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ECC matters

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Re: ECC matters

#131

Post by sam_lowry_ »

phkahler wrote: post #117
CydeWeys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but even low-end Ryzen Threadripper CPUs have TDP of 180W, which is a bit higher than I'd like. Why does it matter? It doesn't idle that high; it only goes that high of you're using it flat out, in which case the extra power usage is justified because it's giving that much more performance over a 100 W TDP CPU. Now I totally get it if you don't want to go Threadripper just for ECC because it's more expensive , but…

>> I've never seen anyone shop a desktop CPU by TDP, rather than by performance and price. Oh oh, me! Back in the day I bought a 65W CPU for a system that could handle a 90W. I wanted quiet and figured that would keep fan noise down at a modest performance penalty. It should also last longer, being the same design but running cooler. I ran that from 2005 until a few years ago (it still run fine but is in storage). Pl…

Hm... My 2013 NUC in fanless Akasa enclosure runs 24/7 on a 6W CPU, I recently looked at the options, and the 2019 6W offering changes little in performance. Yes, memory got faster, but that's it.

My passive-cooled desktop is also running a slightly trottled down 65W CPU.

So yes, there are people who choose there hardware by TDP.

Re: ECC matters

#132

Post by harperlee »

simias wrote: post #13
raverbashing wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm always annoyed with this kind of mistake. Especially as non-native speakers should know better than the native ones (which usually don't give a f.). Now the point about internally doing ECC is an interesting one, could be a way out of this mess. And apparently ECC is more available in AMD land

For a 2nd language speaker making these homophonic mistakes is actually a sign of fluency. It means that you just transcribe a mental flow of words instead of consciously constructing the language. The first time I wrote "your" instead of "you're" in English I thought it was quite a milestone!

As an “english as a second language” user, I can’t see myself writing e.g. “should of” instead of “should have”, however fluent I am. I think you don’t make that kind of typo unless you have learnt english before grammar.

Re: ECC matters

#133

Post by [deleted] »

ethbr0 wrote: post #49
phkahler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But is ECC more available in AMD land? Yes it is. The problem is they dont really advertise it. I'm not certain but it might even be standard on AMD chips, but if they dont say so and board makers are also unclear, who knows...

It's a market size problem. For consumer motherboard OEMs, only AMD effectively has ECC support (Intel's has been so spotty and haphazard from product to product), and of AMD users, only a small number care about ECC. So motherboard companies, being resource and time-starved as they are, don't make it a priority to address such a small user-base. If Intel started shipping ECC on everything, it would go a long way tow…

[deleted]

Re: ECC matters

#134

Post by detaro »

defanor wrote: post #128
usefulcat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. I have a low end Epyc machine with ECC. It has a TDP of something like 30 watts.

I didn't consider embedded CPUs (I guess that's about an embedded EPYC, not a server one), those look neat. But there's no official ECC support (i.e., it's similar to Ryzen CPUs), is there? Edit: as detaro mentioned in the reply, there is, and here's the source [0] -- that's what they mean by "RAS" on promotional pages [1]. That indeed looks like a nice option. [0] https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/updated-3…

All EPYC, including the embedded ones, do officially have ECC support

Re: ECC matters

#135

Post by detaro »

usefulcat wrote: post #114
vvanders wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Threadripper is a hard requirement for ECC. There's some pretty reasonable TDP processors if you step down from Threadripper.

It’s not. I have a low end Epyc machine with ECC. It has a TDP of something like 30 watts.

what kind of machine is that? Been vaguely looking for one a while back, and everything seemed difficult to get (since the main target is large-volume customers I guess)

Re: ECC matters

#136

Post by oconnor663 »

koolba wrote: post #127
phkahler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I've never seen anyone shop a desktop CPU by TDP, rather than by performance and price. Oh oh, me! Back in the day I bought a 65W CPU for a system that could handle a 90W. I wanted quiet and figured that would keep fan noise down at a modest performance penalty. It should also last longer, being the same design but running cooler. I ran that from 2005 until a few years ago (it still run fine but is in storage). Pl…

SFF?

"small form factor" as far as I can tell

Re: ECC matters

#138

Post by ant6n »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
jackric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the crash reports include recent solar activity?

Timestamp + location should be enough to figure that out.

It would be interesting to see whether there is a correlation between solar activity and game crashes — which in turn may provide an indication whether crashes are due to bugs or bit flips.

Re: ECC matters

#139

Post by FartyMcFarter »

Does anyone know why ECC memory requires the CPU to support it?

Naively, I can understand why error reporting has dependencies on other parts of the system, but it would seem possible for error correction to work transparently.

Re: ECC matters

#140

Post by CoolGuySteve »

zdw wrote: post #74

Good news is that for DDR5, ECC is a required part of the spec and should be a feature of every module: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15912/ddr5-specification-rele...

I always wondered why isn't ECC built into the memory controller, the same hardware that runs the bus into L3 or the page mapper could checksum groups of cachelines.

It seems redundant to have every module come with its own checking hardware.

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