Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdmichal | Hacker News Reader

> I'd love to see this code in memory testers like memtest86 so I could send the RAM back if it ever caught a problem like this.

Is this an individual stick bug, or a design bug akin to Spectre? Given that they tested 40 different sticks and seemed to find effective patterns for all of them make me think it's the latter. In which case, just return all your computers?

View on HN

Yeah, this is a problem with high density DRAM. Fixes are possible but difficult and expensive. In the cutthroat DRAM market nobody seems willing to put in the engineering effort to develop a solution and then manufacture it. It would have to sell at a premium, in a market where it's difficult to even find ECC memory at times.

The article states that ECC isn't sufficient to solve Rowhammer, but it does make the attack harder. If you are looking for a hardware solution it is your only option currently, even if it is imperfect.

I imagine you are right that consumers don't care or know enough to put pressure on manufacturers, but what about big companies like the FANGs? Or Government agencies like NSA etc? What are they doing about it? I imagine intelligence agencies are well aware of the issue and have or are trying to get solutions to protect their own infra.

Off topic but shouldn’t FAANG really be referred to as MAAAN now?

Google -> Alphabet

Facebook -> Meta

Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix. MAAAN.

Google still exists. Facebook still exists. Meta/Alphabet are mainly holding companies. For example, I received reach outs from recruiters for Google and Facebook today. Not from Meta and Alphabet. Maybe once Meta and Alphabet deliver on things and build brand recognition, it should change. Until then, I'd vote "no".

If you're doing that: M3AN.

I like MAGMA more

Right, the idea was to swap Netflix for Microsoft, giving MAGMA or GAMMA:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29042753

MANGA

M - Meta A - Apple N - Netflix G - Google A - Amazon

I'm now adopting this, thanks

AMANAM

Apple Microsoft Amazon Netflix Alphabet Meta

Now I can add "I have never worked for the MAAAN" with pride on my business cards!

Every now and again I worry I've grown up. Then I realize there is no grown up, just a Matroyshka doll of more and more eclectic subtexts

If you detect flips you can send it back, it's violating the advertised interface.

Sure, but if it's possible to cause bit flips in basically all currently available components, then what's the point? Return all of your RAM and have a non-functional computer?

Can't get bit flips on my RAM if I have no RAM.

So you just.. Send back all of your RAM all the time because they are all susceptible to bitflips?

This is not a tenable solution.

It happened because at some point in the past (around 10 years ago I believe), the memory vendors decided that it was ok to design product with known "pattern sensitivity", because...I suppose they made more money that way and no customer complained loudly. Pattern sensitivity in memory chips is a very old problem, and previously was treated as a fatal design error, fixed and the affected chips used for parking lot infill. But today every chip sold is affected. Basically the same as Boeing and the MAX, just fewer people killed.

> Pattern sensitivity in memory chips is a very old problem, and previously was treated as a fatal design error

You seem to know more about this than I do. Where might one go to read more about this? Are there whitepapers, design docs, other resources which could be used to assert positively that the industry used to consider this a defect?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com