As in POWER6, the POWER7 processor has the ability to do processor instruction retry and alternate processor recovery for a number of core-related faults. This significantly reduces exposure to both hard (logic) and soft (transient) errors in the processor core. Soft failures in the processor core are transient (intermittent) errors, often due to cosmic rays or other sources of radiation, and generally are not repeatable. When an error is encountered in the core, the POWER7 processor will first automatically retry the instruction. If the source of the error was truly transient, the instruction will succeed and the system will continue as before.Hard failures are more difficult, being true logical errors that will be replicated each time the instruction is repeated. Retrying the instruction will not help in this situation because the instruction will continue to fail. As in POWER6, POWER7 processors have the ability to extract the failing instruction from the faulty core and retry it elsewhere in the system for a number of faults, after which the failing core is dynamically deconfigured and called out for replacement. The entire process is transparent to the partition owning the failing instruction. These systems are designed to avoid a full system outage.