Elevation Plays a Role In Memory Error Rates 190
alphadogg writes "With memory, as with real estate, location matters. A group of researchers from AMD and the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have found that the altitude at which SRAM resides can influence how many random errors the memory produces. In a field study of two high-performance computers, the researchers found that L2 and L3 caches had more transient errors on the supercomputer located at a higher altitude, compared with the one closer to sea level. They attributed the disparity largely to lower air pressure and higher cosmic ray-induced neutron strikes. Strangely, higher elevation even led to more errors within a rack of servers, the researchers found. Their tests showed that memory modules on the top of a server rack had 20 percent more transient errors than those closer to the bottom of the rack. However, it's not clear what causes this smaller-scale effect."
basements (Score:5, Funny)
Another reason for nerds to stay in the basement
This is news? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's interesting! (Score:5, Funny)
Another interesting idea would be to do the same experiment by latitude. Does the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center have a higher rate than the Maui Supercomputing Center?
They tried to do that test a few years back, but both research teams mysteriously disappeared. The leading hypothesis is that the Arctic team was eaten by polar bears, but nobody has any idea what happened to the Maui team. The only clue left at the scene was a nearly-empty glass of pina colada.
Hmmm .... (Score:4, Funny)
Is this why when I'm in an airplane I can never remember if I turned all the lights out? ;-)
Re:Product suggestion. (Score:4, Funny)
OK. Where am I going to find an RoHS lead block?
Re:Heat related? (Score:4, Funny)
BRB, going to convincine my boss to tip all our servers over.