Paper ID: 2312.02855

Exploring Error Bits for Memory Failure Prediction: An In-Depth Correlative Study

Qiao Yu, Wengui Zhang, Jorge Cardoso, Odej Kao

In large-scale datacenters, memory failure is a common cause of server crashes, with Uncorrectable Errors (UEs) being a major indicator of Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) defects. Existing approaches primarily focus on predicting UEs using Correctable Errors (CEs), without fully considering the information provided by error bits. However, error bit patterns have a strong correlation with the occurrence of UEs. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on the correlation between CEs and UEs, specifically emphasizing the importance of spatio-temporal error bit information. Our analysis reveals a strong correlation between spatio-temporal error bits and UE occurrence. Through evaluations using real-world datasets, we demonstrate that our approach significantly improves prediction performance by 15% in F1-score compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms. Overall, our approach effectively reduces the number of virtual machine interruptions caused by UEs by approximately 59%.

Submitted: Dec 5, 2023