Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 07 May 2001 12:01:50 -0700 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: Wow! Is memory ever cheap! |
| |
Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > > > On the other hand, if your apps don't have built in integrity checks then > > > ECC is pretty much a requirement. > > > > Isn't this pretty much saying "if you're willing to dedicate your > > system to running nothing but Bitkeeper, you can run it really fast?" > > A) Fast has nothing to do with it, ECC runs at the same speed as non-ECC;
"It" meaning BitKeeper.
> B) As I said above, "if your apps don't have built in integrity checks then > ECC is pretty much a requirement"; > C) As I said above, we use our systems for BK development, so this choice > makes sense for us. > > I think the point you are really missing is that it is not an either/or > choice. All you really need in practice is one application which is > both heavily used and has integrity checks. It could be BitKeeper or > something else, all that matters is that it will detect memory problems.
This is not true in my experience. YES, it will detect bad memory configurations, but with over 2^34 memory cells to worry about -- each of them carrying a charge of a few dozen electrons only -- you WILL have random failures, especially if the memory is allowed to remain stale for extended periods of time, as is very likely in a configuration like this (think disk cache.)
Bad memory configurations is bad. However, good memory configurations are not necessarily perfect.
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
|  |