Linus Torvalds comments on ECC memory

[comet--berkeley]

From Phoronix on January 3:
Linus Torvalds On The Importance Of ECC RAM, Calls Out Intel's "Bad Policies" Over ECC

[cynwulf]

...but these f*ckers happily sold broken hardware to consumers and claimed it was an "attack", when it always was "we're cutting corners"."

True indeed, but wonder what the Intel "f*ckers" on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Board think of his comments?

It's also worth noting that the same "f*ckers" are "Platinum" donors, paying a large part of his exhorbitant salary and big contributors of code to Linux kernel.

[comet--berkeley]

Originally Posted by cynwulf

True indeed, but wonder what the Intel "f*ckers" on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Board think of his comments?

It's also worth noting that the same "f*ckers" are "Platinum" donors, paying a large part of his exhorbitant salary and big contributors of code to Linux kernel.

Criticizing the messenger does not change the message.

Cosmic rays should be planned for in critical computer hardware. ECC memory is one way to cope.

Here is an article from MarineLink.com from last month:

Cosmic Rays, the 'Unseen Menace' for Maritime

[cynwulf]

I agree and on reflection that post was not one of my finer moments.

Intel have "led" the industry - and led the race to the bottom, in terms of quality and security, over the last two decades. They have been more interested and invested in performance (and in inserting the insidious management engine) than anything else.

They can't even seem to get their Linux vga driver stack right - that's been broken for I don't know how long - I gave up on a particular FreeBSD machine with Intel graphics and just installed a cheap Nvidia PCI-e card.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...ations-off-Opt

[bradley]

Originally Posted by cynwulf

...
Intel have "led" the industry - and led the race to the bottom, in terms of quality and security, over the last two decades.
...

Well said. There will be a day (and hopefully it's not far away) when finally I will have no Intel machine in use. That day will be a fine day.

[Prevet]

What CPU would be a good replacement for Intel? Is ARM the way to go? I remember reading about the ME a couple of years ago on a tech blog, and they were telling people to get rid of Intel/AMD and use ARM.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

ARM has no management engine that we know of but the microarchitecture is proprietary so we can't be sure what's hiding in there. RISC-V is open source but the implementations can have proprietary add-ons. POWER9 looks good and is listed by the FSF as "fully free", Raptor Computing offer some blob-free mainboards but once you add a graphics card or a hard drive you add blobs to the system. POWER10 uses proprietary firmware for the memory and it looks like this will continue from now onwards:

https://www.devever.net/~hl/omi

tl;dr: we're all ****ed, there is no hope

[Prevet]

The POWER9 looks affordable if you just buy the CPU and motherboard, but if you buy it in a case its $7000. What are they making the case out of? Gold? I wish I was rich.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Their Entry-Level Developer System includes a case and (blob-infested) NVMe drive for "only" $3,404.59.

[Prevet]

I wouldn't know what to do with the power of those computers. I use terminal programs and run OS from a USB stick and notice no slowness. Maybe if I was running simulations for the government, or a big website I could use them.

I don't keep up with the latest hardware any more. Perhaps the price doesn't seem that high, if you are used to paying Apple computer prices? Anyhow, there's definately an opening in the market for low powered secure computing.

[bradley]

That devever writing is interesting, only found it here. Closed source storage firmware is indeed problematic and the industry is still very reluctant regarding fully opensource hardware offerings. I'm glad though that Talos II or something like this project (Powerpc Notebook) exist. That new RISC-V board is interesting too (if I remember correctly not fully opensource though).