Simon Marlow wrote: 
On 18 February 2005 04:26, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:

  
At least this proves that it isn't a hardware problem.  :)
    

Seth, you're a bit confused.  This error from gcc is a deterministic,
repeatable, crash due to a known bug in gcc 2.95.  

You were complaining about random unrepeatable crashes, which are most
likely caused by hardware failure.  We never said that deterministic
crashes in gcc are due to hardware.

Cheers,
	Simon
Simon, you'll never give up.  The crashes are absolutely repeatable.  The fact that I haven't identified a deterministic way to reproduce them does not in any way imply that a deterministic way to reproduce them does not exist.  And, as I've said, you are essentially claiming that a total of over 100 machines all have the same hardware problem, that never ever occurs unless gcc is running.  You know that isn't true.  You can, on the same machines, compile the same code with a different compiler hundreds of times (which I did; I left it running on two machines for a month) without a single problem.  That is a software problem.

I make a living by determining whether problems are software or hardware, and I very rarely make a mistake.  I certainly never make a mistake with this sort of overwhelming proof.  You are just ignoring the things that I've said that don't fit your theory.  You will not find a single case of this caused by hardware, because if the hardware is really responsible, it is 100% impossible that every other program, including programs that consume all the memory and most of the swap (consume more total memory than the gcc runs) always work perfectly, and only gcc causes this supposedly hardware problem to appear.  100 machines, of six different microprocessors, and six different types of memory, all have a hardware problem that causes gcc, and only gcc, and absolutely nothing other than gcc, to crash?  These machines can otherwise run for months at a time at very high load and the hardware problem somehow never appears?

Tell me that you've ever seen a hardware problem with these characteristics.  Furthermore, tell me that you've seen hardware problems that never get worse, and are associated with a single program.  Find a single example of such a program that reveals a hardware problem in processors made by three different companies.  Or an example of a program that reveals a hardware problem in a dozen different motherboards.  None of which exhibit even the slightest problem unless gcc is running.  None of which deadlock, freeze up, never have kernel panics ... it just isn't possible, unless you ignore the evidence.

And the fact that one is deterministic implies that the others are not?  That has absolutely no basis in logic.  I'm sure that with enough work each and every one can be produce deterministically.  Nobody has paid me to do that, and nobody is going to.  It's a lot cheaper to just use a compiler that works.  Even having to use Sun's compiler, with all it's problems, is less expensive then trying to fix gcc, and Sun charges about 3,000 each for the compiler.

Hardware problems cause random problems, and any problem that occurs with only one program is by definition not random.  You are confusing random with not yet explained.  The two aren't remotely alike.
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