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ECC and DDR5

etbe.coker.com.au

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Re: ECC and DDR5

#131

Post by adrian_b »

etbe wrote: post #107
adrian_b wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few errors per day seems much too frequent, unless you live at a high altitude. Normal good DIMMs, at least when new, should not have errors more frequently than one error per many months. Frequent errors may appear with memories that are not seated well in their sockets, or which are old, at least several years old. Frequent errors may also be caused by more general computer problems, like a bad power supply unit.

Does this imply that the all plastic gamer PCs (that are more designed to be art projects than serious computers) are bad and that everyone should be using systems with solid steel cases to block radiation?

A steel case has too little effect on cosmic radiation, but it is good to shield electrical noise.

The computers in plastic cases can sometimes be affected by appliances with electrical motors that are used nearby them.

The cosmic radiation is attenuated only inside a big building, e.g. one with many stories above you. A really great attenuation is obtained only underground.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#132

Post by adrian_b »

lightedman wrote: post #44
adrian_b wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a consumer protection law like any other such law. Forcing the vendors to sell only products that do what they are advertised cannot be considered in any way as "forcing unnecessary things upon people". Any computer without ECC memory is a computer that does not compute from time to time and you have no idea when that happens. Originally, any IBM PC or compatible had memory error detection. All this pro…

"All this problem of the computers without ECC memory has been created by some evil Intel employees, who have conceived around 1994 a scheme for market segmentation between "Pentium" and "Pentium Pro"." I hate to break it to you but the computer I had in the 80s didn't come with ECC. Non-ECC computing was a thing WELL BEFORE Intel tried to think of market segmentation. Revisionist history is not welcomed here.

The home computers like those from Commodore, Apple, Atari etc. lacked protection against memory errors, but the computers intended for business, like the IBM PC and all its clones had memory error detection capability in the form of parity.

Absolutely all IBM PC originals or clones until those with 486 and with the early Pentium variants supported parity on the motherboard.

The user could choose to not install the parity chip (or when the first memory modules appeared there were also slightly cheaper modules without the parity chip), but that was the user's decision, all the motherboards supported parity.

On IBM PC compatibles, the lack of protection against memory errors had never existed before Intel segmented the market between "non-Pro" and "Pro", by launching the Triton chipset, which no longer supported parity memory.

As long as the memory modules were byte-wide, only parity could be implemented. ECC memory could appear only later, after the passage to wide memory modules.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#133

Post by inigyou »

nu11ptr wrote: post #51

I've always thought it odd that we don't use ECC as a standard on all computers. I think people really downplay the impact of memory issues. They can be devastating, especially over time. They will slowly corrupt your file system, documents, binary files, code, everything. You notice when things like your compressed files start giving CRC/checksum errors or your downloads don't match SHA-512. You are then left with t…

This fact comes mostly down to Intel choosing to use ECC support for market segmentation. If you care about your data, you buy the server chips that cost double what the desktop chips with ECC support lasered out cost.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#134

Post by inigyou »

flaunf221 wrote: post #97
piguin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need the ECC RAM for your filesystem with integrity only then can you be confident you aren't going to be familiar with a concept like this happening 9 or 10 times.

You can read online how often correctable errors happen to people with ECC and reporting. Single digit - sometimes none - errors per year in systems with consumer amount of RAM.

Sometimes I get a few per day. I only know that because my Linux kernel configuration happens to have whatever settings enabled to get them reported in dmesg.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#135

Post by inigyou »

Aurornis wrote: post #40
Havoc wrote: post #5

Got ECC udimm for my ddr4 server and was surprised to see it picking up errors occasionally (once every couple months). Likely from a weakness in one of the sticks. This far it’s always corrected it though so opted to keep them anyway (nobody wants to be minus 32gb in these trying memory times) With normal sticks I’d not have know that there is a potential issue.

There should not be errors during normal use at rated speeds. With non-ECC RAM running a memory test and getting any errors means it’s not stable. The memory tests run at maximum bandwidth constantly so a few days of full bandwidth memory testing might produce as many transmissions as your months of regular server use. Seeing bit errors (even if corrected) means something is not right. The ECC can correct it for a wh…

That was true in DDR4 but I understand DDR5 has pushed density so far that you do get errors in normal modules - like early LCD panels that were expected to have a few stuck pixels - and therefore ECC should really be mandatory.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#136

Post by sdsdssweew213 »

gruez wrote: post #54
graemep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ECC RAM is not needed for every application and mandating it for every gaming rig and machine used to run Chrome will just increase prices unnecessarily. The price increase will be very small if manufacturers are no longer able to segment the market to make a higher margin on those who need it. No one wants even games or web browsers to crash randomly. > If they want to eat that cost, it should be up to them. They…

>The price increase will be very small if manufacturers are no longer able to segment the market to make a higher margin on those who need it. AMD doesn't have this segmentation. Where's the hoard of people building systems with ECC ram? At best you have a few people on HN saying they're doing it, but in practice nobody actually does it.

Even before current RAM price craziness ECC UDIMM's were hard to find, and often more expensive than non-ECC. I was lucky to grab 128GB for similar price to non-ECC a few years back.

More people would use them, if they were available. RDIMM's do not work on normal consumer boards, so obviously people won't be using them.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#137

Post by graemep »

flaunf221 wrote: post #35
adrian_b wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a consumer protection law like any other such law. Forcing the vendors to sell only products that do what they are advertised cannot be considered in any way as "forcing unnecessary things upon people". Any computer without ECC memory is a computer that does not compute from time to time and you have no idea when that happens. Originally, any IBM PC or compatible had memory error detection. All this pro…

> Any computer without ECC memory is a computer that does not compute from time to time So are the computers with ECC memory. It's not an absolute protection either.

Seatbelts and working brakes are not an absolute protection either, but i still want them.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#138

Post by graemep »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #81
_factor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the opinion shifting to the people being unworthy of uncorrupted data unless they’re wealthy enough to pay the artificial extortion price for integrity.

What you're actually saying is that I shouldn't be allowed to determine what kind of RAM my application needs. Instead, you are saying that someone with a gun should dictate this choice to me. That's what we mean when we say that people with your point of view are promoting nanny-statism. It amounts to infantilization of adult consumers and subsequent disempowerment. Occasionally such legislation can be justified, as…

> People can and should be educated -- and expected -- to make their own decisions about things like whether they need ECC RAM.

So you think its realistic to expect the average consumer to assess the pros and cons of using ECC RAM?

We could solve this by better information which addresses your concerns about it being nanny statism. We would need it to be something that consumers understand - e.g. We could require all computers without ECC RAM to have a warning label saying something like "this computer uses cheap memory so is prone to crashing and losing your data". I strongly suspect the impact of that would be very similar to that of just banning non-ECC RAM.

I would also argue that having reliable RAM is a reasonable extension of existing legal requirements for consumer products: e.g. that they are of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose (to use the current UK terminology).

Re: ECC and DDR5

#139

Post by warmwaffles »

ck2 wrote: post #7

16GB ECC DDR5 was $50 early 2025 it is now $500 when the AI/datacenter bubble finally bursts we are going to have some amazing hardware deals

When that bubble does finally burst, you won't be able to afford those amazing hardware deals due to the economy being in the tank for a while.

Re: ECC and DDR5

#140

Post by etbe »

adrian_b wrote: post #131
etbe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this imply that the all plastic gamer PCs (that are more designed to be art projects than serious computers) are bad and that everyone should be using systems with solid steel cases to block radiation?

A steel case has too little effect on cosmic radiation, but it is good to shield electrical noise. The computers in plastic cases can sometimes be affected by appliances with electrical motors that are used nearby them. The cosmic radiation is attenuated only inside a big building, e.g. one with many stories above you. A really great attenuation is obtained only underground.

Good point. Some googling suggests that plastic may be better than metal as hydrogen absorbs high energy protons without generating secondary radiation.
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