[mjevans]

If it weren't a market segmentation strategy, just like limiting the RAM capacity, then there'd be equivalent 'server' chips for most current 'desktop' feature sets and vice versa. However that is clearly not the case, both in my own shopping experience and in the experience of Jeff Atwood (this is in fact something he complains about in this very article).

ECC would require running and connecting a few more traces, but that would /surely/ be offset by not having to create as many layouts or source/stock as many parts. In the past AMD used to have a competing/selling point of /all/ of their CPUs supporting ECC ram. Today that is not the case, as they too have mirrored (colluded?) Intel's market segmentation strategy.