The system is the sum of the parts. Once, while investigating the cause of occasional bursts of static in audio, I eventually narrowed it down to misconfigured

The system is the sum of the parts. Once, while investigating the cause of occasional bursts of static in audio, I eventually narrowed it down to misconfigured pull-down resistors on the ADC data lines. (Okay, not quite silicon.) EEC memory, a not uncommon upgrade for servers, guards against data corruptions due to thermal noise (a silicon-level concern), among other things. Okay, it's rare that the lowest levels will affect most projects, but without a little bit of understanding, some bugs can be impossible to even fathom.