4 ms·
Except if the bit error happens in a pointer and you end up reading from the wrong part of memory. Or in your file system driver and you corrupt the file system
by Asooka 9y ago
Except if the bit error happens in a pointer and you end up reading from the wrong part of memory. Or in your file system driver and you corrupt the file system. Yes, it will most likely be in the 500GB of float arrays, but why would you risk it?
- iainmerrick 9y agoExactly. I'm amazed at how blithely people dismiss the impact of bit errors. A random bitflip could break anything! That's terrifying. Even if it's just in a float, it looks like a single bitflip could change FLOAT_MAX to NaN. That could hurt.
- cjbillington 9y agoYeah but you'll notice, and resume the simulation from a previous checkpoint or something. The risk is with errors that you don't notice, but that nonetheless change the outcome in a meaningful way. That seems to me to actually be a pretty small space of situations.