RAS Architecture Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Several recent publications confirm that faults are common in high-performance computing systems. Therefore, further attention to the faults experienced by such computing sys-tems is warranted. In this paper, we present a study of DRAM and SRAM faults in large high-performance com-puting systems. Our goal is to understand the factors that influence faults in production settings. We examine the impact of aging on DRAM, finding a marked shift from permanent to transient faults in the first two years of DRAM lifetime. We examine the impact of DRAM vendor, finding that fault rates vary by more than 4x among vendors. We examine the physical location of faults in a DRAM device and in a data center; contrary to prior studies, we find no correlations with either. Finally, we study the impact of altitude and rack placement on SRAM faults, finding that, as expected, altitude has a substantial impact on SRAM faults, and that top of rack placement correlates with 20 % higher fault rate. 1Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. This document’s Sandia identifier is 2013