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> Just give everyone the good technology as much as is possible. Who’s it hurting if some subjectively underutilise it? Everyone who buys the product and doesn

> Just give everyone the good technology as much as is possible. Who’s it hurting if some subjectively underutilise it? Everyone who buys the product and doesn't require the technology, because they'll be spending more money on something they don't need or use.

frou_dh 9y ago
How does someone “not use” ECC RAM when their computer contains it? Computer reliability should be a rising tide. Up-and-to-the-right is the goal.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
If ECC was the normal product that went into everything, and someone invented "unverified" RAM to get a tiny speed boost and slightly decreased cost, how much do you think the actual price difference would be? I expect it would be tiny. It's a political decision by Intel to make ECC an Xeon-only product which has resulted in the vast majority of the price difference. The silicon die area required for it really doesn't cost that much more - often, the area is present on the consumer dies but just disabled so they can charge a lot more to the enterprise customers who actually require it. And political decisions like that make a lot of HN users unhappy. As Joel Spolsky said in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...: > Working my way backwards, this business about segmenting? It pisses the heck off of people. People want to feel they’re paying a fair price.... And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off. Everyone knows that ECC parts are nearly identical to the cheap parts, with the ECC module turned off. But there's no boycott, because there are (were?) no other options, like there might be for a printer company. ECC segmentation is just something everyone knows and resents.
- kpxxx3 9y ago
  Whether you like it or not segmentation allows lowering the price even further on the low end. That can be argued as an advantage to people on the lower end market so they can get something instead of nothing. You enable ECC in everything and now that just raises the base price (lowers it for the upmarket segment). Finally I really hope you are just talking about ECC controllers. Like actual ECC requires extra memory and that isn’t cheap at all! It’s not just flipping a switch. In a phone or something it hardly matters if some controller silicon supports ECC. The cost is going to be much greater than just 1-2% more Edit: yeah rereading your comment. It doesn’t seem you’re familiar with ECC memory. It’s not just some extra circuitry it actually involves redundancy, so the cost difference is way more than tiny.
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  I'm responding to the generalization in the previous comment, I don't specifically agree about ECC.

frou_dh 9y ago

How does someone “not use” ECC RAM when their computer contains it? Computer reliability should be a rising tide. Up-and-to-the-right is the goal.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

If ECC was the normal product that went into everything, and someone invented "unverified" RAM to get a tiny speed boost and slightly decreased cost, how much do you think the actual price difference would be? I expect it would be tiny. It's a political decision by Intel to make ECC an Xeon-only product which has resulted in the vast majority of the price difference. The silicon die area required for it really doesn't cost that much more - often, the area is present on the consumer dies but just disabled so they can charge a lot more to the enterprise customers who actually require it. And political decisions like that make a lot of HN users unhappy. As Joel Spolsky said in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...: > Working my way backwards, this business about segmenting? It pisses the heck off of people. People want to feel they’re paying a fair price.... And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off. Everyone knows that ECC parts are nearly identical to the cheap parts, with the ECC module turned off. But there's no boycott, because there are (were?) no other options, like there might be for a printer company. ECC segmentation is just something everyone knows and resents.

kpxxx3 9y ago
Whether you like it or not segmentation allows lowering the price even further on the low end. That can be argued as an advantage to people on the lower end market so they can get something instead of nothing. You enable ECC in everything and now that just raises the base price (lowers it for the upmarket segment). Finally I really hope you are just talking about ECC controllers. Like actual ECC requires extra memory and that isn’t cheap at all! It’s not just flipping a switch. In a phone or something it hardly matters if some controller silicon supports ECC. The cost is going to be much greater than just 1-2% more Edit: yeah rereading your comment. It doesn’t seem you’re familiar with ECC memory. It’s not just some extra circuitry it actually involves redundancy, so the cost difference is way more than tiny.
tokenizerrr 9y ago
I'm responding to the generalization in the previous comment, I don't specifically agree about ECC.