Re:MacBook Pro
by xorblurb on Thursday October 27, 2016 @05:51PM
(#12810598)
The whole story about ECC ram in the computer industry is completely insane. RAM is basically the only place in most PC not protected by a form of ECC, except on expensive (or at least less produced) Xeon (or maybe some AMD, I don't know which ones). I don't know if caches on most ARM processors have ECC, but the situation might very well be the same on smartphone. Sad...
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Re:MacBook Pro
by alfalfasprout on Friday October 28, 2016 @01:04AM
(#12813243)
If I'm not mistaken, all Xeon E5 and E7 processors support registered ECC memory. Many (if not most) multi-socket Xeon motherboards won't even let you install non-ECC memory.
Here's the thing... there's really not much of a point in ECC memory for most desktops and laptops. In servers, sure... in mission critical applications even a tiny memory error could have devastating consequences. But for someone browsing facebook? Nah.
What's the point of perpetuating a miserly "they don't need/deserve $BETTER_TECH" attitude?
The general march of progress in computing has been about better technology iteratively trickling down to everybody.
I don't "need" my phone to have a 64bit CPU, but I'll take it. Glad it does. No doubt a few years ago someone was saying...
"64bit should be a PC thing. Phones? Nah."
...like it was some kind of law, rather than just the point-in-time market situation.
Strangely, there are a bunch of low-end pentiums that support ECC.
Probably "industrial" low-end pentiums, for projects where reliability is needed but even a Xeon E3 would be overkill.
The thing is that it is considered that ECC in RAM is not needed for consumer electronics, but that's utterly insane.