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Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 18:45:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Tom <tom@sdf.com>
To: Alfred Perlstein <perlsta@cs.sunyit.edu>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Parity Ram
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On Sun, 26 Oct 1997, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

> > > Do you know anything of Richard Hamming's assertion that parity memory
> > > (the old fashioned even/odd type) is-a-bad -thing in large
> > > configurations?
> > 
> >   I think it bullshit.  I've never heard of this before.  Nor have you in
> > the two times you've mentioned it, actually stated what is supposed to be
> > so bad about it.
> 
> more bits means more chance of error even if they are "error-correcting"
> bits?

  And how is that bad?  Even simple parity systems will catch 100% of all
single bit errors, regardless of where the bit appears.

  More bits mean more redundancy.  That means it gets safer, not riskier.

Tom