[giantrobot]

I don't think ECC is going to give anyone a false sense of security. The issue at Google's scale is they had to spend thousands of person-hours implementing in software what they would have gotten for "free" with ECC RAM. Lacking ECC (and generally using consumer-level hardware) compounded scale and reliability problems or at least made them more expensive than they might otherwise had been.

Using consumer hardware and making up reliability with redundancy and software was not a bad idea for early Google but it did end up with an unforeseen cost. Just a thousand machines in a cosmic ray proof bunker will end up with memory errors ECC will correct for free. It's just reducing the surface area of "potential problems".

[Animats]

consumer hardware...

That's Intel's PR. Only "enterprise hardware", with a bigger markup, supports ECC memory. Adding ECC today should add only 12% to memory cost.

AMD decided to break Intel's pricing model. Good for them. Now if we can get ECC at the retail level...

The original IBM PC AT had parity in memory.

[giantrobot]

When I said consumer hardware I was meaning early Google literally using consumer/desktop components mounted on custom metal racks. While Intel does artificially separate "enterprise" and "consumer" parts, there's still a bit of difference between SuperMicro boards with ECC, LOM features, and data center quality PSUs and the off the shelf consumer stuff Google was using for a while.

I don't know if AMD really intended to break Intel's pricing model. Their higher end Ryzen chips you'd use in servers and capital W Workstations don't seem to have a huge price difference from equivalent Xeons. Even if they're a bit cheaper you still need a motherboard that supports ECC so it seems at first glance to be a wash as far as price.

That being said if I was putting together a machine today it would be Ryzen-based with ECC.

[jfim]

> Now if we can get ECC at the retail level

You can actually, most AMD consumer chips (except the ones with integrated graphics) have ECC support, even though it's not officially supported. See this Reddit thread for more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ggmyyg/an_overview_of_...

[esgwpl]

Small nit, the PRO version of Ryzen APUs do support ECC[0], also ASRock has been quoted saying that all of their AM4 motherboards support ECC, even the low end offerings with the A320 chipset.

[0] https://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/a320m-hdv%20r4.0/index.asp#Spe...

[Animats]

The CPU chip can do it. Some motherboards bring out the pins to do it, but they're often called "workstation" boards and cost 2x the price of a standard desktop motherboard. ECC memory itself is overpriced. $60 for 16 GB DDR4 without ECC, $130 for 16 GB DDR4 with ECC.

This is the legacy of Intel's policies.

[buran77]

Because if you give consumers a choice between having ECC or LEDs on otherwise identical boards with identical price, most will go for the LEDs. In reality the price isn't even the same because ECC realistically adds to the BOM (board, modules) more than LEDs do. So the price goes up with seemingly no benefit for the user.

As such features that are unattractive to the regular consumer go into workstation/enterprise offerings where the buyer understands what they're buying and why.

[Dylan16807]

> Because if you give consumers a choice between having ECC or LEDs on otherwise identical boards with identical price, most will go for the LEDs.

Citation needed.

I would bet that your typical ram-purchasing consumer is not seeing or even considering the existence of the ECC model.

> ECC realistically adds to the BOM (board, modules) more than LEDs do. So the price goes up with seemingly no benefit for the user.

LEDs are a great opportunity to increase profit margin, so I'm not sure about your price conclusions.

[buran77]

That's pretty much exactly my conclusion

> Citation needed.

It really isn't. It was a hypothetical choice between 2 models, with ECC or LEDs, at the same price. Hypothetical because most boards don't offer the ECC support at all, and certainly not at the same price.

> LEDs are a great opportunity to increase profit margin, so I'm not sure about your price conclusions

You confused manufacturing costs, price of the product, and profit margins. LEDs cost far less to integrate than ECC but command a higher price premium (thus better profit margins) from the regular consumer. Again supporting my statement that even if presented with 2 absolutely identical parts save for ECC vs. LEDs the vast majority of consumers will go for LEDs because they don't care or know about ECC.

[wolrah]

I think they may have been referring to the actual mainstream retail availability of ECC RAM. I can buy non-ECC RAM at almost any retailer that sells computers. If I need non-ECC RAM right now I can have it in my hands in 30 minutes. ECC on the other hand I pretty much have to buy online. Microcenter stocks a single 4GB stick of PC4-21300, and I can't think of a single use case where I'd want ECC but not more than 4GB.

[jfim]

You're right, rereading the parent post with that angle makes it clearer that they were complaining about the unavailability of memory and other hardware.

It would definitely be great to have more reliable hardware generally available and at less of a price premium.

[Animats]

Yes. I'd pay an extra 25%, but not an extra 110%.