61 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
[Source](http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/cpu_reliability.html "Permalink to CPU reliability (Linus Torvalds) ")
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# CPU reliability (Linus Torvalds)
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[Index][1] [Home][2] [About][3] [Blog][4]
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* * *
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From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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Newsgroups: fa.linux.kernel
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Subject: Re: [patch] CFS scheduler, -v8
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Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 16:52:21 UTC
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Message-ID: <[fa.oZhj8hj7kSDLnitsqrEJcRJN+RE@ifi.uio.no][5]>
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On Thu, 10 May 2007, Pavel Machek wrote:
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>
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> Also notice that current cpus were not designed to work 300 years.
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> When we have hw designed for 50 years+, we can start to worry.
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Indeed. CPU manufacturers don't seem to talk about it very much, and
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searching for it with google on intel.com comes up with
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The failure rate and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) data is not
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currently available on our website. You may contact Intel®
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Customer Support for this information.
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which seems to be just a fancy way of saying "we don't actually want to
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talk about it". Probably not because it's actually all that bad, but
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simply because people don't think about it, and there's no reason a CPU
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manufacturer would *want* people to think about it.
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But if you wondered why server CPU's usually run at a lower frequency,
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it's because of MTBF issues. I think a desktop CPU is usually specced to
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run for 5 years (and that's expecting that it's turned off or at least
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idle much of the time), while a server CPU is expected to last longer and
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be active a much bigger percentage of time.
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("Active" == "heat" == "more damage due to atom migration etc". Which is
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part of why you're not supposed to overclock stuff: it may well work well
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for you, but for all you know it will cut your expected CPU life by 90%).
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Of course, all the other components have a MTBF too (and I'd generally
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expect a power supply component to fail long before the CPU does). And
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yes, some machines will last for decades. But I suspect we've all heard of
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machines that just don't work reliably any more.
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Linus
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* * *
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[Index][1] [Home][2] [About][3] [Blog][4]
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[1]: http://yarchive.net/index.html
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[2]: http://yarchive.net/home.html
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[3]: http://yarchive.net/about.html
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[4]: http://yarchive.net/blog
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[5]: http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_umsgid=fa.oZhj8hj7kSDLnitsqrEJcRJN+RE%40ifi.uio.no
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