- Do you get that "blue screen of death" on your
PC now and then for no reason, requiring you to reboot? Does your Apple
give you that infamous fatal error message requiring you to re-boot?
-
- You're not alone. Defective software can certainly cause
these events to happen. The hardware industry is now pointing
their finger at Microsoft - while Microsoft points their finger right
back in a very crafty way.
-
- Here's the latest in the finger war from an engineering
newsletter dated May 18, 2007:
-
- *** START OF EXTRACT
-
- MICROSOFT IS THE PROBLEM ACCORDING TO HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS
-
- PCs and notebooks are memory hogs, and manufacturers
may need to adopt error-correcting code memory to stem the increase
in system crashes, experts said during the Windows Hardware Engineering
Conference. A confidential Microsoft white paper analyzing the causes
of system crashes found that single-bit error rates in DRAM are a
leading cause of system failures, reports editor at large Rick Merritt.
OEMs have countered that Windows failures account for more crashes
than DRAM soft errors. The issue now is which side will assume the
added cost of fixing the problem.
-
- HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS ARE THE PROBLEM ACCORDING TO EXPERTS
-
- PCs and notebooks are memory hogs, and manufacturers
may need to adopt error-correcting code memory to stem the increase
in system crashes, experts said during the Windows Hardware Engineering
Conference. A confidential Microsoft white paper analyzing the causes
of system crashes found that single-bit error rates in DRAM are a
leading cause of system failures, reports editor at large Rick Merritt.
OEMs have countered that Windows failures account for more crashes
than DRAM soft errors. The issue now is which side will assume the
added cost of fixing the problem.
-
-
- MICROSOFT SAYS PCs MAY NEED DRAM UPGRADE
-
- Desktop and notebook computers need to adopt error-correcting
code (ECC) memory to fend off rising system crashes from single-bit
memory errors, according to a confidential white paper written by
Microsoft Corp.
-
- *** END OF EXTRACT [1]
-
-
- PING PONG BLAME GAME
-
- What do we have here? Microsoft's position is from a
"confidential white paper." Now how did that get out? Was it
on purpose or even staged by the company itself? (Looks like their defense
contracts have infiltrated corporate thinking.) It has been known since
1978 that DRAMs can be susceptible to radiation, causing data stored in
memory to shift to the opposite state creating a crash. [2]
-
- The mile-high city of Denver, Colorado has several
times the cosmic background radiation found at sea level. Has
anyone performed a statistical correlation of computer crashes between
sea level and 5,000 ft? More than likely, no one really wants to know.
-
- There was also a memory and microprocessor
research laboratory built high upon a mountain for chip reliability research
for studying long term radiation effects. This was announced several years
ago, however little is known of the research results from this facility.
The facility was built by a chip manufacturer.
-
- It is well known that the plastic which encapsulates
DRAM chips can emit alpha particles. Why this material is radioactive is
not known. In 1990, alpha particle induced soft errors occurred in 16 Mb
computer systems at the mean rate of roughly one error every 3 months.
Improved DRAM designs have greatly reduced that error rate so that today
the mean error rate in a 16 Mb system is roughly one bit error every 16
years. [3]
-
- ALPHA PARTICLES
-
- Consider what happens when you have a GIGABYTE (or more)
of memory in your computer. What does this do to increase the statistical
failure rate cited above, over tiny 16Mb chips? It can't be good. Memory
chips are so dense today that only one or two electrons are used to retain
data in each bit at any given memory location.
-
- So how large are Alpha particles? A small cloud chamber
anyone can make allows one to see Alpha particle tracks in the CO2-created
fog. Think about the size of an Alpha particle, as opposed to the size
of just ONE electron. Put another way, an Alpha particle hitting a memory
cell bit is similar to taking a bowling ball and rolling it across
a pool table of two people playing billiards. It would be nearly impossible
NOT to knock balls off the table. You might also find that a the players
will use their billiard cue sticks for another purpose, too.
-
- There is also the problem of cosmic rays, which rip through
all matter on the surface of the Earth day and night. Imagine just one
high speed cosmic ray particle hitting one or two electrons in a memory
cell. Think that data or program code will remain unchanged? In fact, statistically
it is only a matter of time before one of these fast particles hits a cell
just right to cause an error. Note that not all of memory is being
used at any moment in time. Therefore, if an error is created in a memory
cell that has no current program code or data stored in it nothing will
happen. This is because when new data or program code is later written
to that same cell, the error is erased.
-
- CAMPING LANTERN MANTLES AND VACUUM TUBES ARE RADIOACTIVE
-
- Alpha particles themselves are stopped with an ordinary
sheet of paper. However, Alpha is classified as ionizing radiation. When
a substance which emits Alpha particles enters the lungs, it can cause
DNA to be altered and a malignancy to develop. The wicks for some camping
lanterns are RADIOACTIVE. I've performed this test myself just a few years
ago with a Geiger counter and proved it is true. Lantern mantles wicks
do indeed contain radioactive Thorium. (There are more than 12,000 links
to this problem on the web.) Why is it we are supposed to be so careful
when disposing of a smoke detector, which has an amount of radioactive
material so small that it's literally INVISIBLE to the human eye? Yet radioactive
camping lantern mantles don't even come with a warning?
-
- Remember vacuum tubes? They also have radioactive
Thorium which is used for the cathodes in the tube. You can see the cathode
through the glass. The end of it is visible as a short stub, as a long,
skinny white tube in the center with the end of it held in place by a mica
plate. Vacuum tubes have either one, two or three of these cathodes. Did
vacuum tubes ever come with a radioactivity warning? No.
-
- THE CURE FOR THE PROBLEM
-
- With memory densities ever increasing and no practical
shielding for radiation in computers, this problem will only get worse.
However, memory is also becoming cheaper, too. This opens the door for
using a holographic type memory storage. (RAID hard drives use technique
like this today.) Program code and data would be copied to completely different
memory chips. Error checking and correction would detect a faulty bit "on
the fly" and would then retrieve the program or data from the backup
copy. This is by far perhaps the cheapest and ultimate answer to the problem.
But what will it take for hardware and chip manufacturers to implement
it, and for both Microsoft and Apple to actually use it?
-
- Clearly both hardware and software manufacturers alike
are at fault.
-
- If you "upgrade" to MS Vista on your computer?
Now you're the problem and it will be something you'll truly regret.
Currently, that operating system has been banned by the US Dept. of Transportation
because of excessive bugs.
-
- Ted Twietmeyer
- www.data4science.net
- www.bookonmars.info
-
- REFERENCES
-
- [1] Reprint permission for extracted text is explicitly
given in the EE Times newsletter
- [2] Brazilian Journal of Physics 2003 - http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-97332003000200013
- [3] http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/part1/
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