Re:Ask HN: Why don't transistors in microchips fail?
by rgovind on Saturday July 11, 2015 @01:08AM
(#9868608)
It happens often enough that NASA has asked FPGA synthesis tool vendors to implement error correction feature on this. Basically, when state machine goes into some error condition/state, the system is reset to a known state.
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Re:Ask HN: Why don't transistors in microchips fail?
by eridius on Saturday July 11, 2015 @02:27AM
(#9868783)
NASA also needs hardware to operate under extreme conditions. For example, anything that goes into orbit is going to have a significantly increased likelihood of a gamma ray burst (because it's no longer protected by the atmosphere). I'd also imagine that they have a much lower tolerance for faults than your average consumer machine as well (because they're doing things that are much more critically important).