Have you ever looked at the rates, or you just dismiss it without looking at it? Note that the current rate is higher than older references since the feature sizes have shrunk, and lower energy events can change bits on newer hardware.
Scientific computation, especially at the level of most researchers, is affected by cosmic ray bitflips, without question.
Since the OP was complaining about not being able to check everything ad absurdium, then this effect is certainly on the table. It's more likely to affect research than the difference between closed and open source if a researcher is ignorant of it.
It's also why good researchers, who know this is a real effect, tries to run a computation in multiple methods over different times, until they feel a consensus on the calculations is robust enough.
If you've never done it, write a program to watch memory for bit flips, and be amazed.
Here's an intro - do a back of the envelope calculation and see if you still think these events are rare enough that they don't affect common scientific work.
Have you ever looked at the rates, or you just dismiss it without looking at it? Note that the current rate is higher than older references since the feature sizes have shrunk, and lower energy events can change bits on newer hardware.
Scientific computation, especially at the level of most researchers, is affected by cosmic ray bitflips, without question.
Since the OP was complaining about not being able to check everything ad absurdium, then this effect is certainly on the table. It's more likely to affect research than the difference between closed and open source if a researcher is ignorant of it.
It's also why good researchers, who know this is a real effect, tries to run a computation in multiple methods over different times, until they feel a consensus on the calculations is robust enough.
If you've never done it, write a program to watch memory for bit flips, and be amazed.
Here's an intro - do a back of the envelope calculation and see if you still think these events are rare enough that they don't affect common scientific work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error#Cosmic_rays_creatin...