[c-nsp] Parity Errors and Cosmic Rays

[Brad Swanson]

What if "C" claims cosmic rays cause certain line cards to fail when certain 
code on the 6509 can't recover the software failure?  6.4.4a on 6509's.  
6324's in the '09.


>-----Original Message-----
>From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
>[mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Andre Beck
>Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 7:41 AM
>To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
>Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Parity Errors and Cosmic Rays
>
>On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 12:14:21PM -0400, Bill Wichers wrote:
> >
> > I remember reading somewhere once that a neutrino hitting a DRAM cell
> > will release just enough energy to flip the state of one bit...
>
>A *neutrino*? So if the starter of this thread really managed to get
>*multiple* hits of *neutrinos* in his DRAM *chips*, he should probably
>try whether his beeing a unique statistical fluctuation gets him
>anything in a lottery or Vegas ;)
>
>If at all cosmic rays (which smells mostly like a BOFH excuse if not
>founded by some reasoning like high altitude or bad space wheather in
>progress) I'd rather expect alpha to do the damage, or the shower of
>particles created by a high energy particle like a myon.
>
>In practice, slowly decaying hardware is often due to way more primitive
>reasons, mostly bad electrolyte capacitors (which tend to be used in
>power supply components and thus cause supply voltage to be unstable or
>out of the expected range). They age progressively at increased
>temperatures - something very common in insufficiently air conditioned
>IT racks. MTBF reduces drastically with increasing temperature. But even
>under ideal conditions, with the practice of selling incorrectly
>declared capacitors that came about in the last years, almost anyone can
>have this problem.
>
>--
>                   The _S_anta _C_laus _O_peration
>   or "how to turn a complete illusion into a neverending money source"
>
>-> Andre Beck    +++ ABP-RIPE +++    IBH Prof. Dr. Horn GmbH, Dresden <-
>_______________________________________________
>cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
>https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
>archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/