“DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study” (Schroeder, Pinheiro & Weber 2009) analyzed memory errors in a large fleet of machines in datacenters over a period of 2.5 years. These authors found that error rates were orders of magnitude higher than previously reported and were dominated by hard errors—the kind that ECC can detect but not correct.
Fascinating, especially the last bit.
