4 ms·

I envy you. A life with zero problems.... I think you're probably the only person in the universe so fortunate. Here's the basic set of problems: 1) ECC is al

I envy you. A life with zero problems.... I think you're probably the only person in the universe so fortunate. Here's the basic set of problems: 1) ECC is almost free if done at scale (e.g. every computer). The only reason it costs extra is that it is only done for high-paying customers and in limited volume. 2) Computer crashes cost lives. If e.g. your doctor's device has an issue mid-surgery, you potentially pay. 3) It's good for the economy. In either case, the cost savings of not having a call center rep say "Wait a minute. My computer just crashed." far outweighs the costs. 4) It's critical for resilience. Disasters (solar flares, EMP, etc.) are rare, but if every computer destroys data, we have a systemic problem. 5) The issue primarily is one of transparency. Most people don't realize it's an issue, and don't shop on it. 6) That's not to mention dual-market uses. E.g. if we need to ramp up military production, medical production, etc. next crisis, our infrastructure should be ready for it. Classical economic theory states government interventions do well for disaster resilience, for externalized costs, and for lack of transparency. Those are all places where markets fail. That means this should be regulated. We should have error correction in all storage and in all computation. Best intervention, though, isn't a ban but a tax. Sales tax should be on a sliding scale from 1-10%, with: - 1% for parts / support / service manuals being available for some extended period - 1% for all software being open-source - 1% for all hardware being open - 1% for use of standard, interchangeable parts (e.g. batteries, power connectors, etc.) - 1% for environmental factors (CO2, toxic materials, etc.) - 1% for reusable infrastructure (e.g. being able to repurpose manufacturing equipment for crisis use) - 1% for workplace factors (e.g reasonable benefits, audits/compliance, non-discrimination for target populations like ex-convicts, etc.) ... and so on Those sorts of gentle incentives accomplish the same thing via market mechanisms without limiting freedom. For a commodity product, a 10% edge far outweighs costs. If Apple wants to make a proprietary magnetic screen connector and save 1mm of space, a 1% extra tax won't even slow them down.

eptcyka 3y ago
ECC is more costly in terms of the BoM and higher power consumption.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  The power consumption is higher by an amount that is not easily detectable. The power consumed by the relatively few gates that generate and verify the ECC code is dwarfed by the power consumption needed to transport bits over the PCB traces. The extra memory cell arrays for ECC bits add some power consumption for refreshing their content and the extra PCB traces for the ECC bits add some power consumption, but this extra power is in the milliwatt range, so it is negligible in comparison with the CPU and GPU power even in a small laptop, not only in a desktop. Most gaming desktops use overclocked memory modules that have an extra power consumption many times greater than the DDR5-4800 or DDR5-5600 ECC UDIMMs. The ECC UDIMMs never need heatsinks, while many of the commonly used overclocked DIMMs will overheat without heatsinks. So the claim that using ECC will increase the power consumption is completely bogus. Something like using a power-save profile instead of a high-performance profile, for clock management, or using JEDEC timings for memory, instead of high-performance timings, would diminish the power consumption by orders of magnitude more than not using ECC memory.
  - frognumber 3y ago
    It's actually a bit more bogus than that. If I can tolerate occasional bit errors -- which ECC permits -- I can reduce my power consumption by far more than the overhead of ECC. Right now, I power rails set to where billions of bits to never flip. If I can tolerate a one-in-a-billion bit flip, my tolerances go up a lot, and power consumption goes down by a similar factor. Properly implemented, ECC would likely cut power while increasing reliability. "Properly implemented" only happens in volume. That sort of optimization makes no sense for the very limited volumes ECC has today. Neither do a lot of other optimizations.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      ECC is ubiquitous in the server space and I wouldn’t really classify that as limited volumes.
      - frognumber 3y ago
Tuna-Fish 3y ago
> 1) ECC is almost free if done at scale (e.g. every computer). The only reason it costs extra is that it is only done for high-paying customers and in limited volume. This is simply not true. ECC means you need to store a minimum of 11% more bits, and at scale this means that you are paying a minimum of 11% more for memory. Note that I am very pro ECC, and think that most computers should use ECC ram.
- satellite2 3y ago
  I don't think the price of ram grows linearly with its bits. Manufacturing, shipping, distribution etc. are major costs that are mostly fixed for a single stick I would imagine.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  As I have also said above, +12.5% paid by the manufacturer of DIMM for memory chips may mean +10% in the price of DIMMs when they are not marked up excessively, like the DDR5 modules today. That +10% may become +5% after adding CPU, cooler, MB, PSU, case and it may become +3% after adding SSDs, a high-quality monitor and other usual peripherals. While at work I have seen plenty of problems with computers without ECC, for my desktops and servers and even for some laptops, when I could, I have used only ECC memory, for the last few decades. That has never increased the cost as much as I have saved by choosing wisely other components in the computers that I have built myself. The main problem has never been the extra cost, but the difficulty to find them exactly when I needed them, because at retail the availability of ECC modules may be sporadic and many distributors appear and disappear, so if I upgrade systems after some years I seldom can find the same source.
- sliken 3y ago
  You are assuming that the raw cost of the chips are 100% of the cost of selling one to the consumer. Other costs are fixed like quality control/testing, marketing, delivery, overhead for the distributors profit, etc. I'd also expect RMA costs to be lower since you can be sure which DIMM is bad, and that it's not CPU, CPU socket, motherboard, powersupply, etc.
gruez 3y ago
>1) ECC is almost free if done at scale (e.g. every computer). The only reason it costs extra is that it is only done for high-paying customers and in limited volume. A ECC DRAM module contains 9 chips rather than 8. I'm not sure how you can claim that's "almost free" unless you have a very loose definition of "almost free". >2) Computer crashes cost lives. If e.g. your doctor's device has an issue mid-surgery, you potentially pay. Sounds like a good reason to regulate medical devices and force them to undergo certification as well. Surely you wouldn't want the the computer to have ECC memory, but it decides to reboot for a 2 hour update? >3) It's good for the economy. In either case, the cost savings of not having a call center rep say "Wait a minute. My computer just crashed." far outweighs the costs. If this is true, why do we need the government to step in? Why aren't businesses doing this themselves out of self interest? >4) It's critical for resilience. Disasters (solar flares, EMP, etc.) are rare, but if every computer destroys data, we have a systemic problem. ECC protects against solar flares and EMP? That's new. >6) That's not to mention dual-market uses. E.g. if we need to ramp up military production, medical production, etc. next crisis, our infrastructure should be ready for it. 1. DRAM modules aren't made in the US, they're made in asian countries with cheap labor. If there's a military crisis, we'd be screwed regardless 2. As mentioned above, ECC DRAM modules are basically the same as non-ECC modules but with an extra chip. The only work to retool a line from non-ECC to ECC is to change the PCBs. Thus the supposed benefits is negligible, unless for whatever reason the military needs a massive amount of desktops.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Almost free means that the 12.5% extra cost for memory chips may mean 10% extra manufacturing cost for the memory modules and that may mean less than 5% of the total cost of a computer with 64 GB DRAM (not counting monitor, SSDs and other peripherals, which would drive the percentage to be much lower) and even less for computers having less memory.
- frognumber 3y ago
  > A ECC DRAM module contains 9 chips rather than 8. I'm not sure how you can claim that's "almost free" unless you have a very loose definition of "almost free". I do. Let's do the math here. A typical computer has 8GB RAM. That's under $20 at my local retail store. We're talking a $2 price difference. That's with the methods used today. The overhead can go arbitrarily low if we adopt techniques used in nonvolatile storage and work in larger blocks of bits. $2 is less than the cost of a tiny fraction of a crash. > Surely you wouldn't want the the computer to have ECC memory, but it decides to reboot for a 2 hour update? A broader regulatory regime would certainly be good. > If this is true, why do we need the government to step in? Why aren't businesses doing this themselves out of self interest? Mostly, because businesses can focus on a finite number of things. A $20 benefit which costs $2 to implement stops making sense if it means your local clinic needs to have someone on-staff who can do an ROI computation on adopting ECC. It's cheaper to buy something sub-optimal. Again, that's where centralization and regulation helps. > ECC protects against solar flares and EMP? That's new. That's literally what they're there for. ECC primarily protects against bit flips, which are the result of random radiation. Mild flares will flip a few bits which ECC will correct. Severe ones will flip a lot of bits, which ECC will detect, and the computer can shut down before destroying more data. > 1. DRAM modules aren't made in the US, they're made in asian countries with cheap labor. If there's a military crisis, we'd be screwed regardless I'm not sure what you mean by "modules," but DRAM PCBs are easy to assemble. They can be made in the US overnight. DRAM chips are primarily made in the US (Micron), Korea (Samsung), and Taiwan (TSMC). https://www.micron.com/manufacturing-expansion https://www.micron.com/manufacturing-expansion And not all crises are military. > The only work to retool a line from non-ECC to ECC is to change the PCBs. Thus the supposed benefits is negligible, unless for whatever reason the military needs a massive amount of desktops. If all you need is memory, that's true. If you also want motherboards and processors which will take those chips, that's harder. If you don't want bit flips in your computation, that's impossible without redesigning all CPUs. Academic CPUs can do error-correcting computation at nominal cost, but there isn't a market incentive to bring that to market.
pkaye 3y ago
2) Computer crashes cost lives. If e.g. your doctor's device has an issue mid-> surgery, you potentially pay. Given that software can also crash, I'd go with a different approach: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers. For most situations, RAIC1 is good enough.

eptcyka 3y ago

ECC is more costly in terms of the BoM and higher power consumption.

adrian_b 3y ago
The power consumption is higher by an amount that is not easily detectable. The power consumed by the relatively few gates that generate and verify the ECC code is dwarfed by the power consumption needed to transport bits over the PCB traces. The extra memory cell arrays for ECC bits add some power consumption for refreshing their content and the extra PCB traces for the ECC bits add some power consumption, but this extra power is in the milliwatt range, so it is negligible in comparison with the CPU and GPU power even in a small laptop, not only in a desktop. Most gaming desktops use overclocked memory modules that have an extra power consumption many times greater than the DDR5-4800 or DDR5-5600 ECC UDIMMs. The ECC UDIMMs never need heatsinks, while many of the commonly used overclocked DIMMs will overheat without heatsinks. So the claim that using ECC will increase the power consumption is completely bogus. Something like using a power-save profile instead of a high-performance profile, for clock management, or using JEDEC timings for memory, instead of high-performance timings, would diminish the power consumption by orders of magnitude more than not using ECC memory.
- frognumber 3y ago
  It's actually a bit more bogus than that. If I can tolerate occasional bit errors -- which ECC permits -- I can reduce my power consumption by far more than the overhead of ECC. Right now, I power rails set to where billions of bits to never flip. If I can tolerate a one-in-a-billion bit flip, my tolerances go up a lot, and power consumption goes down by a similar factor. Properly implemented, ECC would likely cut power while increasing reliability. "Properly implemented" only happens in volume. That sort of optimization makes no sense for the very limited volumes ECC has today. Neither do a lot of other optimizations.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    ECC is ubiquitous in the server space and I wouldn’t really classify that as limited volumes.
    - frognumber 3y ago

Tuna-Fish 3y ago

> 1) ECC is almost free if done at scale (e.g. every computer). The only reason it costs extra is that it is only done for high-paying customers and in limited volume. This is simply not true. ECC means you need to store a minimum of 11% more bits, and at scale this means that you are paying a minimum of 11% more for memory. Note that I am very pro ECC, and think that most computers should use ECC ram.

satellite2 3y ago
I don't think the price of ram grows linearly with its bits. Manufacturing, shipping, distribution etc. are major costs that are mostly fixed for a single stick I would imagine.
adrian_b 3y ago
As I have also said above, +12.5% paid by the manufacturer of DIMM for memory chips may mean +10% in the price of DIMMs when they are not marked up excessively, like the DDR5 modules today. That +10% may become +5% after adding CPU, cooler, MB, PSU, case and it may become +3% after adding SSDs, a high-quality monitor and other usual peripherals. While at work I have seen plenty of problems with computers without ECC, for my desktops and servers and even for some laptops, when I could, I have used only ECC memory, for the last few decades. That has never increased the cost as much as I have saved by choosing wisely other components in the computers that I have built myself. The main problem has never been the extra cost, but the difficulty to find them exactly when I needed them, because at retail the availability of ECC modules may be sporadic and many distributors appear and disappear, so if I upgrade systems after some years I seldom can find the same source.
sliken 3y ago
You are assuming that the raw cost of the chips are 100% of the cost of selling one to the consumer. Other costs are fixed like quality control/testing, marketing, delivery, overhead for the distributors profit, etc. I'd also expect RMA costs to be lower since you can be sure which DIMM is bad, and that it's not CPU, CPU socket, motherboard, powersupply, etc.

gruez 3y ago

>1) ECC is almost free if done at scale (e.g. every computer). The only reason it costs extra is that it is only done for high-paying customers and in limited volume. A ECC DRAM module contains 9 chips rather than 8. I'm not sure how you can claim that's "almost free" unless you have a very loose definition of "almost free". >2) Computer crashes cost lives. If e.g. your doctor's device has an issue mid-surgery, you potentially pay. Sounds like a good reason to regulate medical devices and force them to undergo certification as well. Surely you wouldn't want the the computer to have ECC memory, but it decides to reboot for a 2 hour update? >3) It's good for the economy. In either case, the cost savings of not having a call center rep say "Wait a minute. My computer just crashed." far outweighs the costs. If this is true, why do we need the government to step in? Why aren't businesses doing this themselves out of self interest? >4) It's critical for resilience. Disasters (solar flares, EMP, etc.) are rare, but if every computer destroys data, we have a systemic problem. ECC protects against solar flares and EMP? That's new. >6) That's not to mention dual-market uses. E.g. if we need to ramp up military production, medical production, etc. next crisis, our infrastructure should be ready for it. 1. DRAM modules aren't made in the US, they're made in asian countries with cheap labor. If there's a military crisis, we'd be screwed regardless 2. As mentioned above, ECC DRAM modules are basically the same as non-ECC modules but with an extra chip. The only work to retool a line from non-ECC to ECC is to change the PCBs. Thus the supposed benefits is negligible, unless for whatever reason the military needs a massive amount of desktops.

adrian_b 3y ago
Almost free means that the 12.5% extra cost for memory chips may mean 10% extra manufacturing cost for the memory modules and that may mean less than 5% of the total cost of a computer with 64 GB DRAM (not counting monitor, SSDs and other peripherals, which would drive the percentage to be much lower) and even less for computers having less memory.
frognumber 3y ago
> A ECC DRAM module contains 9 chips rather than 8. I'm not sure how you can claim that's "almost free" unless you have a very loose definition of "almost free". I do. Let's do the math here. A typical computer has 8GB RAM. That's under $20 at my local retail store. We're talking a $2 price difference. That's with the methods used today. The overhead can go arbitrarily low if we adopt techniques used in nonvolatile storage and work in larger blocks of bits. $2 is less than the cost of a tiny fraction of a crash. > Surely you wouldn't want the the computer to have ECC memory, but it decides to reboot for a 2 hour update? A broader regulatory regime would certainly be good. > If this is true, why do we need the government to step in? Why aren't businesses doing this themselves out of self interest? Mostly, because businesses can focus on a finite number of things. A $20 benefit which costs $2 to implement stops making sense if it means your local clinic needs to have someone on-staff who can do an ROI computation on adopting ECC. It's cheaper to buy something sub-optimal. Again, that's where centralization and regulation helps. > ECC protects against solar flares and EMP? That's new. That's literally what they're there for. ECC primarily protects against bit flips, which are the result of random radiation. Mild flares will flip a few bits which ECC will correct. Severe ones will flip a lot of bits, which ECC will detect, and the computer can shut down before destroying more data. > 1. DRAM modules aren't made in the US, they're made in asian countries with cheap labor. If there's a military crisis, we'd be screwed regardless I'm not sure what you mean by "modules," but DRAM PCBs are easy to assemble. They can be made in the US overnight. DRAM chips are primarily made in the US (Micron), Korea (Samsung), and Taiwan (TSMC). https://www.micron.com/manufacturing-expansion https://www.micron.com/manufacturing-expansion And not all crises are military. > The only work to retool a line from non-ECC to ECC is to change the PCBs. Thus the supposed benefits is negligible, unless for whatever reason the military needs a massive amount of desktops. If all you need is memory, that's true. If you also want motherboards and processors which will take those chips, that's harder. If you don't want bit flips in your computation, that's impossible without redesigning all CPUs. Academic CPUs can do error-correcting computation at nominal cost, but there isn't a market incentive to bring that to market.

pkaye 3y ago

2) Computer crashes cost lives. If e.g. your doctor's device has an issue mid-> surgery, you potentially pay. Given that software can also crash, I'd go with a different approach: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers. For most situations, RAIC1 is good enough.