Kirk Talman wrote:
2) on a ceramic substrate foolishly made from clay not tested for the presence of radioactive impurities, it is highly unlikely an alpha particle, regardless of its diet and lack of exercise, will make it to a chip.
I seem to remember an article by IBM staffers in Scientific American or Science some decades ago. They concluded that alpha particle hits on memory were possible. I don't recall the precise figures, but seem to recall it was around one hit per megabyte per 10**4 or 10**5 hours. For memory with any means of error correction this is negligible.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT new e-mail address: gerhardp (at) charter (dot) net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
