[erik]

Has anyone tried using software to measure bit-flip rates on non-ECC systems? It seems like a pretty easy task. Turn off swap. Fill a bunch of memory with a known pattern. Every few hours read all the memory and verify that no bits were flipped. If the 2009 result holds on modern systems and a gigabyte of DRAM flips a bit every few hours, then evidence should show up pretty quickly.

[adrian_b]

At least according to more recent publications and to my own experience, a single gigabyte of good DRAM does not flip a bit every few hours, but every few months.

On non-server computers, which seldom reach peak memory usage, a bit flip may happen in a location where it does no harm.

Nevertheless, after a few years of use, a memory module can start to have frequent bit flips, even many per hour. If you have ECC, you will be notified about this and you will be able to replace the bad module. On most computers without ECC, that can easily lead to undetected data corruption.

Also, when you have 64 GB DRAM, that multiplies by 64 the error frequency.