
Asus Prime X370-PRO specs suggest AMD Ryzen processors may support ECC memory - en
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.asus.com/gr/Motherboards/PRIME-X370-PRO/specifications/
======
Zenst
It is good that AMD now look like they will finally be pushing Intel out of
complacency. ECC should be the norm, not the exception and hopefully this will
help drive the price of ECC memory down so that happens.

~~~
nolok
Finally ? AMD used to always support ECC, I believe their latest consumer
chips didn't but that was mostly because it was never used because most
motherboards makers don't want to add its support to their non-server
variants.

Because why would they ? The very people for who that matters are those who
have the needs and funds to buy the more expensive variant. Same reasoning as
to why Intel isn't adding it to their desktop cpu.

~~~
jl6
Enterprises are also professional cost cutters, so if AMD can provide
enterprise-class features for less, then they will find a market.

~~~
masklinn
That's demonstrably not true, AMD has supported ECC more or less across the
board since the Athlon64.

Enterprises may be professional cost cutters, but before that they're
professional ass coverers, otherwise Oracle would have died 20 years ago.

~~~
8draco8
No one got ever fired for buying Intel

Even if Ryzen will be twice as fast enterprise will still go with Intel.
Unless some company with reasonable size (like DigitalOcean or Linode) will
adopt Ryzen in their servers and brag about it.

~~~
loeg
We are absolutely looking at buying large quantities of (Ry)zen, if the
numbers work out. We're most concerned about multi-core / NUMA penalty
compared to Intel.

I assume we also get some sort of volume discount with Intel that may not be
reflected in consumer pricing. But maybe we would get the same with AMD.

Also, CPUs are a tiny _tiny_ portion of our costs of goods sold. So in the
end, it doesn't matter too much how expensive Intel is relative to AMD. That
said, we would prefer to see competition for the long run.

------
lightedman
Hype headline, change it. AMD has almost always had ECC support in their
desktop processors as long as I've used them. The motherboard makers are to
blame for not implementing it.

------
nolok
Not much of a surprise coming from AMD, but it will most likely end up like
their previous generations of CPU: most motherboards won't support ECC memory,
forcing you to buy specialized hardware anyway. And if you're buying
specialized hardware, you might as well go all the way.

~~~
rubber_duck
>forcing you to buy specialized hardware anyway.

The link is literally a MBO claiming support for ECC and from what I can tell
it will be ~170$ - which is not really unreasonable.

------
chx
This smells:

> \- Supports HDMI 1.4b

Erm, Bristol Ridge already has 2.0
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/10705/amd-7th-gen-bristol-
ridg...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10705/amd-7th-gen-bristol-ridge-and-
am4-analysis-a12-9800-b350-a320-chipset/3)

> Supports DisplayPort with max. resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 60 Hz

That's DisplayPort 1.2. No way. It's going to support DP 1.4, Polaris already
does.

------
MayeulC
Am I the only one finding "3-D printing friendly motherboard with patent-
pending mounting design" ironic? (along with the classic "Proprietary"
adjective marketing people like to put everywhere they can). This comment is
for one of their boards on the original page.

Keep in mind these are motherboard specs. I would suggest not reading too much
into them.

I am quite excited about Zen, but I hope they will make consumer motherboards
that support more than 64GB RAM.

------
phkahler
I disagree with the title, I don't think it says all Ryzen will support ECC.

>>4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz ECC and non-ECC, Non-ECC, Un-
buffered Memory

That looks like a motherboard spec - because it is. And it supports Ryzen
processors of various types. I read that as: One CPU supports "ECC and non-
ECC", another CPU specifies "Non-ECC". At least that's how I read it.
Otherwise there is no reason to put non-ECC in there twice.

~~~
PedroBatista
But it's a AM4 socket and is that only compatible with Ryzen atm?

~~~
cestith
AMD Ryzen™ Processors

4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz ECC and non-ECC, Non-ECC, Un-
buffered Memory

AMD 7th Generation A-series/Athlon™ Processors

4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory

That seems pretty clear to me that there's AM4 Ryzen and also there will be an
AM4 A-series and an AM4 Athlon line. AMD has said repeatedly that AM4 is going
to be the one socket for all their new chips from the server through to
mobile. Look for the Opteron (or its replacement if the new server chips get a
name change), the A series, the Athlon series, and Ryzen all to use the same
socket but offer different memory and PCI configurations based on both the
chipset and the CPU/APU.

------
ioquatix
That's awesome, I think this is the perfect CPU for my next ZFS NAS. If you
try to find ECC support in Intel's lineup, it's hard to find much. Either the
low end Pentium, or the high end Xeon ($$$).

~~~
anoother
And I believe they've removed it from the latest-gen Pentiums

~~~
nagvx
This is not true. VT-d and ECC were thought to be removed, but these features
were simply unlisted, not removed. Intel Ark now shows them as available, e.g:

[http://ark.intel.com/products/97143/Intel-Pentium-
Processor-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/97143/Intel-Pentium-
Processor-G4560-3M-Cache-3_50-GHz)

~~~
anoother
Good to know, thanks for the info.

------
valarauca1
This maybe true for later models but not initial offers.

If you look a the Linux 4.10 change log [1] you will see that while zen
supports ECC, it ignores the error correction message. So you _can_ use ECC
ram, but you get none of the benefit of ECC ram

[1]
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=d12a969ebbfcfc25853c4147d42b388f758e8784)

~~~
rincebrain
That looks like it just adds a class of errors, "deferred", without
explanation, though this commit [1] implies that these are for ECC errors
whose handling was not urgent, and does not specify further how those would
occur (unless the MC knows something about the page being used for cache/re-
readable data or something, so it can just drop the page on the floor and
reread it).

[1] -
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4838a0def07f5611347860b1fc0129c3fe77cc02)

------
agapon
> 4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz ECC and non-ECC, Non-ECC, Un-
> buffered Memory

To be fair, that "ECC and non-ECC, Non-ECC" reads like they were still editing
the page and hadn't made up their minds yet if the motherboard supported ECC.
In other words, they were deciding between "ECC and non-ECC" and "Non-EC".

------
andy_ppp
Can someone tell me how many errors over the past 10 years or so would have
been fixed by ECC memory. I've no idea at all how much better it would be and
what the current error rate it prevents is? It sounds more nice to have than
vital? Is there a performance cost to it at all?

~~~
acoye
Would prevent Rowhammer attacks.

~~~
anoother
DDR4 is innately much more resilient to rowhammer than previous standards.

~~~
chithanh
More resilient maybe, but not Rowhammer-proof:
[https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/once-thought-
safe-d...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/once-thought-safe-
ddr4-memory-shown-to-be-vulnerable-to-rowhammer/)

------
vegardx
Regardless of this being something new one can hope that it marks a point in
time where access to consumer-geared motherboards and CPUs that support ECC-
memory becomes more available. Simply because people actually want it.

------
fcanesin
Ryzen also moved lots of the chipset logic to the chip. This has reflected on
cheaper prices for motherboards, but could also easy the broad support of
features like ECC.

------
mozumder
So this would effectively compete against the newer Skylake/Kaby Lake Xeons,
especially with them being only 4 core vs 8 for Zen.

~~~
masklinn
In the same way every previous generation of AMD CPU "effectively competed"
against equivalent-generation Xeons.

------
nickpeterson
I think one issue is the amount, I was under the impression am4 was only going
to support 64gb.

~~~
runholm
64GB is also the limit of Intels desktop i7 processors. I don't think Ryzen is
intended as server processors, so 64GB should cover the target market very
well.

~~~
jeswin
Nope. X99 i7s support 128GB and quad channel memory. Most of X99 boards come
with 8 slots as well. However the setup is way over-priced, so I'm going to
preorder Ryzen on day 1 if available. It just seems like phenomenal value.

~~~
tbob22
Sandy-E to Haswell-E i7's do not officially support 128gb, though there have
been reports of it working.

Broadwell-E i7's now officially support 128gb.

All the Xeon equivalents (e5-1650/60,80, etc) support 256-768gb depending on
the model, if paired with a consumer board that limit is usually 64-128gb.

------
mariusmg
No excuse now, Intel . Get to it.

~~~
vonklaus
I wonder if they have. I don't know if this is water-cooler gossip, but I have
heard they are going to have another release in 6-8 months and Kaby lake is
simply a placeholder.

I wonder if they are far ahead enough to drop something that beats Ryzen on
every metric including price. Either way, that would push it up quick.

~~~
rincebrain
Evidently, while Cannonlake (the 10nm next gen chips for low-power SKUs) got
punted to 2018 [0], Coffee Lake (the 14nm next gen chips for desktops) are
still on for 2017 [1].

[0] - [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/18/intel-
corporation-...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/18/intel-corporation-
delays-10-nanometer-cannon-lake.aspx)

[1] - [https://www.technewsinc.com/intel-8th-gen-coffee-lake-
proces...](https://www.technewsinc.com/intel-8th-gen-coffee-lake-
processors-14nm-chips-142514/)

~~~
PedroBatista
Didn't Intel release new CPUs last month? they'll be running out of lakes soon
to overcharge us for 10% improvements.

~~~
rincebrain
Desktop Kaby Lake launched last month, portable Kaby Lake started shipping to
OEMs Q2 2016.

Intel used to try for a tick or tock every year - so Sandy Bridge in 2011, IVB
in 2012, Haswell in 2013, then Broadwell was incredibly late except for a
handful of SKUs in 2014, Skylake in 2015, Kaby Lake (mobile) in 2016...

Really the problem is that Intel ends up having these staggered releases,
probably to address limited yield on their new processes and the most
impact/value (since they've been so focused on improved work per watt, and
mobile cares about that for a lot more than just heat dissipation reasons...)

------
gallexme
will there be any "cheapish"(consumer) dual socket motherboards?

~~~
sp332
AMD just launched a new interconnect, so it could be a while before
motherboard makers start cranking them out. [http://wccftech.com/amds-
infinity-fabric-detailed/](http://wccftech.com/amds-infinity-fabric-detailed/)

------
vegabook
Who needs a Xeon now? The only chink in the armour here is the 64GB max, which
admittedly is bad for the science/Machine learning folks, but the vast
majority of these chips is used for databases, web serving, app serving, etc,
for which these ECC-enabled Ryzens are a game changer on price. Cluster them
up on premises or in cloud, and you're looking at a total winner, especially
that the 16GB dimms are still much cheaper than the 32s so you'll be able to
create very decent servers on the cheap.

~~~
8draco8
ECC support in CPU is just a half of success. Now somebody have to convince
motherboard manufacturers to enable it. It was the same thing with previous
AMD CPUs. They all had ECC support but there was virtually no motherboards
that would support it.

~~~
drewg123
Yes, I still remember what a PITA it was to identify a motherboard that both
supported ECC _and_ allowed enabling it in the BIOS for my last AMD build
(circa 2007). I still remember reading about boards that offered "ECC
support", but had no way to enable it in the BIOS, change the scrubbing time,
etc. And how relieved I was that whatever I wound up with did indeed have full
ECC support.

Then again, buying Xeon boards with ECC support for desktop use has been "fun"
as well, but for the opposite reason. I actually had to go with a USB sound
card when I built my wife's e3 xeon setup.

~~~
jlgaddis
There are plenty of SuperMicro desktop boards that include sound (and support
ECC).

~~~
drewg123
Yes, I'm typing this from one (X10SRA) now. But there was some drawback to
getting sound in ~2011. And even when I built this one, I wasn't really happy
with the selection.

A poor selection and higher prices is a consequence of fragmenting the market
and making workstations with ECC a fairly rare thing.

