I think it's multiplication. The odds are low but the number of potential instances is larger. Data centers have larger numbers of machines and those machines are doing repeated work where you observe the result.

Personal machines are typically limited by what your senses can handle. There are few of them for starters. They idle a lot. If many pieces failed inexplicably it's not likely to be something you are personally paying attention to with your senses.

(I have personally observed ram and disk failures on personal machines anyway. And I have seen stuff in my dmesg indicating hardware faults on my personal desktops, but rarely in a way that I notice in actual use not looking at dmesg.)

> I wonder if home systems are equally vulnerable, or if there is something about data center system design or facilities that make them more susceptible?

I was told once that today's concrete has a much higher background radiation than brick and mortar from before the 50s. There is also more steel in data centres.

However, I'm not at all sure if background radiation of building materials is even in the right order of magnitude to matter here. Probably not.

A bit of a tangent, but somewhat related to your bit about concrete: steel salvaged from ships built before 1945 is less radioactive than modern steel and is useful for devices that are extremely sensitive to radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

The reason the modern stuff is more radioactive is the massive number of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted starting in 1945. I imagine the concrete has the same issue.

I think you need high energy radiation like cosmic rays from space to create problems. So those at higher elevation are at more risk. Heavy material like concrete may block this radiation.

Alpha particle emissions are common causes of single-bit errors, especially from ceramic enclosure materials in integrated circuits. Mitigating soft errors from circuit packaging is an active area of research in materials science. Parity bits and CRC error checking are needed precisely to reduce the impact of these errors down to manageable levels.

"Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper, beta particles by aluminum, and gamma radiation by a block of lead."

This is what I read online. A typical hardware components is enclosed in a aluminum case so really gamma radiation is of concern right?

GP is saying the radiation is emitted by the component package itself, i.e. the random decay of particles in the ceramic surrounding an IC can cause errors.

Lantz, "Soft errors induced by Alpha Particles", 1996. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/510798/?reload=true

It comes from within.

Concrete and brick are significant sources of radiation. Especially when new.

I don't know if the sort of radiation they give out is of much risk to computers however.