Memory errors in consumer devices such as PCs and phones are not something you hear much about, yet they are probably one of the most common ways these machines fail.
I'll use this thread to explain how this happens, how it affects you and what you can do about it. But I'll also talk about how the industry failed to address it and how we must force them to, for the sake of sustainability. 🧵 1/17
First of all let's talk briefly about how memory works. What you have in your PC or phone is what we call dynamic random access memory. That is memory that stores bits by putting a minuscule amount of charge into vanishingly small capacitors (or not putting it in if we're storing a zero).
These capacitors continuously leak this charge, so it needs to be refreshed periodically - every few milliseconds - which is why it's called "dynamic". 2/17
Diagnosing it is hard. Windows has a memory diagnostic tool which will catch the worst offenders and is easy to use: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/do-more-with-surface/how-to-use-windows-memory-diagnostic
It's not enough though, some errors can only be caught with more extensive testing. I recommend the open-source memtest86+ (https://memtest.org/) tool or the closed source memtest86 one (https://www.memtest86.com/) 8/17
@gabrielesvelto thanks for an interesting thread!
I read talk, some years ago, about memtest+ not being maintained and actually not working at all for most cases (iirc it was in the context of the Ubuntu live cd boot option)
Do you know how it looks these days?
Gabriele Svelto [moved]
kamstrup