Intel patents cosmic ray detectors on-a-chip. What a relief.

That great perpetrator of worldly ills, the cosmic ray, has at last met its match. Intel has patented the concept of an on-chip detector of cosmic rays which would auto-correct for soft errors caused by the cosmic ray's interference. Apparently Intel is concerned that cosmic rays -- those perky particles from space that blast through the Earth's atmosphere and tamper with your precious bodily fluids -- are going to become "a major limiter of computer reliability in the next decade" as chips get smaller and smaller. The rays have already been proved to interfere with electronics in small ways, so while Intel doesn't have method for building an actual cosmic ray detector yet, they're certainly getting a jump on the problem with this patent. We know we'll certainly be sleeping better at night.

[Via Slashdot]

[hexoDAT64 @ Mar 9th 2008 1:20AM]

I'm patenting a way to fix global warming. I just don't know how to do it yet...

[chris @ Mar 9th 2008 1:26AM]

lets all not use cars and skip instead
that way we save all that gas stuff

plus skipping is way funner anyway

[derX @ Mar 9th 2008 1:32AM]

Guys, if we fix global warming, then what else's existence are we going to argue about?

Jesus'? Dinosaurs? The Lochness Monster?

I prefer global warming, our arguments seem more civil and it produces Ocscar Award winning movies. As inconvenient a truth as it maybe, I say, let's ignore the solution for a while, let's just argue about it.


Or it'll kill us. It's up to you. Though it probably won't prove fatal until much further in the future. *ignorant smile*

[Stephen @ Mar 9th 2008 3:36AM]

c'mon now soviet...

rick roll me once, shame on me.
rick roll me twice, shame on you.

[asphixiated @ Mar 9th 2008 3:46AM]

@soviet:

that has got to be the best implementation of the rick roll i have ever seen in my life.

[soviet_vexxer @ Mar 9th 2008 5:56AM]

LIAR!!!!! asphixiated, lol i think i got stephen the other day with the exact same link. but yea them rays are supposed to mess with dna and cause cancer.

[AutoTom @ Mar 9th 2008 7:05AM]

not quite the same thing - but i like it

[Aguiluz @ Mar 9th 2008 10:29AM]

@Soviet_Vexxer

HA! I got that dumb website banned!

[Zach @ Mar 9th 2008 11:47AM]

goodness gracious soviet. demon.

[Zach @ Mar 9th 2008 11:47AM]

goodness gracious soviet. demon.

[Zach @ Mar 9th 2008 11:48AM]

WOW. only on engadgets comment system would it load me up with a blank page, and when i refresh forces me to double comment.
i guess he really is a demon o.O

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 9th 2008 1:24AM]

So 10 seconds before I'm dead because some star in a neighboring solar system blew up and threw some nasty gamma rays this way my laptop will tell me I'm toast and shut down on me to protect itself....good to know....good to know. :-P

[derX @ Mar 9th 2008 1:28AM]

Yes, it is all outlined in the "Viva SKYNET" booklet which came with your laptop.

Our deaths are okay, as long as the computers live and reproduce.

[~~Tito~~ @ Mar 9th 2008 3:08AM]

Then they will mate, and the females will have to go and get food (Imagine march of the Penguins).

[engadgetier @ Mar 9th 2008 9:57AM]

thats right. In a few years, when a terminator comes to find me, John Connor, i won't be able to destroy skyNet with nuclear weapons. that sucks. But seriously, machines will one-day take over the world and kill us ALL!

[MEAT! @ Mar 9th 2008 1:31PM]

"Here! That tomato just ejected itself!"
"It works! It works!!" *CRASH*

[RIMM Jobs @ Mar 9th 2008 1:41AM]

The engineers at Intel have really taken control lately. Truly amazing stuff they've been cranking out. And with the roadmap they highlighted last week we could be entering a golden age of breakthroughs in performance.

[Michael LaFramboise @ Mar 9th 2008 3:16AM]

Yeah, shame we'll be too dead cause of all the cosmic rays to use any of that innovation :p

[poos4life @ Mar 9th 2008 3:07AM]

Those rays done been proved to hornswaggle those cantraptions? Well don't that beat all. Shucks

[Anton @ Mar 9th 2008 3:17AM]

LASERZ!

[Superprime @ Mar 9th 2008 4:01AM]

I think they have a good reason to make these detectors:

"I haven't seen any recent figures on how often they happen, but back in 1996 IBM estimated you would see one a month for every 256MB of RAM."
That's A LOT

[AutoTom @ Mar 9th 2008 7:06AM]

yay! the IT guy ( me ) now has an excuse - why did this happen? umm probably cosmic rays..

[Bobs @ Mar 9th 2008 7:54PM]

All it needed was a restart.

[Wwhat @ Mar 10th 2008 4:54AM]

"When triggered, it could activate error-checking circuits that refresh the nearby memory, repeat the most recent actions, or ask for the last message from outside circuits to be sent again."

So now we'll have to get rid of DDR3 and get DDR3-ECC I guess, but do the new chipsets still support ECC?

[pallavnarang @ Mar 9th 2008 5:49AM]

LOL@ precious body fluids! And i suppose if some of these chips installed in a nuclear weapons facility "misbehave" we might have an intergalactic war at hand....we'll be so pwnd!

[Harry Wagstaff @ Mar 9th 2008 7:21AM]

But what if a cosmic ray strikes the chip and causes it to malfunction? You need a cosmic ray detector chip-on-a-chip-on-a-chip-on-a-chip. Triple redundancy is the only way to be sure.

[laxsu19 @ Mar 9th 2008 9:36AM]

Seems like the thing this poster missed while looking for a chance to be sarcastic is that these things would be incredibly useful in space, if used as advertised.

[HopefulNebula @ Mar 9th 2008 10:30AM]

Well, there goes one of the BOFH's excuse cards...

[sbratz4 @ Mar 9th 2008 1:49PM]

what a worthless piece of shit you are. It is funny, I get banned here (posts deleted, ip blocked) because I criticize engadget by comparing how they are all flowery in their posts about apple, but will demonize microsoft for the same things apple does, but yet the scum of the earth people like you get to put out these types of posts that try to take over people's computers get to stay around. Burn in he'll you fuck-wit.

[Sam Winter @ Mar 9th 2008 6:43AM]

hmmm.... WTF are you talking about and who are you directing that nonsense at?

[Kizorblade @ Mar 9th 2008 6:57AM]

Yeah. Now we know why you get IP banned. Congratulations, you're stupider then Paris Hilton!

[AutoTom @ Mar 9th 2008 7:07AM]

please go to gizmodo - we dont want you here

[Aguiluz @ Mar 9th 2008 10:31AM]

Engadget is a happy place. Penalties are only reserved for the abusers.

[paul34 @ Mar 9th 2008 2:34PM]

Don't you have a Hannah Montana concert you should be going to or something?

[thethirdmoose @ Mar 9th 2008 11:46PM]

He got IP banned from the concert.

[captain underpants and the bringdown gang @ Mar 9th 2008 4:02PM]

Boy I bet the fantastic four wish they had this.

[biffwhammy @ Mar 9th 2008 5:15PM]

These things wouldn't only be useful in space (if, as laxsu19 said, they work as advertise). I work at an accelerator lab. We have problems with PLC's failing at high beam currents due to soft errors caused (we think) by prompt, high-energy neutrons from the beamline. On-board autocorrection would make our lives easier (not that I expect to still be working at the lab by the time this actually comes to market or anything).

[azn.jalapeno @ Mar 10th 2008 12:11AM]

i used to be an intern at intel, and i remember a guy there told me that errors sometimes occur on ram because of cosmic rays. occasionally, a cosmic ray will strike the ram just right causing a bit to change values. although this tends to be an extremely unusual occurrence. the computers in some airplanes have things that will try to make sure that bits aren't being flipped, but that system is far from perfect.

[electroglyph @ Mar 10th 2008 4:38AM]

no way, like... ECC ram?

[Wwhat @ Mar 10th 2008 4:55AM]

I 'used to' read the link in the article too...

[dandan94 @ Mar 12th 2008 1:03AM]

Contact searching found in iPhone firmware 2.0 during SDK event
Posted on March 8, 2008 by Daniel Ahdout | Edit

So, while Phil Schiller was talking about the new Enterprise features that were going to be released on the iPhone during the SDK event on March 6th, I noticed a new feature that was added into the Contacts section of the Phone application. It is a little spotlight icon right above the A on the alphabet. We have no clue how search will be implemented into iPhone, maybe a little pop-up, but it will definitely be helpful to Enterprise users who have thousands of contacts. It is a very smart addition to the iPhone software, but how come nothing was said about it? But who cares if they didn’t say anything about it, search is finally coming to iPhone. To see this for yourself, you can go to 9 minutes and 30 seconds in on the Quicktime video of the event. What’s weird is that during the demo’s of Contacts, you can’t see the spotlight icon, but in the screenshot that he presents you can see the spotlight icon. Maybe Apple has planned to have search in the final 2.0, but it wasn’t ready for the demo.

[Zippy @ Mar 26th 2008 9:15PM]

...folks....now that new all generation aircraft are virtually 100% dependent on microelectronics, knowing your chips may have experienced a soft errors is very important....