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Any word on ECC support for the Ryzen chips?

• diamondlovesyou 9y ago
  As a current user of ECC RAM w/ a Ryzen 7 1800, I can tell you it works. We need faster ECC RAM though: the external RAM speed affects the internal AMD Infinity Fabric, which provides inter core comms.
  • nsxwolf 9y ago
    It works but does it "work"? I've never seen a straight answer on this. It's not validated - does it really work, as in, error corrects?
    • undersuit 9y ago
      I don't remember the source, but one of the review sites overclocked some ECC ram for Ryzen to the point where it was erroring. They were stable and viewing the one-bit errors coming in and being corrected until they got a two-bit error and the machine booted(as they are supposed to).
      • deaddodo 9y ago
        No, two-bit failures are supposed to hard fault (to minimize damage of data corruption). Which the Ryzen did not do (in that specific test, at least).
        • theevilsharpie 9y ago
          The OS detected the fault and terminated the application which used the faulted memory address range, which is what it was supposed to do.
          • deaddodo 9y ago
            The guy who ran the exact test OP is referring to specifically states that it handles two-bit errors in a sub-optimal manner. Sure, you don't have to hard fault. Just like regular memory controllers don't fail on any bit-errors. But it's ideal, when dealing with critical data.
        • wyldfire 9y ago
          Memory (and other) errors generate a Machine Check Exception which are handled by OS and/or BIOS. OSs can be smart enough to accumulate a history of errors and offline affected physical pages (which can result in a very localized single process segmentation violation). You could just log the errors. But you could also dial up the reaction all the way to NMI on these errors, which often triggers a processor reset.
    • kbwt 9y ago
      It definitely works on ASRock AM4 boards. Just make sure to get unbuffered ECC RAM.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• ComputerGuru 9y ago
  I thought ECC was already supported out of the box on Ryzen? IIRC, the issue was motherboard support (motherboards have been the pain point for Ryzen from the very start). http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75030-ecc-memory-amds-ryzen-deep-dive.html http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-review...
• valarauca1 9y ago
  Ryzen will work with ECC ram but it won't actively correct ECC errors (at least on Linux) the interrupt code flags that as differed. Currently there aren't Ryzen server chips out, just desktop/enthusiast models.
  • simcop2387 9y ago
    And word on why this is, or a source for it? I'm curious if this is just something that can be fixed with an upgraded kernel.
  • deaddodo 9y ago
    Yes, it does. It'll correct 1-bit errors and report 2-bit errors. It just doesn't fault on 2-bit errors, as is expected.
    • theevilsharpie 9y ago
      Ryzen will send a machine check exception to the OS in the event of a double-bit error. It's up to the OS on how to handle it. This also isn't a Ryzen-specific behavior. All x86 ECC-capable machines work this way.
  • aidenn0 9y ago
    4.10.something (4.10.6 maybe?) Added EDAC support for ECC.