From: Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org>
Subject: Re: How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off?
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:32:09 -0700
Date: 2011-03-15T10:32:09-07:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <lnei68i92e.fsf@nuthaus.mib.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 82d3lsvqw7.fsf@stephe-leake.org
Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> writes:
> Elias Salomão Helou Neto <eshneto@gmail.com> writes:
>> I have followed the (quite lenghty) on a topic, IIRC, about bitwise
>> operators, which eventually lead to people mentioning the Ariane 5
>> case.
>>
>> Since then I have been wondering. If compiler checking where actually
>> turned on, what would have happened? How could it avoid the disaster?
>
> Just to remind people; the real problem was that Ariane 4 code was
> reused on Ariane 5, without carefully considering the design, also
> without adequate testing.
>
> Ariane 5 is a bigger rocket; it has bigger accelerations. The range for
> accelerations in the code, which was correct for Ariane 4, was incorrect
> for Ariane 5.
>
> No amount of "defensive programming" can handle such a fundamental
> design error.
As I recall, the problem was that an exception message was sent
and interpreted as binary data, because it was incorrectly assumed
that the exception could never happen. The exception occurred in
a subsystem that wasn't even needed at the time. (It's entirely
possible I've got this wrong.)
What if the subsystem had handled the exception and quietly
terminated?
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-03-15 17:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 79+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-03-14 15:49 How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? Elias Salomão Helou Neto
2011-03-14 16:17 ` KK6GM
2011-03-14 19:25 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-03-14 19:28 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-14 20:28 ` KK6GM
2011-03-15 4:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-03-15 4:53 ` Shark8
2011-03-14 18:29 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 10:41 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were notturned off? robin
2011-03-16 15:16 ` Simon Wright
2011-03-17 11:48 ` robin
2011-03-16 16:58 ` Martin Krischik
2011-03-16 23:39 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking werenotturned off? robin
2011-03-17 18:48 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-18 12:06 ` Alex R. Mosteo
2011-03-18 21:15 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? robin
2011-03-20 10:42 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-20 17:06 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking werenotturned off? Martin Krischik
2011-03-20 17:11 ` Martin Krischik
2011-03-20 18:10 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2011-03-21 13:24 ` Leif Roar Moldskred
2011-03-20 13:07 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were notturned off? Florian Weimer
2011-03-20 17:00 ` Martin Krischik
2011-03-20 20:17 ` Florian Weimer
2011-03-20 20:37 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-20 20:14 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 18:20 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 18:29 ` Hyman Rosen
2011-03-16 18:55 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 19:40 ` KK6GM
2011-03-16 20:52 ` Hyman Rosen
2011-03-16 21:02 ` KK6GM
2011-03-16 21:09 ` Shark8
2011-03-16 21:13 ` Hyman Rosen
2011-03-16 21:35 ` Shark8
2011-03-16 22:27 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 21:04 ` Shark8
2011-03-16 21:10 ` Hyman Rosen
2011-03-16 21:27 ` KK6GM
2011-03-16 21:31 ` Shark8
2011-03-16 22:32 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-18 21:14 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? robin
2011-03-16 23:46 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking werenotturned off? robin
2011-03-17 0:26 ` Simon Wright
2011-03-17 11:01 ` Georg Bauhaus
2011-03-17 11:04 ` robin
2011-03-17 13:36 ` Niklas Holsti
2011-03-18 21:13 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? robin
2011-03-19 10:12 ` Niklas Holsti
2011-03-17 22:51 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking werenotturned off? Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-18 21:13 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? robin
2011-03-20 10:42 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-15 6:28 ` Stephen Leake
2011-03-15 17:32 ` Keith Thompson [this message]
2011-03-15 17:40 ` KK6GM
2011-03-15 19:44 ` Robert A Duff
2011-03-15 19:12 ` Florian Weimer
2011-03-15 19:45 ` KK6GM
2011-03-15 19:57 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-20 13:00 ` Florian Weimer
2011-03-20 20:13 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-15 19:42 ` John B. Matthews
2011-03-17 11:44 ` robin
2011-03-17 18:37 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-17 23:04 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were notturned off? robin
2011-03-18 15:55 ` Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-17 21:37 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-16 10:33 ` robin
2011-03-16 15:08 ` Simon Wright
2011-03-17 12:39 ` robin
2011-03-17 13:41 ` Georg Bauhaus
2011-03-17 23:34 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were notturned off? robin
2011-03-18 12:57 ` Hyman Rosen
2011-03-18 16:49 ` KK6GM
2011-03-18 17:18 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2011-03-19 17:55 ` Keith Thompson
2011-03-20 18:39 ` Robert A Duff
2011-03-17 18:43 ` How would Ariane 5 have behaved if overflow checking were not turned off? Vinzent Hoefler
2011-03-17 20:58 ` Simon Wright
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