Linus Torvalds blames Intel for killing ECC memory

It's been a while since a rant from Linus Torvalds hit mainstream tech sites but we can now kick off 2021 properly as the Linux founder launched an attack on Intel. Via a forum post, Torvalds slaps Intel for being "instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with its horribly bad market segmentation."

ECC stands for error correcting code and is primarily used for servers. So why does it matter for consumers? Torvalds points out that the lack of ECC support on Intel's consumer platforms results in lower security. Torvalds basically suggests Intel's marketing decisions have held back adoption of a technology that would make PCs more secure and more stable:

"ECC absolutely matters," retorted Torvalds. "Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously. And if you don't believe me, then just look at multiple generations of rowhammer, where each time Intel and memory manufacturers bleated about how it's going to be fixed next time... And yes, that was – again – entirely about the misguided and arse-backwards policy of 'consumers don't need ECC', which made the market for ECC memory go away."

Full details at The Register.