Monday, February 8, 2010

Use ECC RAM!

My colleagues often make fun of me because I shut down and restart my laptop several times a day.  There are several reasons I do this, but one of them is to avoid accumulated memory (RAM) errors due to cosmic rays.  These errors occur more frequently than most people think if your computer doesn't use error correcting (ECC) RAM (and most laptops do not).  Here's an article that explains why this is true, and also gives specific estimates about the frequency of these errors. 

Bottom line: I'm going continue the behavior that I'm mocked for...

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