I just read about [single event upsets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-event_upset) and it’s pretty fascinating. One thing that got me was that a speedrunner of Super Mario 64 experienced a single event upset.
So that leads me to believe that commercial electronics and regular CPUs and GPUs must have a chance to experience these single event upsets. When I research it, there’s only discussion on how it affects space electronics and FPGAs. But there’s gotta be a chance it affects my normal laptop, right? Why would FPGAs be more susceptible to SEUs than CPUs?
If I’m writing a Python script and I set a boolean to False, what’s the probability it gets set to True instead? If I’m logging into a website, what’s the possibility that the server side misinterprets my input? If it can affect an N64 in someone’s living room, there’s gotta be a non-zero chance, right?
In: Engineering
Computers will often do a thing where they check to see if any circuits aren’t working: they’ll take a “vote” on what the answer to an equation is. If a circuit gets it wrong, it’ll be ignored after that. This prevents an incorrect circuit from operating after that. It’s an oversimplification, but the idea is true.
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