Ok, I’ll bite: what’s a “cosmic ray bit-flip”?
The probability of losing your life to a cosmic ray bit-flip is increasing daily
Submitted 9 months ago by Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 9 months ago
TomFrost@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So basically, we have low level neutron radiation coming at us at all times from space. Mostly from our own sun, some other external sources too. It takes a whole lot of concrete or lead or water to stop that completely, so anything that makes it through our atmosphere is harmlessly passing through all of us.
But since things like computer RAM and other electronic storage have gotten so much smaller, this radiation is now capable of energizing or discharging individual bits — 1s or 0s — in that storage. Imagine you’re in the hospital for a back operation and the robot arm is approaching a 1 bit that tells it to stop… but that 1 flips to a 0 because the sun sneezed and now your spine is in two fun-sized pieces.
This is all mostly moot today, though. ECC-enabled RAM (memory with protections against bit flips) is the norm and this is a pretty well-understood problem.
GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Ok, there just has to be a movie that capitalizes on this idea.
Carighan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Should mention that the robot does not depend on a 1 to stop, more on like 600 in any “modern” programming language. 😅
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Nearly every computer you use, including the ones people are starting to use for self-driving, can have their memory accidentally modified from cosmic rays
We try really hard to protect spaceships from them, since they’re subject to more
However, due to the law of large numbers, sometimes your computer will get random bit flips - where it should be a 0, but it’s instead a 1, or vice versa
harmsy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Cosmic ray zaps your silicon just right to flip a bit. If you’ve heard of the Tick Tock Clock upwarp in Mario 64, most people suspect that’s what happened.
A_A@lemmy.world 9 months ago
On first thought : yes.
But on second thought : no (i.e. : not really, because of system’s redundancies)AndOfTheSevenSeas@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The probability of [a thing happening] increasing daily if it hasn’t happened yet.
How profound.
Vladkar@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If you’re a fallacious gambler, maybe.
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
The probability of rolling a six is 1/6 no matter what numbers were rolled previously. Unless I’m misunderstanding your point
Kbobabob@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Unless you start adding extra mass to one side, ie adding more things to your life that this could happen to.
AndOfTheSevenSeas@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If we were discussing dice, yes.
Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
statistics are statistics
I should have clarified this in the post; i had electric cars and scooters(record breaking sales where i live) in mind when i originally had the thoughtbamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Regarding electric scooters, I’m not really sure what bits there are to be flipped, which could cause issues. My understanding is that when you hit the brakes for example, that electrical signal is sent directly to the brakes, and there’s not a digital buffer of inputs which are stored to memory to be read, which is where a bit flip could happen. I assume braking and acceleration are analog voltages on the wire, so a brief cosmic ray would be miniscule and probably not noticeable.
Aatube@kbin.social 9 months ago
Like bamboo said; electric scooters aren't digital
Amir@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Since the set of all remaining time only shrinks, the possibility of anything ever happening at least once in all time should also shrink unless it already happened.
And things happening at a rate per second doesn’t mean it increases either if it hasn’t happened yet. The probability of me being eaten by a dinosaur today is definitely not higher compared to being eaten by a dinosaur yesterday.
AndOfTheSevenSeas@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Its truly inspiring how you wrote a paragraph to encompass a single sentence. I can’t thank you enough you enough for your useful drivel.
flathead@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Imagine this happening today…
Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
The real Y2K
olafurp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I thought we already had a way to deal with bit flips. CPU bit flips should be common by now because of the size of processors these days.
Thoth19@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yup. There is technology to deal with this. But does every piece of hw have that tech? No. Does every piece of sw run eccs for this purpose? No.
favrion@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Explain?
towerful@programming.dev 9 months ago
More computers dealing with more parts of your life increases the chance that a bit flip has a negative effect
DarkGamer@kbin.social 9 months ago
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Everything important is using ECC and low-level parity bit protection.
ares35@kbin.social 9 months ago
in a perfect world, perhaps. but we don't live in one.
db2@lemmy.world 9 months ago
history-computer.com/dec-pdp-11-computer/
cooopsspace@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Thanks Intel for making this statement false
Thoth19@lemmy.world 9 months ago
These have a high probability of working but it isn’t perfect. And not all of them tell you which way the bit was flipped.