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Nah, the trend had started some time before, and Intel is complicit due to limiting the maximum amount of RAM at the chipset level. I am not sure whether it was

Nah, the trend had started some time before, and Intel is complicit due to limiting the maximum amount of RAM at the chipset level. I am not sure whether it was a technological or a marketing constraint. I have a Sony Vaio VGN-Z17 laptop that I purchased in 2008 in a mint condition that now runs Linux. It has 4Gb of RAM, which – I think – is the maximum, and it can't be upgraded any further due to the chipset not allowing such a thing. Everything else (apart from the 32-bit CPU)… is still a marvel: a 1.4 kg masterpiece with a carbon fibre body, 2x GPU's (discrete Intel and NVIDIA chips), a fingerprint scanner, a 1300x900 TNT screen (okay, low res by modern standards), up to 11 hours of the uptime with a swappable large battery, plus other peripherals expected and usual of the era. Everything still works like a charm. Memory can't be upgraded tho. Intel has held laptops vendors hostage for far too long by not supporting more in the chipset. It should not come as a surprise that the laptop vendors have started soldering memory chips on.

aurareturn 3y ago
If the CPU is 32 bit, then the max RAM can only be 4GB.
- inkyoto 3y ago
  The laptop has an Intel Core CPU that supports 36 bit physical addresses (via larger memory pages), so – practically – it can address up to 64Gb of RAM. The constraint is the Intel chipset.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    PAE is a hack, you're still not able to use more than 2GB (or 3GB if you're lucky) of address space in a single process. Like it or not, we're at a point where that might not even be enough to browse a single webpage (if that webpage is a horribly bloated SPA). 64bit compute is inevitable.
    - inkyoto 3y ago
      My point did not pertain to aesthetic qualities of PAE but rather to a limitation of Intel CPU chipsets that imposed a maximum memory constraint (either out of marketing microsegmentation or engineering reasons), the practice that has persisted for years onwards and upwards, and was likely the catalyst for the PC laptop vendors to start soldering the memory chips on. Lastly, running 3Gb processes (which Linux supported and Windows did not) on a ultra-portable laptop was not really a thing in 2008, and who was going to win the 64-bit x86 flavour battle (AMD or Intel) had not become clear yet.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
Sakos 3y ago
Core 2 Duos might have been more limited than they maybe could have been, but the 2006-2008 era was still very much transitional. DDR2 was still extremely common and you weren't going to find any 4GB modules. The next architecture was Arrandale (the first Core i3/5/7 line) where the max was increased to 8GB and the Sandy Bridge (probably the minimum I'd consider for doing anything with modern applications or a modern OS) supported 16-32GB. If they held anything hostage, they certainly didn't do it for long. I also think it's ridiculous to consider this in a vacuum. The few AMD laptops I could find from the same time frame have the same memory limits.

aurareturn 3y ago

If the CPU is 32 bit, then the max RAM can only be 4GB.

inkyoto 3y ago
The laptop has an Intel Core CPU that supports 36 bit physical addresses (via larger memory pages), so – practically – it can address up to 64Gb of RAM. The constraint is the Intel chipset.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  PAE is a hack, you're still not able to use more than 2GB (or 3GB if you're lucky) of address space in a single process. Like it or not, we're at a point where that might not even be enough to browse a single webpage (if that webpage is a horribly bloated SPA). 64bit compute is inevitable.
  - inkyoto 3y ago
    My point did not pertain to aesthetic qualities of PAE but rather to a limitation of Intel CPU chipsets that imposed a maximum memory constraint (either out of marketing microsegmentation or engineering reasons), the practice that has persisted for years onwards and upwards, and was likely the catalyst for the PC laptop vendors to start soldering the memory chips on. Lastly, running 3Gb processes (which Linux supported and Windows did not) on a ultra-portable laptop was not really a thing in 2008, and who was going to win the 64-bit x86 flavour battle (AMD or Intel) had not become clear yet.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

Sakos 3y ago

Core 2 Duos might have been more limited than they maybe could have been, but the 2006-2008 era was still very much transitional. DDR2 was still extremely common and you weren't going to find any 4GB modules. The next architecture was Arrandale (the first Core i3/5/7 line) where the max was increased to 8GB and the Sandy Bridge (probably the minimum I'd consider for doing anything with modern applications or a modern OS) supported 16-32GB. If they held anything hostage, they certainly didn't do it for long. I also think it's ridiculous to consider this in a vacuum. The few AMD laptops I could find from the same time frame have the same memory limits.