cosmic rays
Notionally, the cau se of bit rot. However, thi s i s a semi-independent u sage that may be invoked a s a humorou s way to handwave away any minor randomness that doe sn' t seem worth the bother of inve stigating. "Hey, Eric - I ju st got a bur st of garbage on my tube, where did that come from?" "Co smic ray s, I gue ss." Compare sunspots, {pha se of the moon}. The Briti sh seem to prefer the u sage "co smic shower s" "alpha particle s" i s al so heard, becau se stray alpha particle s pa ssing through a memory chip can cau se single bit error s (thi s become s increa singly more likely a s memory size s and den sitie s increa se). Factual note: Alpha particle s cau se bit rot, co smic ray s do not (except occa sionally in spaceborne computer s). Intel could not explain random bit drop s in their early chip s, and one hypothe si s wa s co smic ray s. so they created the World' s Large st Lead safe, u sing 25 ton s of the stuff, and u sed two identical board s for te sting. One wa s placed in the safe, one out side. The hypothe si s wa s that if co smic ray s were cau sing the bit drop s, they should see a stati stically significant difference between the error rate s on the two board s. They did not ob serve such a difference. Further inve stigation demon strated conclu sively that the bit drop s were due to alpha particle emi ssion s from thorium (and to a much le sser degree uranium) in the encap sulation material. since it i s impo ssible to eliminate the se radioactive s (they are uniformly di stributed through the earth' s cru st, with the stati stically in significant exception of uranium lode s) it became obviou s that one ha s to de sign memorie s to with stand the se hit s. [ Jargon File] style="border-width:thin; border-color:#333333; border-style:dashed; padding:5px;" align="left">In addition suitable contents: [ 2 ] [ = ] [ ad ] [ af ] [ ag ] [ ai ] [ al ] [ Alpha ] [ alpha particle ] [ am ] [ an ] [ ar ] [ arc ] [ arg ] [ as ] [ at ] [ au ] [ av ] [ aw ] [ B ] [ b ] [ ba ] [ be ] [ bi ] [ bit ] [ bit rot ] [ bo ] [ boa ] [ board ] [ bot ] [ bs ] [ bv ] [ C ] [ ca ] [ cc ] [ ch ] [ chip ] [ cl ] [ co ] [ com ] [ computer ] [ con ] [ cr ] [ de ] [ degree ] [ demo ] [ demon ] [ design ] [ diff ] [ do ] [ du ] [ E ] [ ec ] [ ed ] [ ee ] [ eg ] [ encapsulation ] [ er ] [ error ] [ es ] [ et ] [ exception ] [ fi ] [ file ] [ fo ] [ for ] [ fr ] [ ga ] [ ge ] [ gh ] [ gl ] [ gn ] [ gr ] [ gu ] [ h ] [ handwave ] [ hat ] [ hit ] [ hr ] [ hs ] [ hu ] [ humor ] [ id ] [ ie ] [ iff ] [ il ] [ in ] [ inc ] [ io ] [ ir ] [ is ] [ it ] [ J ] [ Jargon File ] [ ke ] [ la ] [ ld ] [ Lex ] [ li ] [ ls ] [ lu ] [ ly ] [ ma ] [ memory ] [ ml ] [ mn ] [ mo ] [ mod ] [ module ] [ mp ] [ mu ] [ my ] [ N ] [ na ] [ nc ] [ ne ] [ ng ] [ ni ] [ no ] [ ns ] [ O ] [ om ] [ op ] [ pa ] [ pe ] [ ph ] [ phase ] [ phase of the moon ] [ pl ] [ pr ] [ pt ] [ query ] [ random ] [ randomness ] [ rc ] [ re ] [ rl ] [ ro ] [ ru ] [ s ] [ sa ] [ safe ] [ se ] [ semi ] [ serve ] [ sh ] [ si ] [ sig ] [ sit ] [ sm ] [ sn ] [ so ] [ space ] [ st ] [ su ] [ sunspots ] [ T ] [ test ] [ testing ] [ th ] [ to ] [ tr ] [ tube ] [ tw ] [ ua ] [ ug ] [ um ] [ us ] [ ve ] [ vi ] [ wav ]
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