Prentice Bisbal wrote:
Gerry Creager wrote:
David Mathog wrote:
Huw Lynes <lyn...@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:
http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/04/blame-it-on-cosmic-rays.html
Apparently someone ran a large cluster job with both ECC and none-ECC
RAM. They consistently got the wrong answer when foregoing ECC.
There were not very many details given. I would not rule out the
possibility that the nonECC memory was slightly faulty, and that the
observed errors had nothing to do with gamma rays at all. A better test
would have been to use the same ECC memory for both tests, and to turn
ECC memory correction on and off in the BIOS.
Where's Jim Lux. I'm sure he's an opinion on this, too...
Opinion? I think he could write a book on this topic!
Last time this issue came up, he included links to several papers on
this topic published by Boeing. As you go up in the atmosphere, the
[prevalence|probability|concentration] of cosmic rays goes up
significantly. Boeing has done a lot of research on this topic, since it
can affect the operation of their [products|weapons].
Once I took a radiation detector (RM-60 from aw-el.com) attached
to an early "netbook" (Atari Portfolio) and recorded the radiation
level on a 11'000 m flight.
From memory the radiation level in the cabin increased from about
12-17 micro R/hr, a natural radiation level at the ground level,
to over 300 micro R/hr, about 20 times more.
Since the natural level of radiation over a lifetime correponds
to a semi-lethal instantaneous dosis, I would think that for the
crew working years in airplanes the cumulated radiation coming
from cosmic rays may be significant.
Dan
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