state of support for "external ECC hardware"

[Ivan Djelic]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 05:39:45PM +0000, Gerlando Falauto wrote:
> Hi Ivan,
> 
> wonderful, thanks a lot!
> If you also happen to have an opionion to using it for chips only 
> needing 1-bit correction, I'd love to hear that...

I would recommend using the strongest ECC your hardware can provide without
hurting performance too much. This is what I do on my hardware (e.g. 8-bit
correction on current 4-bit devices). I find it has 2 advantages:
- increased reliability
- seamless transition to newer devices with stronger ecc requirements
The latter is important, because changing ECC strength can be painful: it
means changing the OOB layout, impacting bootloader and kernel, thus breaking
compatibility, etc.
HTH,
--
Ivan