🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <81654r$72u4@gamma.dmz-eu.st.com>, Dave Smith <dsmith@contrac
t15.inmos.co.uk> writes

>If you are doing tax rate calculations, which would 
>probably use the FPU, then you might get unnoticed errors in your data.  

The ability of the manufacturers to test all parts of their chips is
very limited. Consequently they would be mad to use close-tolerance chip
design in areas they cannot properly test. You *ought* therefore to be
quite confident that the internal error checking within the CPU chip
will catch problems or be largely immune in the event of an internal
failure. Remember that even good devices operated within their spec will
and do fail and .001% of 100M devices is a heck of a large number of
failures. If they resulted in untrapped errors in financial software of
a large-medium sized company the costs might be eye-watering. 

Judging from the apparent resistance of overheated (and thus failed in
use) processors that have been mentioned in dtpc over the years that
have (on reinstallation of a new fan) gone on for years without problem
I suspect that the manufacturers have sensibly included a chip shutdown
in the event of this sort of gross problem. After all it would only
require a minute percentage of the total components on the chip to
implement this sensible facility (ie just switch off the clock).

I don't believe that for the average user, using known clockable chips,
and with the usual checks is under any great risk for non-critical
usage. If they do have a critical use then saving a few $10's is not an
issue.

>I'm not
>sure I'd like to take the risk of corrupting the data going through my CPU. It's
>a matter of personal choice whether you overclock or not.

If you even use a computer you run the risk of corrupted data. The
decision is to what level of assurance your usage is required to
achieve. This might go from triple (or more) paralleled processors with
voted error correction/checks for operating a remote spacecraft to
grossly overclocked systems when using the latest game. In the former a
failure tends to be rather terminal and the latter a slightly irritating
reboot every week or so.

-- 
Oz