Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus(arstechnica.com) |
Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus(arstechnica.com) |
Even the security issues only meaningfully impact servers.
People like Linus can buy server-class hardware if ECC is so important to them.
ECC ram should be more expensive as you're paying for more bits, and marginally slower as you're comparing stored with computed. If consumers don't value their data (they say they do but don't act accordingly), bit errors is what we get.
I do my job on a company laptop, if it were my own company I'd use an AMD desktop with ECC.
So your claim is that it has nothing to do with Intel's product segmentation strategy?
An aside question for readers: How often does RAM error, and is it a significant problem in practice?
I don't have any direct experience with this (that I could tell) using consumer computers for the past 15-odd years of programming.
It’s supposed to work but if you have any problems with it you can’t go back to AMD and complain. IMHO that’s not really good enough, if ECC is going to protect you they need to officially support it.
It sounds like not officially supporting ECC is a CYA move for when it doesn’t work.
It's sad thinking of where we could be today if mega-corps had less incentive to do this.
Edit: to the down voter, please explain why you think my opinion is wrong?
FTA: "Bit flips can happen for many reasons, beginning with cosmic-ray impact or simple hardware failure. A large-scale study[0] of Google servers found that roughly 32 percent of all servers (and 8 percent of all DIMMs) in Google's fleet experience at least one memory error per year. But the vast majority of these are single-bit errors—and since Google is using server CPUs and ECC RAM, this means the machines in question keep right on trucking."
[0] http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf
Linus is certainly known for some inappropriate rants against people which he has since toned down, apologized for, and worked to correct.
That said, this image is taken from an event where Linus was prompted about Nvidia in 2012 during some filming. For those who don't use Linux, these times were extremely chaotic in graphics, especially for Linux with respect to Nvidia, who were largely catering to Windows users. It's what kept Windows gaming in such a strategic position. This affects people who have lower end machines, people who can't afford Windows, and people who seek freedom from predatory data collection. Throwing up his middle finger at a company with those kind of practices is hardly revolutionary or inappropriate.
Source: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/torvalds-nvidia-linux/amp
[0]: https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Dinaburg/BH_US_11_Dinabu...
That said, I also would like to know more about how often RAM errors actually happen. My gut feeling is that on mass produced consumer hardware, software errors FAR outweigh hardware errors in terms of how much they inconvenience me personally. Maybe the very occasional "that's weird" moments where a restart fixed it were hardware errors but they're few and far between. That's just a feeling, though, and I like numbers.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...
tl;dr for the article: “Please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place” - Linus Torvalds, former "Candid" speaker