Messages in this thread | | | From | (root) | Subject | Re: memtest86, built into kernel | Date | Tue, 23 Apr 1996 00:14:10 -0700 (PDT) |
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> > Basically they say there that with modern SIMMs the MTBF for a soft > > error (ie. alpha particle corruption) is between 12-30 years of > > continual system use. > Its not alpha particles but poor quality control that is 99% of the PC > problem (ignoring software issues for now). > > Alan
Certain product lines of HP minis do aggressive memory checking. On the HP3000's (I don't know if this is true of the HP9000's) there is a task which basically soaks up idle CPU time and goes through memory aggressively testing it all with various bit patterns. If it finds a bad bit, it marks the entire page as unusable, and spits all sorts of diagnostic messages out on the console. If I remember correctly, HP calls this feature 'dynamic bad page deallocation'.
Because this task is basically running when the CPU is idle, it has no cpu impact on the rest of the system.
I would definitely like to see something like this in Linux...
-Dan
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