Beyond basic ECC error correction discussed earlier, some high-reliability memory systems implement a technique called 'memory scrubbing.' What does this additional technique involve, and why is it useful?

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Beyond basic ECC error correction discussed earlier, some high-reliability memory systems implement a technique called 'memory scrubbing.' What does this additional technique involve, and why is it useful?

Accepted Answer

Memory scrubbing is a proactive reliability technique that goes a step beyond simply relying on ECC to correct errors only when a particular memory location happens to be actively read by a running program. Instead, the system periodically and systematically reads through ALL of memory -- including portions that aren't currently being actively used by any running program at that moment -- specifically checking the ECC information for each location and correcting any detected single-bit errors found along the way. This proactive approach is valuable because, without it, a single-bit error in a rarely-accessed memory location might sit uncorrected and undetected for a long time; if a SECOND, independent error were to occur in that very same memory word before the first error is ever detected and corrected (through the memory simply happening to be read again), the accumulated combination could exceed what basic ECC error correction is capable of fixing (most ECC schemes reliably correct only single-bit errors, and can merely detect but not correct certain multi-bit errors). Proactively scrubbing through all of memory periodically significantly reduces the window of opportunity for such error accumulation, which is exactly why this technique is valued in servers and other high-reliability systems where memory errors could have serious consequences.

Computer Science :: Computer Fundamentals :: Primary Memory (RAM/ROM)

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Computer Science :: Computer Fundamentals :: Primary Memory (RAM/ROM)

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