At one time, Windows even dealt with gamma rays, as this assembly comment stated [1]:<p><pre><code> ;
; Invalidate the processor cache so that any stray gamma
; rays (I'm serious) that may have flipped cache bits
; while in S1 will be ignored.
;
; Honestly. The processor manufacturer asked for this.
; I'm serious.
;
invd
</code></pre>
[1] For a brief period, the kernel tried to deal with gamma rays corrupting the processor cache (<a href="https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181120-00/?p=100275" rel="nofollow">https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181120-00/?p=10...</a>)
This issue is quite under-appreciated from my experience. I work in a field where ECC memory is an absolute must because there's a lot of money on the line and cosmic rays are a real issue.<p>You'd be surprised by the amount of random bit flipping happening in commodity hardware that we use every day.
Oh, this reminds me of the Radiolab episode about cosmic rays from last year. Fascinating story!<p><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bit-flip" rel="nofollow">https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bit-f...</a>
Interesting presentation on real world issues with cosmic rays: <a href="http://webhost.laas.fr/TSF/IFIPWG/Workshops&Meetings/44/W2/05-Mukherjee.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://webhost.laas.fr/TSF/IFIPWG/Workshops&Meetings/44/W2/0...</a><p>Page 2 notes the somewhat famous set of issues in the year 2000 with some Sun Sparc models that did not have ECC on the L2 cache. It took out some pretty big players.