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by tempguy9999 2605 days ago
> ...split and join data in non-deterministic ways ... to different floating point rounding

Ah, of course! A very timely reminder, thanks!

> GPU's aren't anywhere near as reliable as CPU's when it comes to being able to run for hours without any random bit flips/errors.

Now that's worrying. A bit flip can't be expected to be skewed towards any particular bit within a float, so it could easily happen in the exponent, skewing a single value by orders of magnitude one way or the other. Combine that with the rest of your 'good' results and yuck. That's very concerning. Thanks for the warning.

1 comments

> A bit flip can't be expected to be skewed towards any particular bit within a float,

Actually, I think they are - for example, the exponent path through an adder/multiplier is typically shorter, so when operated close to clock speed limits, the exponent is more likley to be correct.

(I've not actually verified the above on real hardware)