title: How to deal with the ECC support feature in NVIDIA graphics cards
body: <p>the server have setup two <code>NVIDIA K20m</code> cards, but with <code>ECC</code> enabled. I have observed that the <code>Volatile GPU-Utilization</code> is high using the <code>nvidia-smi -a</code> command, even through no computing task is running in the card. The <code>K20m</code> is just used for computing. I have searched in <code>Google</code>, and checked the following links: <a href="https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/539632/k20-with-high-utilization-but-no-compute-processes-/" rel="noreferrer">https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/539632/k20-with-high-utilization-but-no-compute-processes-/</a> and <a href="https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/464744/how-to-disable-enable-ecc-on-c2050-/" rel="noreferrer">https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/464744/how-to-disable-enable-ecc-on-c2050-/</a></p>
  
  <p>It seems the <code>ECC</code> is always a bad feature, so it is always set to be <code>disabled</code>. So what's the true  meaning with the <code>ECC</code>? I'm just a commont user of that server, so I don't have the right to use the command <code>nvidia-smi -e 0</code> to set <code>ECC</code> to be disabled. Is it possible for common user to set the <code>ECC</code> to be disabled? </p>
  
  <p>What are the effects when we turn off the <code>ECC</code>? When should we turn it on? and when off?</p>