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You better get used to it. RAM is going to move closer and closer to the CPU for speed and power reduction. And every major laptop manufacturer will move that
by audunw 5y ago
You better get used to it. RAM is going to move closer and closer to the CPU for speed and power reduction. And every major laptop manufacturer will move that way to compete. Especially now that the M1 Mac has shown what’s possible when every part of the system is optimized for low power.
What we can hope for is that SSD acts more like RAM. Maybe it could have a decent sized RAM chip that the OS can dedicate as cache for virtual memory. There’s a chance that at least some hardware manufacturers will continue to allow for replaceable SSDs.
- emodendroket 5y agoYeah, I’m really curious where they go from here because it seems like the lesson is that modularity has a major performance penalty.
- ribit 5y agoOnce you get to a certain stage, yes, modularity becomes very expensive. I do believe that things like SSDs or WiFi cards should be modular, because there is no reason for them not to, but RAM? We are moving towards high-bandwidth on-package RAM, why would I want to sacrifice 100Gbps of performance and 5+ hours of battery life — not to mention also paying more — just to have an option of upgrading the RAM some time down the line?
- emodendroket 5y agoRight, and then even if you can upgrade the RAM, the machine may not even be compatible with the best RAM down the line anyway. It's hard to imagine another drop-in upgrade that will be as big as putting SSDs in old machines was.