Little bit offtopic: Again seems that Intel? what?! is the one lowering the bar.
ECC matters
281–290 of 567 posts
Re: ECC matters
#282Re: ECC matters
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you'll have to pay a huge primer for that privilege. I can assure you that your standard computer components are not rated for century-scale use. That's why I've always been on the fence with this ECC thing. For servers it's vital because you need stability and security. For desktops I think that for a long time it was fine without ECC. If I have to chose between having, say, 30% more RAM or avoid a potential cr…
But it isn't just a crash, it's also silent data corruption that will never be detected
It can be a concern, that's true, but personally most of the stuff I edit end up checked into a git repository or something similar.
And I mean, we all spend all day editing test messages and comments and files on non-ECC hardware, yet bitflip-induced corruption is rare enough that I can't say that I've witnessed a single instance of it in my life, despite spending a good chunk of it looking at screens.
It's just not a problem that occurs in practice in my experience. If you're compiling the release build of a critical piece of software, you probably want ECC. If you're building the dev version of your webapp or writing an email to your boss, you'll probably survive without it.
Re: ECC matters
#284Good 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...
Is it built in as an added feature, or as the only way to make DDR5 reliable? My inner cynic is screaming the latter.
When the value add feature becomes a necessity, it’s not a value add any more.
Re: ECC matters
#285Asked myself, would it be possible to build a Geiger counter with RAM?
Re: ECC matters
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I also wouldn't do this one, but that's because in my English accent I simply wouldn't pronounce them the same way. Also the word sequence "should of" is extremely uncommon in proper English, so it catches the eye more easily I think.
"You're/your", "their/they're", "its/it's" and the like are a different story, because I do pronounce those the same and they're all very common.
Re: ECC matters
#287Earlier 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.
I haven't seen definite details and test results on these (but haven't looked recently). What specific configurations (CPU, MB, RAM) are known to work? Let's say I have a Ryzen system, how can I check if ECC really works? Like, can I see how many bit flips got corrected in, say, last 24h?
All desktop Ryzen CPUs without integrated GPU, i.e. with the exception of APUs, support ECC.
You must check the specifications of the motherboard to see if ECC memory is supported.
As a rule, all ASRock MBs support ECC and also some ASUS MBs support ECC, e.g. all ASUS workstation motherboards.
I have no experience with Windows and Ryzen, but I assume that ECC should work also there.
With Linux, you must use a kernel with all the relevant EDAC options enabled, including CONFIG_EDAC_AMD64.
For the new Zen 3 CPUs, i.e. Ryzen 5xxx, you must use a kernel 5.10 or later, for ECC support.
On Linux, there are various programs, e.g. edac-utils, to monitor the ECC errors.
To be more certain that the ECC error reporting really works, the easiest way is to change the BIOS settings to overclock the memory, until memory errors appear.
Re: ECC matters
#288For the average user, what’s the impact of bit flips in memory in practical terms? I am not talking about servers dealing with critical data. Suppose that I maintain a repository (documents, audio and video), one copy in a ZFS-ECC system and one in an ext4-nonECC system. Would I notice a difference between these two copies after 5-10 years? That tells us if ECC matters for most people.
This isn't about disk storage, this is about DRAM. A bit flip in DRAM might corrupt data, but could also cause random crashes and system hangs. That generally matters to everyone.
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Re: ECC matters
#289Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can remember memory with extra capacity for error detection used to be a rather common thing on early PCs. That really only changed a couple of decades in, in order to be able to offer lower prices to home users who didn't know or care about the difference. Probably about the time, or earlier, when with some hard disk manufacturers megabytes suddenly shrunk to 10^6 bytes (before kibibytes or mebibytes where a thing, btw).
Re: ECC matters
#290I still remember Craig Silverstein being asked what his biggest mistake at Google was and him answering "Not pushing for ECC memory." Google's initial strategy (c. 2000) around this was to save a few bucks on hardware, get non-ECC memory, and then compensate for it in software. It turns out this is a terrible idea, because if you can't count on memory being robust against cosmic rays, you also can't count on the soft…
I mean early on sure at a startup where you’re not printing money I can see how saving on hardware makes sense. But surely you don’t need an MBA to know that hardware will continue to get cheaper whereas developers and their time will only get more expensive: better to let the hardware deal with it than to burden developers with it ... I’d have made the case for ECC but hindsight being what it is ...