Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!cbmvax!jesup From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Parity Checking / ECC RAM on the A3000 Keywords: parity error detection and correction, marketability Message-ID: <11893@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 29 May 90 06:52:09 GMT References: <1641@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 48 >In <1990May27.101258.24470@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >>The Amiga 3000 is capable of holding (at least supporting) much more memory >>than a Cray 1, and the size of gates in modern memory is much smaller and >>thus they are more susceptable to alpha radiation induced parity errors than >>were the gates of the Cray memory. I think you're making a pretty tenuous comparison here. I could be wrong, but I don't see suns or the like using ECC (I'm not even certain all of them are using parity). I don't see that the marketplace has shown it to be important for desktop machines in the sun/whatever class, let alone the low-end sun/high-end amiga level. >>To take an Amiga seriously as a commercial machine in the "workstation, >>large memory" market, I'd guess error correcting code will turn out to be >>vital. It would be a shame to have a big production run of the hardware >>installed and on the street, only to have parity problems give the machine >>a reputation as an unreliable machine, to be avoided in droves. Better if >>the problem is solved before the reputation is besmirched. I think ECC is one of our less important problems at the moment. If people care, they can drop in an ECC memory card (cpu slot for max speed or Z-III) and put all their fast ram there. An opportunity for 3rd- party hardware companies - or it would be if anyone cared about ECC, which they (for the most part) don't. >Right.. ECC is not parity, and vice versa. Parity checking is totally, >completely, and utterly useless. Yup (or very close). >>But then, what do I know after 29 years in the field about what people who >>buy the machines look for in a large processor? My computer purchases were >>limited to a couple of million bucks worth, down in the noise level in the >>marketplace. ;-) Amiga's are "large processors", then? ;-) BTW, Commodore just sold about $10M of Amigas to the government (as reported in WSJ, I think). We (as part of a Sears business center deal) won a subcontract for supplying multitasking computers to the government. Apparently this is suprising, since we've only been trying to sell to the government for 6 months, and many firms don't make sales for 18 months, due to long product cycles. (Taken from the WSJ article, not anything internal.) -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"