Sign up for a new account or log in here:
also @ TechSpot: Codemasters announces £125,000 special edition of GRID 2
Home › News › Industry News
Scientists develop computer that never crashes
Depending on what you are doing, a computer crash can be classified as anything from a minor annoyance to a complete disaster. I’ve been experiencing some BSODs lately of unknown origin and let me be the first to tell you, it’s pretty darn annoying when you are right in the middle of something important – like work – and everything shuts down before you get a chance to save.
Fortunately, researchers and scientists at the University College London have come up with a solution they say will end computer crashes forever.
Today’s computers typically work procedurally by pulling data from memory, working on the data then sending it back to memory. This usually happens in a fixed order and until something goes wrong, all is well. When a process fails or crashes for whatever reason, however, everything hits the fan and the computer will often times lock up.
The computer that UCL has developed is different in the fact that data and instructions are essentially mirrored across several different systems. The systems work simultaneously although independent of each other – the only thing they share is a section of memory for context-sensitive data.
In the event that one system crashes or data becomes corrupted, the computer is able to rebuild that set of data from another system and start fresh again. The systems are said to execute in a random order using a pseudorandom number generator that acts as a task scheduler.
At this point, performance isn’t all that great but there’s certainly room to improve upon. If you’re interested in learning more about this developing technology, the developers will present their findings at the IEEE International Conference on Evolvable Systems in April.
Group of technicians repair illustration (homepage) by Shutterstock.
User Comments: 36
Got something to say? Post a comment-
Yes, *nix computers crash. But at least I know why they crash - me. Both my Windows and Linux experiences are frought with deadlocks that require the use of the Big Shiny Button to recover, but the Linux crashes usually immediately follow my entering a wonky command or trying something outside the box. Windows, on the same hardware, explodes randomly and gives me nothing human-readable to troubleshoot the issue.
For reference, I've locked up a Ti-83 Plus to the point that the batteries had to come out.
-
Never say never! I dare them to give that computer to my sister. It will crash in seconds!
-
JC713 said:
I gotta say, if you have the right hardware, crashes are rare
-
Bethesda develops an open world game for the uncrashable computer. Game CTDs within an hour.
In all seriousness though, I find it hard to believe, regardless of whatever methodology they have behind it, there's no way there's a system to ensure a computer will never crash. To say otherwise is to grossly underestimate the capabilities of human stupidity.
What is so hard to believe? Unless something goes wrong with the rom. Maybe servers would be really interested in this.
Because no matter how flawless hardware may be, software will always have bugs
-
In order for this computer to never crash, it should never be powered on, or never connected to the internet, infected by installing windows, and remain free of human interaction.
-
I guess the best verbage that you could use is "that it has never crashed since powering it up". That would be a more accurate statement for them. Its just sad that all the ney sayers are jumping on them for ONE WORD!! Provided that it hasnt crashed since powering on, it stands to reason that with regular use that it prolly wouldnt crash NORMALLY. That in and of itself is pretty impresive.
-
Darth Shiv said:
If a computer crashes, most of the time it is because it was badly programmed.If you let 2 computers calculate the same instructions they'll both crash.
If you want to avoid crashes due to hardware faults, you can allready implement VMware Vmotion stuff or Oracle RAC, etc...
Could have missed the point here
My thoughts too... how many crashes are *not* from bad hardware/bad writes to memory? I would think *most*? Sounds like a load of crap to me...
-
avoidz said:
Oh come on...! My comp never crashes. I DON'T USE M$OFT WINDOWS!!!Mine never crashes either! Haven't had a crash in the last few years that I even remember when it was. I use Windows 7/8.
Same here. I have never had a single crash on my Windows 7 and 8. Methinks Guest must be using old Windows versions (I.e. Windows 95/98/ME).
Same again. Since XP, Windows has been very stable.
-
St1ckM4n said:
This solution is both a hardware and a software solution. It is an alternate scheduling methodology: [link]
For reference, servers are slower than desktop computers, which are slower than for example a PS3. However, the accuracy of the CPU's is the other way around.
This proposed solution increases the 'accuracy', hence slowing it down.
-
None of my Windows 7 PCs have ever crashed.
I can't even recall the last time I saw a PC crash that wasn't caused by illegal software.
-
"Never" crashes until the hardware breaks.
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
Featured on Mice
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.