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in case you don't have $18,000 to buy those fancy brand new DDR4 RAM - second hand 64GB DDR3 ECC REG RAM is about $100 each, a dual socket c602 motherboard such as my Z9PE-D16 has 16 memory slots, having 16 x 64GB = 1TB RAM in such a workstation costs you $1,600. bargain!
Well, less than any other time in history. Not sure I get the point here.
This is a use case where persistent memory really shines. Its about 10x slower but you can get 1.5TB or it for less than $10,000. You don’t have to use the persistence - you can treat it as RAM.
Unless you truly need DDR4 speeds, I would think you would be better off for your money using CPU Raid and NVME. More drives, more speed. One guy used 8 drives and got 28Gbps.
I want to know why ECC RAM isn't more common. With the amount of RAM going into today's computers, it's insane not to protect it.
I decided to put 32 GB of Ram in my home desktop some months back. I knew I didn’t need that much, but I figured macOS (it’s a Hackintosh) would use it for file caching or some such. To my disappointment, it goes completely unused more often than not. According to Activity Monitor, I currently have around 7 gb just sitting idle.
Typically the only time I use enough memory that my working files don't fit in the page cache along with the application memory, is when I build Android.
It's possible you just don't have that much on your disk that you use.
If you're an enterprise that needs a single CPU server with 1.5TB of RAM (to run SAP HANA or some other in-memory DB most likely) then the RAM cost, or really the entire hardware cost, is probably the smallest line item in the entire business case, more or less a rounding error. The author seems to be approaching this from the standpoint of someone building a home rig for some reason.
I want to know why ECC RAM isn't more common. With the amount of RAM going into today's computers, it's insane not to protect it.
But "gamers" who like to overclock, and AMD users who use motherboards that don't generally support ECC don't care.
For professional work, I think you'd be crazy not to. You get 1 bit-flip per year per gigabyte. So for my 128GB system we use on desktop configurations and build servers we'd get 2 bit flips/week. Do you really want to send a build out to a customer that has a potential bit-flip in it?
I've done some shopping around, and the best pricing I can find puts these 128GB RAM at about $1,500. Each. Yes, each. Some back of the envelope math -- or math in your head if you are good at that sort of thing -- put the price of 1.5TB of RAM at a cool $18,000. If my memory serves me well, I routinely bought 1Mb RAM modules for 5.500 Spanish pesetas (33 Euro). This was around 1987-1990 I believe. If my math is righ…
