3 ms·

Actually crashing on bit flips is a second problem, and an indicator of the first problem.

• Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Crashing is "not the problem" because crashing prevents the far worse problem of incorrect data or operation that you don't know is incorrect. The difference in significance is so great that by comparison a mere crash is no problem at all. In fact you design systems with hair triggers to 'crash' on purpose as readily as possible. Trying desperately to crash at all times every millisecond all day every day. IE, halting all operation of some subsystem, or the whole thing, the second a single bit wrong is detected. Better to kill the hd or the entire machine than let it keep running one second after getting any hint it might not be 100% trustworthy. 'crash' in quotes because really all you want to do is halt, and you're doing it on purpose, but that is still a crash, in the sense that your application does not want to halt and it isn't necessarily halted gracefully with any chance to conclude anything or save anything. Those are just more operations you can no longer trust to be correct, and so should not be allowed to do.