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A comment on ECC matters. Parent comment

Re:ECC matters by knorker on Sunday January 03, 2021 @01:40PM (#25623884)
That doesn't help if the memory is corrupted before the verification code is applied. (the code will simply put a signature on incorrect data)

Or after it's been checked. (time-of-check vs time-of-use)

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Re:ECC matters by MaxBarraclough on Sunday January 03, 2021 @01:47PM (#25623960)
Right, exactly. TCP protects us from data-corruption in network streams, and ECC protects us from data-corruption in RAM. I doubt any sort of software solution could practically compete against hardware ECC, even if it could be done it would presumably be disastrous for performance.
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Re:ECC matters by knorker on Sunday January 03, 2021 @01:51PM (#25623996)
The best integrity checking is "end to end". The problem with non-ECC is that there are no "ends" that are trustworthy.

I guess in theory some software could produce signed data in CPU cache, and "commit" it to RAM as a verified block.

But the overhead would be enormous. Would you slow down your CPU by half in order to not pay 12.5% more for RAM?

Hmm, I wonder what SGX and similar do about this.

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