Effects of Memory Corruption
The consequence of a memory error is system-dependent. In systems without ECC an error can lead either to a crash or to corruption of data; in large-scale production sites memory errors are one of the most common hardware causes of machine crashes. Memory errors can cause security vulnerabilities. A memory error can have no consequences if it changes a bit which neither causes observable malfunctioning nor affects data used in calculations or saved. A 2010 simulation study showed that, for a web browser, only a small fraction of memory errors caused data corruption, although as many memory errors are intermittent and correlated, the effects of memory errors were greater than would be expected for independent soft errors.
An example of a single-bit error that would be ignored by a system with no error-checking, would halt a machine with parity checking, or would be invisibly corrected by ECC: a single bit is stuck at 1 due to a faulty chip, or becomes changed to 1 due to background or cosmic radiation; a spreadsheet storing numbers in ASCII format is loaded, and the digit "8" is stored in the byte which contains the stuck bit as its eighth bit; then a change is made to the spreadsheet and it is saved. However, the "8" (00111000 binary) has silently become a "9" (00111001).
Read more about this topic: ECC Memory
Famous quotes containing the words effects of, effects, memory and/or corruption:
“Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“For my name and memory I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.”
—Madame Chiang Kai-Shek (b. 1898)