alt Hacker NewsCurious to learn more here - why would altitude play a role here? And when you say high altitude - are we talking La Paz, Bolivia (~12k feet) or Denver, CO (~5k feet)?
Curious to learn more here - why would altitude play a role here? And when you say high altitude - are we talking La Paz, Bolivia (~12k feet) or Denver, CO (~5k feet)?
The primary source of uncorrelated bit-flips is, effectively, cosmic radiation.
(Correlated bit-flips are likely from a manufacturing error... or, at least in one case, from excessively radioactive ceramic packaging.)
The more atmosphere you have to randomly absorb high-energy photons, the better.
Higher density memory drops fewer electrons in each well, which means a lower-energy photon can change the state.
Corolary: submarine datacenters are much better than orbital datacenters. Cheaper to cool, construct, shield and access.