Three comments

Posted Jul 19, 2006 7:17 UTC (Wed) by drs (guest, #16570)
In reply to: Three comments by nix
Parent article: Crash-only software: More than meets the eye

My understanding of this problem (recalling a Ted Tso talk on the issue)
is that as system voltage sags in an unexpected power failure, different
system components fail to operate correctly at different voltage levels.

More specifically, the voltage at which main memory maintains coherency is
significantly above the voltage at which the DMA engines in the
North/South bridge stop operating. So there is every likelihood that the
DMA engines will happily write random garbage from main memory to the
still operating disk. :(