4 ms·
> But once you know you have good DIMMs, it doesn't look like you need to be quite so paranoid about bit errors. Assuming that only the one-error-per-year case
by tbrownaw 17y ago
> But once you know you have good DIMMs, it doesn't look like you need to be quite so paranoid about bit errors.
Assuming that only the one-error-per-year cases were due to random bit flips, and all the multiple-errors-per-year cases were due to bad DIMMs, I came up with about a 1/5 chance of getting a single random bit-flip over a 6 year lifespan. But there also seems to be about a 1/3 chance of having a DIMM randomly go bad after a couple years, which of course without ECC would manifest as random crashes and lost (or maybe corrupted) work.
- Estragon 17y agoSeems like running memtest every six months or so would be a good policy. It would be nice if there were a way to test the memory while a machine is running.
- regularfry 17y agoI remember someone-somewhere saying that in their experience building GCC was a more thorough memory test than memtest itself...
- psranga 17y agoThe errors we're talking about here are transient. The memory location itself is still usable, the contents get changed when a cosmic ray hits. After the hit, the corrupted value is held without a problem. Memtest checks if the memory location has a gross fault which prevents it from storing values correctly. Doesn't seem like memtest will help.
- Estragon 17y agoGood point. Thanks.