Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ECC matters

realworldtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 567 posts

Re: ECC matters

#71

Post by xxs »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #38
loeg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's real obnoxious of Intel to silo ECC support off into the Xeon line, isn't it? I switched to ECC memory in 2013 or 2014 with a Xeon E3 (fundamentally a Core i7 without the ECC support fused off) and of course a Xeon-supporting motherboard (with weird "server board" quirks: e.g., no on-board sound device). I love that AMD doesn't intentionally break ECC on its consumer desktop platforms and upgraded to the T…

Doesn't intel make ECC available on the i3 line of CPUs?

Not any more[0] 10300. It used to[1] - 9300:

0: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199281/...

1: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134886/...

Re: ECC matters

#72

Post by marcosdumay »

defanor wrote: post #66
loeg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's real obnoxious of Intel to silo ECC support off into the Xeon line, isn't it? I switched to ECC memory in 2013 or 2014 with a Xeon E3 (fundamentally a Core i7 without the ECC support fused off) and of course a Xeon-supporting motherboard (with weird "server board" quirks: e.g., no on-board sound device). I love that AMD doesn't intentionally break ECC on its consumer desktop platforms and upgraded to the T…

I've considered using an AMD CPU instead of Intel's Xeon on the primary desktop computer, but even low-end Ryzen Threadripper CPUs have TDP of 180W, which is a bit higher than I'd like. And though ECC is not disabled in Ryzen CPUs, AFAIK it's not tested in (or advertised for) those, so one won't be able to return/replace a CPU if it doesn't work with ECC memory, AIUI, making it risky. Though I don't know how common i…

Keep in mind that Intel lies about its TDP.

Re: ECC matters

#73

Post by formerly_proven »

phh wrote: post #20

I don't know if ECC is that important, but reliability of RAM (or any storage) feels pretty crazy to me. 128GB being refreshed every second for a month error requires that the per-bit refresh process has a reliability of 99.9999999999999999% to be flawless. Considering we are dealing with quantum effects (which are inherently probabilistic), I wouldn't trust myself to design anything like that. Now back to ECC, I'll…

RAM is not as reliable as you think. Some ECC memory hardly ever finds an error, some machines see them at a very consistent rate, e.g. 50 errors per TB-day. That would translate to 1-2 errors per day in a 32 GB PC. Without ECC you cannot know in which bucket you are.

Re: ECC matters

#75

Post by MaxBarraclough »

dijit wrote: post #25
sys_64738 wrote: post #14

ECC memory is predominantly used in servers where failure absolutely must be identified and logged. The desktop market to a lesser extent due to lack of mission critical tasks being run from there.

There are situations though, where you’re working on a document and the documents “save” format is a memory dump. Corruption for things of that type (Adobe RAW for example) would remove data. It might present itself as a 1pixel colour difference, but it could be more damaging (incorrect finances, in accounting software for example). Software trusts memory; but memory can lie. That’s dangerous.

That's an interesting point. In an extreme case, an order or money transfer might be placed for an incorrect quantity, or to an incorrect recipient.

Re: ECC matters

#76

Post by TheCoelacanth »

nix23 wrote: post #50
reader_mode wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 5 seconds to Google ECC memory if you're really interested and if you're working on kernel related stuff you 99.9999% know what it is.

To someone on HN who isn’t familiar with what Google does that explains nothing about how Google works ;)

Google is like an evil version of Duck Duck Go.

Re: ECC matters

#77

Post by cbanek »

As someone who has had to read thousands of random game crash reports from all over the interwebs (you know when Windows says you might want to send that crash log? like that), I totally agree.

Of all the things to be worried about, like OS bugs, bad hardware configuration, etc. bad memory is one of those really troubling things. You look at the code and say "it's can't make it here, because this was set" but when you can't trust your memory you can't trust anything.

And as the timeline goes to infinity, you may also get one of these reports and be asked to fix it... good luck.

Re: ECC matters

#78

Post by CydeWeys »

defanor wrote: post #66
loeg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's real obnoxious of Intel to silo ECC support off into the Xeon line, isn't it? I switched to ECC memory in 2013 or 2014 with a Xeon E3 (fundamentally a Core i7 without the ECC support fused off) and of course a Xeon-supporting motherboard (with weird "server board" quirks: e.g., no on-board sound device). I love that AMD doesn't intentionally break ECC on its consumer desktop platforms and upgraded to the T…

I've considered using an AMD CPU instead of Intel's Xeon on the primary desktop computer, but even low-end Ryzen Threadripper CPUs have TDP of 180W, which is a bit higher than I'd like. And though ECC is not disabled in Ryzen CPUs, AFAIK it's not tested in (or advertised for) those, so one won't be able to return/replace a CPU if it doesn't work with ECC memory, AIUI, making it risky. Though I don't know how common i…

> 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 max power draw, which you don't even have to use? I've never seen anyone shop a desktop CPU by TDP, rather than by performance and price.

Re: ECC matters

#79

Post by supernovae »

louwrentius wrote: post #44

ECC matters, even on the desktop, it's not even a discussion, to me. If you think it doesn't matter: how do you know? If you don't run with ECC memory, you'll never know if memory was corrupted (and recovered). That blue screen, that sudden reboot, that program crashing. That corrupted picture of your kid. Who knows. I'll tell you, who knows. God damn every sysadmin (or the modern equivalent) can tell you how often t…

I've got nearly 30 years of experience and not once has non ECC memory lead to corruption. Maybe a crash, maybe a panic, maybe a kernel dump...

But.. in all my time operating servers over 3 decades, it's always been bad drivers, bad code and problematic hardware that's caused most of my headaches.

Have i seen ECC error correction in logs? yeah.. I don't advocate against it but, i've found for most people you design around multiple failure scenarios more than you design around preventing specific ones.

Take the average web app - you run it on 10 commodity systems and distribute the load.. if one crashes, so what. Chances are, a node will crash for many more reasons other than memory issues.

If you have an app that requires massive amounts of ram or you do put all of your begs in one basket, then ECC makes sense...

I just know i like going horizontal and I avoid vertical monoliths.

Re: ECC matters

#80

Post by xxs »

marcosdumay wrote: post #72
defanor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered using an AMD CPU instead of Intel's Xeon on the primary desktop computer, but even low-end Ryzen Threadripper CPUs have TDP of 180W, which is a bit higher than I'd like. And though ECC is not disabled in Ryzen CPUs, AFAIK it's not tested in (or advertised for) those, so one won't be able to return/replace a CPU if it doesn't work with ECC memory, AIUI, making it risky. Though I don't know how common i…

Keep in mind that Intel lies about its TDP.

Intel measures TDP at base frequency... that's disingenuous.
Post reply on HN