[Pw_forum] lack of ECC on Intel core i7

[Nicola Marzari]

Dear All,


a question not directly q-e related, but probably relevant to the community.

Does anyone have any sense about the importance of error corrections
for dynamical memory ?

The new intel core i7 do not support ECC, but are much faster than
then older processors. Having a calculation done quickly and
incorrectly is preferable to having one done slowly and carefully
(it's the 21st century, after all), but I was wondering if
anyone had some opinion or expertise.

We bought a core i7 for testing, but chose the extreme
edition, and it broke after a few hours...

We do have an older cluster (2006) of core 2 duos, without ECC,
and the calculations are ok (the cluster is not very reliable,
though - not sure if it's related).

			nicola


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Prof Nicola Marzari   Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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