Background, Most modern computers use a system cal= led ECC (Error checking/correction) wherein each memory location has an ext= ra bit (the parity bit) that is used for checking whether the data location= is "correct". Interestingly, data bits in memory can actually change= randomly, due to electro magnetic radiation - even cosmic rays. Some= computers do not have ECC, most recently, the Pentium series did not. = ; (note that this is not the division problem that some early Pentium CPUs = had, this is a random event). The Core 2 duo has ECC. If th= ere were a an random data change, NONMEM could give different results from = the same run. It might very well recover, since it reads the data set= from the disc source (which would not change, only stuff loaded into DRAM = could change) for each iteration, and presumably, the correct values for da= ta, and all the variables internal to NONMEM could be fixed next iteration = (the Hessian might take a while to recover, and there are certainly other v= ariables that changes could not recovered from at all). &nb= sp; This is relevant because the next generation of Intel CPU (Core i7, to = be released next week) do not have ECC. Actually it is the mother boa= rds for the Core i7 that do not support ECC. A leader in the field (D= aniel Bernstein) contents that in scientific computing you don't need ECC u= nless you actually care that the answer is correct (or something like that)= . Here is the question. Has anyone ever seen apparently ran= dom - non reproducible results from NONMEM. That is, run the same dat= a set, same control file, same hardware, same compiler and options and got = a different result. If so, any idea what hardware it was on? thanks <= br> Mark <= /div> |
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