Computer processor manufacturer Intel have revealed details of a patent for protecting future generations of computers from the growing threat of cosmic rays.
The company has designed an on-chip cosmic ray detector to try to cope with the particles, which originate in space before sporadically entering the Earth’s atmosphere and going through everything they encounter.
“What happens is if a cosmic ray causes a collision inside the silicon chip, that releases lots of charged particles,” Intel’s senior scientist Eric Hannah told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme. “All our logic is based on charge, so it gets interference.”
The risk from cosmic rays may not be thought of as a big problem on a single computer with a single chip, as there is the potential for error only perhaps every several years.
But Mr Hannah explained that on a supercomputer with 10,000 chips, there was the potential for 10 or 20 faults a week.
And the risk of cosmic ray interference will only increase as chips get smaller. This is because circuits will require less charge per switch to operate.
This actually is not a tinfoil hat moment. I think.
Yes, I could see where this could be a problem. With the chips going to 20nm, any little bit of energy could do weird things. They already have a hard time controlling quantum effects as it is.
But my bigger question is, if a cosmic ray caused a fault in some data or caused a miscalculation, how would they know? What do you do about it?
Ah_Yea:
Early computers often were designed to do everything twice, and compare the results. Sometimes this was sequential, and sometimes parallel, but it was a resource hog. I don’t think any of the PC manufacturers ever did it. A lot of memory board and motherboard manufacturers did implement parity bits in PC’s, but that seems to have largely went away, too. (The last time I noticed it was on a motherboard that didn’t want to boot without parity until it was booted up with parity active and the CMOS told to shut it off. Thereafter it wouldn’t accept parity-enabled memory…. Really fun trying to diagnose memory issues that way….)
I do think the Cosmic Ray issue is real. They do go through about anything, and as the memory components get smaller, may indeed alter the state of one or more bits. Parity bits may be a good idea. Tinfoil isn’t enough…. Lead isn’t enough….
The good news, I suppose, is that parity bits could probably be added back inexpensively. Not perfect, but at least you’d know something poofed.
Regards
From what you two guys are saying, looks like we just need to make these computers thingies real small–and then power them with cosmic rays?
I’ll notify the IPCC of this potential engineering technology.
It’s when the chip for fuel injection and timing on the car quits that I’m going to be PO’d.
I can live without anti-lock brakes for a day, but no engine??
Sounds like something that they’ll overcharge for when computers become dirt cheap. Like the famous “undercoating” at car deslerships
Well, they did have a problem with Alpha Particles from ceramic packaging of memory chips some time ago – they went to plastic and that problem went away, but of course the elemental chip geometry was much larger than today. Now in takling about Cosmic Rays, they weren’t very specific – we have Alpha Particles, Beta Particles, and Gamma Rays, and also Neutrinos. Alpha and Betas can be sheilded with lead, while gamma rays require (from Wiki): “Shields that reduce gamma ray intensity by 50% (1/2) include 1 cm (0.4 inch) of lead, 6 cm (2.4 inches) of concrete, 9 cm (3.6 inches) of packed dirt or 150 m (500 ft) of air. When multiple thicknesses are built, the shielding multiplies.” As for Neutrinos – they come mostly from the Sun and pass through the Earth completely, so there is no amount of shielding on Earth that can block them. (Wiki Neutrino for more info). So, I wonder what kind of “Cosmic Rays” Intel intends to block out ? It seems to me that Array Computers will have to revert to some kind of Paralled Computation for Error Checking alone, so some of the speed up from clustering arrays of CPUs will have to be sacrificed for accuracy …
Last I heard, “Cosmic rays” are very high energy gamma photons. Currently they’re believed to come from distant supernovae.
Too bad they can’t do anything about Vista being a huge, steaming turd.
#2, Stu, thanks for that excellent explanation.
#6, JimD. When referring to cosmic rays, my assumption is that the chip makers are not actually concerned about the cosmic rays per se but about the energy they deposit when they slow down in the chip. Cosmic rays can be pretty high in energy, and when they slow down they create a shower of new particles. Muons, in particular.
While an undergrad, I reworked a well known experiment designed to measure the decay of Muons created by cosmic rays. In this experiment we could actually count the Muons because they would cause a special plastic to light up. These subatomic particles had that much energy. I can only imagine what they would do inside a chip.
In this case wouldn’t global warming be a Good Thing? Warmer atmosphere = thicker atmosphere = more protection from cosmic rays.
I believe that Intel could care less if my computer gets zapped. I would surmise its being paid for by the defense department to ensure that their computers can better withstand radiation from a nuclear blast, or even on satellites in orbit. Yes I know nothing can stand a direct hit of a nuclear blast…but those on the periphery.
#0 “…growing threat of cosmic rays.”
Why would the threat of cosmic rays be higher today than it was say ten years ago? It’s not like we are currently experiencing a higher frequency of cosmic rays hitting earth. More likely our society is more dependent on computers than it was 10 years ago and the number of “vital” computers is larger, but that has nothing to do with the number of supernovae that went off thousands-to-millions of years ago…
The only reason we have this Cosmic Ray problem is because of Bush and his corrupt administration.
I’m sure Bush is gonna blame it on Terrorists.
# 12 Bigby said,
Why would the threat of cosmic rays be higher today than it was say ten years ago?
Moore’s Law has been operating, and chip features are much smaller (shrinking by half every 1.5 to 2 years), and thus more susceptible to being affected by the stray charges.
# 7 floyd said,
Last I heard, “Cosmic rays” are very high energy gamma photons.
Actually, they are mostly very high velocity, usually ionized, atomic nuclei, mostly hydrogen (single protons). But when they hit the atmosphere they produce a shower of secondary particles of many kinds including muons (which then decay into yet more particles) and gamma ray photons.
Error-detecting-and-correcting memory (EC memory) is currently available and may help. But Intel’s plan probably involves rechecking recent results when a cosmic ray is detected.
Though I live in the middle of the country, I’ve been to the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco a few times (one of the nation’s best). On my first visit I was fascinated by a cloud chamber display. This was a box about 2.5 feet wide, a foot tall and 1.5 feet deep filled with a super-saturated alcohol vapor in which charged particles left a tiny visible trail of mist, which would slowly fall to the bottom of the chamber. I estimate there were an average of _ten_to_twenty_ of these _per_second_. This gave me a new appreciation of the DNA repair capabilities in living cells. We live in a much more radioactive world than I had ever realized.