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by reliabilityguy 1 day ago
> It's my long standing opinion[1] that we shouldn't accept any RAM that can be subject to random bit flips.

Every system fails eventually.

2 comments

That is why every subsystem must have means to detect the failures, to allow the replacement of the bad components.

ECC in DIMMs achieves this.

For myself, this has been the greatest advantage of always using ECC, that I have been warned early about the great increase in the frequency of errors in some DIMMs, after many years (over 5 years) of continuous usage, which has allowed me to replace the offending DIMMs and continue to use those systems for some more years.

Yes things fail, but currently random bit flips are not considered a failure.
The big companies consider them a failure in their own computers, so they use appropriate memory, but they consider that "consumers" either must accept them as normal and not a failure, or pay a great overprice in comparison with what a big company pays, in order to have memory devices with error detection.
They are, that’s why ECC exists, and those who are willing to pay for it, can get it.