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List:       freebsd-hackers
Subject:    Re: Video memory as swap under FreeBSD
From:       Dag-Erling_Smørgrav <des () des ! no>
Date:       2007-10-16 10:47:25
Message-ID: 86zlyj5oaq.fsf () ds4 ! des ! no
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Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org> writes:
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@des.no> writes:
> > Arne Schwabe <schwabe@uni-paderborn.de> writes:
> > > Video RAM may also not be as stable as your main RAM.  I mean
> > > nobody [cares] if a bit flips in video ram.
> > That may have been true fifteen years ago, but not today.
> Have the anybody ever seen ECC video RAM? Video RAM usually works on
> higher frequencies then main RAM and IMHO it must affect stability.
> For video RAM some percent of errors is really less important, I have
> seen it myself with my previous video card until it died completely.

A modern video adapter is basically a processor with a specialized
instruction set and multiple parallel pipelines.  Video memory is not
just a frame buffer, it contains code and structured data (textures,
polygon lists etc.)  If you're lucky, a single-bit error might just
change the color of a pixel, but it might also crash the GPU.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des@des.no
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