Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!super!rminnich From: rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: VAX Memory Test Message-ID: <609@super.ORG> Date: 10 Aug 88 13:38:09 GMT References: <3300032@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <12849@mimsy.UUCP> <1743@swlabs.UUCP> <167@vertical.oz> Sender: uucp@super.ORG Reply-To: rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Lanham, MD Lines: 12 In article <167@vertical.oz> greg@vertical.oz (Greg Bond) writes: >Usually called memory scrubbing. A task for the null process? >And is it usually implemented in hardware or software? Do hardware >implementations automagically write back corrected value? At burroughs it was called healing. The memory controller did it all automatically. ON a cheaper machine there is no reason (i can think of) that you couldn't do it in software- just read the value and write it back. Course, if you have snooping caches or channels or other things that might whomp memory that has side effects, whereas on the burroughs machines which did it in hardware that was not an issue. ron