I disagree. AMD has offered ECC support for a while and it’s not catching on. It doesn’t make sense to blame this on Intel.
> Motherboard traces are ~free and the feature is in the die already, so it requires zero expense to offer it to consumers.
Yet it’s missing from a substantial number of AMD boards, despite being supported. You have to specifically confirm the motherboard added those traces before buying it.
Traces aren’t entirely free. Modern boards are densely packed and manufacturers aren’t interested in spending extra time on routing for a feature that consumers aren’t interested in anyway.
Or they just don't care because it's not already popular and unbuffered ECC RAM isn't even particularly widely available. The delta design cost of routing another 8 data lines per DIMM channel is tiny. Especially on ATX boards and other larger formats. I could see some crazy packed mini-ITX layout where this might be a bit harder, but definitely not in the normal cases.
(I've routed a rather dense 4-layer BGA credit card sized board; not exactly a motherboard, but I do have a bit of experience with this subject. It was definitely denser than a typical ATX board per layer.)
Every time I've gone looking for unbuffered ECC RAM over the past three or five years, I've had no trouble finding it. In my experience, the trick is to shop for "server" RAM, rather than "desktop" RAM.
Are there speeds or capacities here that you'd particularly like to see that aren't present? <https://nemixram.com/server-memory/ecc-udimm/>
I've been quite satisfied with the three orders that I've placed with Nemix. I see no indication that they _don't_ ship to Japan, and indications that they _do_ ship internationally... so consider purchasing from them next time you have a need for such memory.
Or, hell, I'd be _shocked_ if there wasn't a company in JP or or KR or CN that also does what Nemix does (that is, yank RAM from decommissioned servers, test it, and sell the stuff that's solid).
And, with Ryzen (and Ryzen Threadripper) becoming ever-more popular, I would expect ECC RAM to continue to drop in price when compared to non-ECC RAM. (But, let's be real here, when you spread the price out over five or ten years, it's _totally_ worth it to have RAM you can rely on.)
It does make sense. Imagine if only 50% of web browsers supported a feature, would you implement it in your website?
Point being, the low market share of ECC-compatible setups means that the market demand for ECC is low, which means that the selection is low, which means the prices are higher than they could be. So yes, absolutely Intel has contributed massively to the issue.
OTOH, it shouldn't be significantly more expensive. It should be ~9/8 the cost of regular memory. It's just one extra chip for every 8. Nothing more.
(in-band ECC is present on Elkhart Lake Atoms and on Tegra Xavier for example)
I'm blaming the decade+ of Intel dominance for killing any chance of ECC becoming popular in non-server environments, just as RAM density was reaching the point where it is absolutely essential for reliability.
> The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip it.
Motherboard traces are ~free and the feature is in the die already, so it requires zero expense to offer it to consumers. Intel chose to artificially cripple their chips to remove that option. Yes, I know there are a few oddball lines where they did offer it. They should have offered it across the board from the get go, seeing as they were selling the same dies with ECC for workstation use.