6 ms·

ECC is a market segmentation tool. Keeping ECC away from consumer hardware means you can charge more to make it available for industrial, professional etc. use.

ericfrederich 9y ago
Interesting thought, but kind of sounds like a conspiracy theory. Anything else to back it up?
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  Obviously ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive. That does not preclude it from being used for market segmentation to get higher margins. Same reason ECC is not supported on consumer processors from Intel. Here it would be almost trivial to add, but they don't. Simple business strategy.
  - nirvdrum 9y ago
    You're probably aware, but the desktop i3 does support ECC. Well, at least through the 7th generation. It looks like now that it's added 2 cores in the 8th generation, ECC has been dropped (NB: I didn't look at all models). So, they're okay with it on consumer parts, as long as you're not looking to do anything resembling professional work I guess.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    > ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive manufacturing cost is non-linear. Obviously intrinsically word gunk.
    - skummetmaelk 9y ago
      Can you expand on this? Memory already includes controller logic and adding ECC logic does not need a seperate process. All you need is more silicon real estate because of the extra bits needed for the ECC. Silicon is cheap.
  - dom0 9y ago
    In most previous generations all Core iX dice have had support for ECC, selectively disabled through fusing. Obviously, all internal busses and caches use error correction/detection independent of what the memory controller does.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > Obviously ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive. Technically. A fraction of a percent increase in die size for the memory transceivers, basically nothing for making and verifying checksums. It's all business strategy.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  Do you see every market segmentation as a conspiracy? If so, a conspiracy between whom?
tormeh 9y ago
Not really. Most people don't care about ECC and gamers actually prefer the faster non-ECC ram. Since ECC is more expensive to make, the industry is obviously not going to sell ECC to people not willing to pay more for it. And in a lucky coincidence it turns out that those who want ECC are willing to pay the moon for it, which of course gatekeepers like Intel exploit.
- ticviking 9y ago
  I'd take a slight slowdown in ram access if I knew for sure that my game won't bluescreen.
- oldsklgdfth 9y ago
  Your point seems to make sense in GPU lands as well. Nvidia offers ECC on their workstation class GPUs - quadro - but not on their gaming GPU - gtx.
  - dom0 9y ago
    Gaming GPUs have different qualification targets anyway. They will error fairly frequently compared to e.g. your CPU; something that doesn't matter when most errors become invisible after about 16 ms, but not really something you want to see e.g. in a simulation.
- DCKing 9y ago
  Well I don't think there's anything about ECC, or at least unbuffered ECC, that should make memory slower than non-ECC memory. "Fast" memory it seems to me is also just a marketing thing. If ECC was considered mainstream as it should be then I think we'd have overpriced '4000MHz Gaming X Raptor' ECC modules all the same. I'm also not convinced that unbuffered ECC makes memory modules significantly more expensive. Basically there's no evidence that ECC memory is signficantly slower or more expensive than non-ECC memory. Obviously it's slightly more complex than non-ECC memory, but it's not a particularly high-tech addition. For all its supposed complexity/slowness, Samsung is using it in its caches on their Exynos SoCs. Everything can be perfectly explained in terms of market segmentation.
KGIII 9y ago
Many and CPUs support ECC. It will take a bit longer to find a motherboard that supports them, but they are out there. Consumer ECC is an option but few seem to know about or opt for it. I want to say I had ECC in my old AMD K6-350, but that was a lot of years ago. Either way, I'm pretty sure they have supported it for a long time and in many of their CPUs, even the CPUs aimed at consumers. Here's a comment I made last night, if you want to dig in and find some current offerings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15406565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15406565

ericfrederich 9y ago

Interesting thought, but kind of sounds like a conspiracy theory. Anything else to back it up?

skummetmaelk 9y ago
Obviously ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive. That does not preclude it from being used for market segmentation to get higher margins. Same reason ECC is not supported on consumer processors from Intel. Here it would be almost trivial to add, but they don't. Simple business strategy.
- nirvdrum 9y ago
  You're probably aware, but the desktop i3 does support ECC. Well, at least through the 7th generation. It looks like now that it's added 2 cores in the 8th generation, ECC has been dropped (NB: I didn't look at all models). So, they're okay with it on consumer parts, as long as you're not looking to do anything resembling professional work I guess.
- sitkack 9y ago
  > ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive manufacturing cost is non-linear. Obviously intrinsically word gunk.
  - skummetmaelk 9y ago
    Can you expand on this? Memory already includes controller logic and adding ECC logic does not need a seperate process. All you need is more silicon real estate because of the extra bits needed for the ECC. Silicon is cheap.
- dom0 9y ago
  In most previous generations all Core iX dice have had support for ECC, selectively disabled through fusing. Obviously, all internal busses and caches use error correction/detection independent of what the memory controller does.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > Obviously ECC requires more resources and is therefore intrinsically more expensive. Technically. A fraction of a percent increase in die size for the memory transceivers, basically nothing for making and verifying checksums. It's all business strategy.
Bromskloss 9y ago
Do you see every market segmentation as a conspiracy? If so, a conspiracy between whom?

tormeh 9y ago

Not really. Most people don't care about ECC and gamers actually prefer the faster non-ECC ram. Since ECC is more expensive to make, the industry is obviously not going to sell ECC to people not willing to pay more for it. And in a lucky coincidence it turns out that those who want ECC are willing to pay the moon for it, which of course gatekeepers like Intel exploit.

ticviking 9y ago
I'd take a slight slowdown in ram access if I knew for sure that my game won't bluescreen.
oldsklgdfth 9y ago
Your point seems to make sense in GPU lands as well. Nvidia offers ECC on their workstation class GPUs - quadro - but not on their gaming GPU - gtx.
- dom0 9y ago
  Gaming GPUs have different qualification targets anyway. They will error fairly frequently compared to e.g. your CPU; something that doesn't matter when most errors become invisible after about 16 ms, but not really something you want to see e.g. in a simulation.
DCKing 9y ago
Well I don't think there's anything about ECC, or at least unbuffered ECC, that should make memory slower than non-ECC memory. "Fast" memory it seems to me is also just a marketing thing. If ECC was considered mainstream as it should be then I think we'd have overpriced '4000MHz Gaming X Raptor' ECC modules all the same. I'm also not convinced that unbuffered ECC makes memory modules significantly more expensive. Basically there's no evidence that ECC memory is signficantly slower or more expensive than non-ECC memory. Obviously it's slightly more complex than non-ECC memory, but it's not a particularly high-tech addition. For all its supposed complexity/slowness, Samsung is using it in its caches on their Exynos SoCs. Everything can be perfectly explained in terms of market segmentation.

KGIII 9y ago

Many and CPUs support ECC. It will take a bit longer to find a motherboard that supports them, but they are out there. Consumer ECC is an option but few seem to know about or opt for it. I want to say I had ECC in my old AMD K6-350, but that was a lot of years ago. Either way, I'm pretty sure they have supported it for a long time and in many of their CPUs, even the CPUs aimed at consumers. Here's a comment I made last night, if you want to dig in and find some current offerings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15406565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15406565