Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 14 Nov 1996 18:43:17 -0500 (EST) | From | "Richard B. Johnson" <> | Subject | Re: Linux & ECC memory |
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On Thu, 14 Nov 1996, Kenneth Albanowski wrote:
> > > I just recently saw an advertisement for a Dell computer with a P6 > motherboard & CPU that includes "64MB EDO RAM with ECC". > > Are there in fact x86 motherboards that support ECC RAM? Can such a > motherboard provide better error recognition & recovery then a simple > "parity error"? > > Most importantly, can (does) Linux take advantage of this? > > -- > Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126) > > ECC is handled in HARDWARE. It has to be. The idea is try to fix bad memory fetches rather than just executing the NMI which would declare that the system is broken then halt. I have not looked at the Linux NMI code, but with many errors of RAM using ECC, the NMI would not be executed because the bad fetch would be corrected.
Only motherboards that have ECC memory-controller chips would be able to take advantage of ECC. Basically, the EDO RAM provides extra bits which CAN BE USED by the ECC memory-controller to fix bad fetches. This is all transparent to software so Linux or any other Operating System would not even know that error correction had occurred (which is the whole idea).
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