On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 09:05:26PM -0700, Ellis Wilson wrote: > Though entertainingly put, it would be an error to say "ECC is a > requirement" for everyone in a "cluster group". I can think of more > than just a few purposes for clusters that truly do not require the > accuracy guaranteed by ECC RAM.
The only big cluster I can think of built without ECC was built by a guy whose research area was making computations reliable by doing additional inexpensive computations to check the answer. While that was really clever, the cluster was intended to be a general purpose machine, and this answer-checking thing can only be efficiently done for a subset of algorithms. Oddly enough, the cluster was subsequently upgraded to ECC. I have never run into a situation where a cluster would be improved by leaving ECC off. I buy ECC for desktops, too, it's a small price to pay to avoid engineer downtime. -- greg _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
