7 ms·

You should see the prices here in the UK, we can get a Ryzen 2700X 8C/16T for £300 or an Intel 9900k 8C/16T for £600. The Intel is probably faster... but enoug

You should see the prices here in the UK, we can get a Ryzen 2700X 8C/16T for £300 or an Intel 9900k 8C/16T for £600. The Intel is probably faster... but enough to justify literally double the money? I seriously doubt it.

jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
>The Intel is probably faster... Only in specific IPC heavy workflows.
- ianai 8y ago
  The amd probably can be built with ECC ram while the intel cannot, as well. I hope that’s a hat trick amd pushes them to release on the i7s.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
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  - cronz 8y ago
    When was the last time your computer crashed because of a cosmic ray?
    - Scramblejams 8y ago
      The problem isn't a crash, the problem is silent data corruption. I have a system with 128 gigs of ECC and it catches a soft bit flip or two about every 6 months.
      - cronz 8y ago
        Most people don't have that amount of RAM. What are the chances that a soft bit flip will cause silent data corruption that matters for a user with, say, 8 GB of RAM?
        Scramblejams 8y ago
        The answer to the question you've asked depends heavily on the particular user and their work, of course. If the user is just playing games, who cares? But maybe they're doing financial calculations or compiling software that lots of users run or maybe they're doing aircraft structural analysis. In any case, bit flips are much more common than were suspected: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/10/dram-study-turns-assumptions-about-errors-upside-down/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/10/dram-... I believe strongly that ECC should be standard, because you can't safely assume that your users are doing worthless work. Apple got this right on (non-Mini) desktops a long time ago. Not yet on laptops, unfortunately.
        monocasa 8y ago
        That study is faulty. The intern who did that study didn't know that Google would buy DRAM chips that failed manufacturers QA, but them on DIMMs themselves, and retest them at lower frequencies and with ECC turned on. When they already have to be tolerant of any node failing because of their scale, they can start playing fast and loose with this sort of thing if it makes financial sense. EDIT: At -3 so far, does anyone want to explain the downvotes? I saw the google slides first hand, and there are comments from 2009 in that article saying the same thing.
        Scramblejams 8y ago
        I didn't downvote, but I'd guess that they (a) want an authoritative reference to the story you're sharing, or (b) figure the point is moot because these errors still happen, even if less often than depicted by the study, and that ought to be enough to justify using ECC. Like I said though, just a guess.
        ianai 8y ago
        All ram should be ecc. No one would accept this incorrectness BS if the precedent hadn’t been set by the monopolist.
        8y ago
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      most bit flips won't cause a full-on crash, but may corrupt data in funny ways, or affect unused memory. I think people underestimate how common they are[1] [1]https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub35162 https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub35162
    - bzbarsky 8y ago
      You computer? Not sure. Computers in general? A noticeable fraction of Firefox crash reports are due to single-bit memory flips.
      - kjeetgill 8y ago
        Huh, this is really interesting. Can you go more into this? How do you know the cause of the error? What kinda numbers are we talking here? Also, are cosmic rays really the main source of single bit flips as apposed to just bad ram maybe?
        bzbarsky 8y ago
        Firefox crash reports include the contents of registers and a few instructions around the instruction pointer. If the crash is in compiled code, not JIT code, you also know where in the binary you were and can get symbols from a symbol server, then compare what the instructions should be to what they actually were. Some of the time the instructions don't match up, indicating corruption _somewhere_. For the specific case of crashes in JIT-generated code, the contents of registers and the instructions can be related in various ways (e.g. if you have a jmp instruction the register better contain your code location). And if you know where your code locations might be (because you're a JIT, and are generating the code and aligning it in memory yourself) and the register with the code location looks like the sort of address you would end up with but with one extra low bit set, say... I am having trouble right now finding the bug report where some of the JIT engineers were analyzing crashes in jitcode, but about 1/3 of those were due to bitflips if I recall correctly. What that means in terms of absolute numbers (or numbers per user-hour, which would be even more useful), I don't know. Note, by the way, single-bit flips can be a consequence of a bad memory chip, not just of cosmic rays.
        kjeetgill 8y ago
        Thanks! Incredibly interesting.

jaxtellerSoA 8y ago

>The Intel is probably faster... Only in specific IPC heavy workflows.

ianai 8y ago
The amd probably can be built with ECC ram while the intel cannot, as well. I hope that’s a hat trick amd pushes them to release on the i7s.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cronz 8y ago
  When was the last time your computer crashed because of a cosmic ray?
  - Scramblejams 8y ago
    The problem isn't a crash, the problem is silent data corruption. I have a system with 128 gigs of ECC and it catches a soft bit flip or two about every 6 months.
    - cronz 8y ago
      Most people don't have that amount of RAM. What are the chances that a soft bit flip will cause silent data corruption that matters for a user with, say, 8 GB of RAM?
      - Scramblejams 8y ago
        The answer to the question you've asked depends heavily on the particular user and their work, of course. If the user is just playing games, who cares? But maybe they're doing financial calculations or compiling software that lots of users run or maybe they're doing aircraft structural analysis. In any case, bit flips are much more common than were suspected: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/10/dram-study-turns-assumptions-about-errors-upside-down/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/10/dram-... I believe strongly that ECC should be standard, because you can't safely assume that your users are doing worthless work. Apple got this right on (non-Mini) desktops a long time ago. Not yet on laptops, unfortunately.
        monocasa 8y ago
        That study is faulty. The intern who did that study didn't know that Google would buy DRAM chips that failed manufacturers QA, but them on DIMMs themselves, and retest them at lower frequencies and with ECC turned on. When they already have to be tolerant of any node failing because of their scale, they can start playing fast and loose with this sort of thing if it makes financial sense. EDIT: At -3 so far, does anyone want to explain the downvotes? I saw the google slides first hand, and there are comments from 2009 in that article saying the same thing.
        Scramblejams 8y ago
        I didn't downvote, but I'd guess that they (a) want an authoritative reference to the story you're sharing, or (b) figure the point is moot because these errors still happen, even if less often than depicted by the study, and that ought to be enough to justify using ECC. Like I said though, just a guess.
        ianai 8y ago
        All ram should be ecc. No one would accept this incorrectness BS if the precedent hadn’t been set by the monopolist.
        8y ago
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    most bit flips won't cause a full-on crash, but may corrupt data in funny ways, or affect unused memory. I think people underestimate how common they are[1] [1]https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub35162 https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub35162
  - bzbarsky 8y ago
    You computer? Not sure. Computers in general? A noticeable fraction of Firefox crash reports are due to single-bit memory flips.
    - kjeetgill 8y ago
      Huh, this is really interesting. Can you go more into this? How do you know the cause of the error? What kinda numbers are we talking here? Also, are cosmic rays really the main source of single bit flips as apposed to just bad ram maybe?
      - bzbarsky 8y ago
        Firefox crash reports include the contents of registers and a few instructions around the instruction pointer. If the crash is in compiled code, not JIT code, you also know where in the binary you were and can get symbols from a symbol server, then compare what the instructions should be to what they actually were. Some of the time the instructions don't match up, indicating corruption _somewhere_. For the specific case of crashes in JIT-generated code, the contents of registers and the instructions can be related in various ways (e.g. if you have a jmp instruction the register better contain your code location). And if you know where your code locations might be (because you're a JIT, and are generating the code and aligning it in memory yourself) and the register with the code location looks like the sort of address you would end up with but with one extra low bit set, say... I am having trouble right now finding the bug report where some of the JIT engineers were analyzing crashes in jitcode, but about 1/3 of those were due to bitflips if I recall correctly. What that means in terms of absolute numbers (or numbers per user-hour, which would be even more useful), I don't know. Note, by the way, single-bit flips can be a consequence of a bad memory chip, not just of cosmic rays.
        kjeetgill 8y ago
        Thanks! Incredibly interesting.