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Jumping to a wider memory bus is most feasible in product segments that already use soldered CPUs and RAM. PCs have been reluctant to drop the sockets/slots unt
by wtallis 3y ago
Jumping to a wider memory bus is most feasible in product segments that already use soldered CPUs and RAM. PCs have been reluctant to drop the sockets/slots until recently, and only then in thin and light laptops. In systems that don't have discrete GPUs, Intel hasn't been applying competitive pressure against AMD's integrated GPUs.
So it's really been a question of whether AMD could spare the cash to tape out a larger laptop chip with the goal of cutting off the low end of NVIDIA's dGPU sales for laptops.
- bombcar 3y agoThis is exactly the reason - and perhaps they finally can do it because "Apple showed the way" with the M-series. They obviously could have done it from a technical standpoint, as they had done it for consoles, but those are not general purpose from the viewpoint of who is laying out the motherboard design.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoBefore Apple does it: Bad idea. After Apple does it: Next big thing.
- ip26 3y agoThey seem to have this unusual ability to get consumers to suddenly demand what used to be too expensive.
- bombcar 3y agoMore importantly you can get the Board of (insert company here) to finally do X if you can show that Apple did X.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoThey don't refer to it as a cult for nothing.
- subarctic 3y agoAn extremely large cult that has a spillover effect into larger society
- mynameisvlad 3y agoOr they have enough leverage for good contracts, and a lot of money on hand to be able to make semi-risky bets that others would not be willing to. Combined with good marketing and reputation. That enables them to take bigger bets than most, and their reputation means customers are more likely to buy into their big bets.
- wiseowise 3y agoIf that’s what you call quality products, then I’d rather be a part of cult.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago> If that’s what you call quality products Well, those in the cult sure do.
- ponector 3y agoQuality products which can be bricked on system update and have so many issues that everyone says to not upgrade for at least 6 months after major release! Also their software is garbage if you need to connect to or use something outside of apple ecosystem.
- wiseowise 3y agoMBP user at home for 6 years and switched at least 3 MBPs at work (switching companies and generations of MBPs). iPhone user for 3 years. My gf has been using iPhones and iPads since who knows when. A couple of friends who are Apple users. I have heard zero complaints about bricked device. I routinely heard and experienced issues with Windows and Android, though.
- wiseowise 3y agoWhen alternatives are Windows laptops that barely work - it doesn’t seem so expensive. Case in point. Back in 2018, me and my gf bought new laptops. I’ve opted for MBP and she bought Asus Rog Strix. Both were over 2k euro. Two years after her laptop has constant issues with Windows updating all the time, WiFi modem dies until you power cycle whole machine, it randomly turns on at night or doesn’t go to sleep at all, fans that sound like jet engines even on lowest of speeds. My MBP 2018 is still a champ after all these years, I had literally zero issues with it and the only reason why I’m contemplating upgrading is how amazing M processors are. And seriously? More expensive? MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and M processor starts at 1500 euro. It has far superior build quality, software and battery life than any Linux/Windows machine in any category. And on top of that it runs completely silently. Apple=expensive meme needs to die.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>When alternatives are Windows laptops that barely work - it doesn’t seem so expensive. Case in point. Yeah there are some junky laptops out there, but case in point I've only had sub-1000 Euro Windows notebooks from Acer, HP and Lenovo, and all worked fine and lasted no matter how hard I abused them. Maybe I'm just super lucky. Or maybe I was an informed consumer with a trained eye to spot the good from the junk. Or both. >And seriously? More expensive? MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and M processor starts at 1500 euro 16GB ram and how much storage? Yeah, that's pretty expensive for the specs and EU purchasing power. Case in point, for Christmas I bought myself a new Lenovo with the new 4nm Ryzen 7840HS, 32GB RAM and 1TB NVME, for ~800 Euros sticker price, no special promotion or sale. That seemed like a good deal to me. Now how much does Apple charge for 32GB RAM and 1TB storage? 2500+ Euros for 24GB RAM. Damn son! Apple are only price competitive at the bare minimum base models(8GB RAM on a "Pro" device?! Give me break Apple). When you start adding cores, RAM and storage, the price skyrockets. Each to his own if the price is worth it, I don't judge. My friend who does a lot of video editing gets his money's worth, but for my uses cases(Windows, Linux, gaming, coding), that 800 Euro laptop will be more than enough, no need to spend way more on Apple for less functionality. Battery life on those Macs is tight tough. If you're on the road a lot, and don't need windows/linux stuff, I'd definitely get one.
- makeitdouble 3y agoThis happens in every industry. Once a competitor gets away with a specific controversial or tricky to explain move, the others can pass through the same hole. Apple dropping the headphone jack or glueing the batteries were the same kind of moves, it expanded to other makers because they got away with it. Or we could look at Twitter charging ridiculous prices for the API and Reddit jumping through the same loop. In the CPU I think it's more nuanced, but there's definitely a tradeoff that many makers wouldn't do on their own.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> This is exactly the reason - and perhaps they finally can do it because "Apple showed the way" with the M-series. This isn't generally what you want as a customer though. Most current games will need something in the range of 8-16GB of VRAM, but will need that in addition to whatever you need in terms of main system memory. If you also want 16GB of system memory, you need 32GB in total but only benefit from 16GB being fast, and you might often want more than 16GB of system memory. Apple is fine with this because then if you want a lot of RAM they can charge you an arm and two legs for that much of the fast stuff, and solder it all so you can't upgrade it. But what you really want is to solder a modest amount of the fast stuff to the CPU, put it in the CPU socket (so even it can still be upgraded by upgrading the CPU, and then the socket doesn't need all of those pins) and still have the same DDR slots as ever to add gobs of the cheap stuff to suit.
- wtallis 3y agoI don't think LPDDR5 is that much more expensive than DDR5 on a per-GB basis. The performance advantage is mostly from a wider memory bus, and a bit from being soldered. In other words, the CPU having access to huge amounts of memory bandwidth is not really costing the users much, after they've paid for the GPU and its memory system. The cost is really just the incremental cost of enlarging a GPU die by strapping some CPU cores on the side. It may not be precisely most cost and performance optimized configuration for gaming, but on the other hand it provides huge benefits for anything that doesn't fit in a cheap GPU's VRAM (eg. LLMs).
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> I don't think LPDDR5 is that much more expensive than DDR5 on a per-GB basis. It is by the time the OEMs are through with it, and once you're soldering it you have to buy it from them. > The performance advantage is mostly from a wider memory bus, and a bit from being soldered. Even the little bit from being soldered should go away when CAMMs enter the scene. But the wider memory bus is part of what makes it expensive. It's not just the input pins on the APU, it's routing all of those pins through the socket and the system board and the memory DIMMs. Which you can avoid by putting some amount of HBM on the APU package without losing the ability to add memory via the narrower bus in the traditional way. > It may not be precisely most cost and performance optimized configuration for gaming, but on the other hand it provides huge benefits for anything that doesn't fit in a cheap GPU's VRAM (eg. LLMs). LLMs are nearly the only thing that currently uses this, and there is nothing stopping a CPU option with a large amount of HBM on the package from existing and fitting into the socket on an ordinary system board for the people who want that. But CPU makers also don't really want to make a thousand SKUs with every possible combination of cores and memory, so what they're probably going to do is have lower core count CPUs with smaller amounts of HBM and higher core count CPUs with more. In which case you can still buy the $100 APU with a modest amount of HBM and then add as much DDR as you want via the slots on the system board instead of having to buy $1000 worth of CPU cores you don't need, or replace a perfectly good CPU with a different one, just to increase the amount of memory for the majority of applications that aren't bounded by memory bandwidth.
- o11c 3y agoNow that CAMM is a thing, there's nothing that forbids it from being used for non-laptop machines.
- wmf 3y agoUnfortunately CAMM appears to have a larger footprint than a DIMM slot.
- phkahler 3y ago>> Unfortunately CAMM appears to have a larger footprint than a DIMM slot. We need a new motherboard form factor that assumes no PCIe graphics card. I like my ITX box and put the power connector and button where the expansion slot would normally go because I used an APU. But we could do a lot better with the board size by assuming integrated graphics. A lower riser on the back would be nice too - maybe only 2 USB high.
- tracker1 3y agoAt that point, you can get a complete mini PC with a higher end laptop APU with a raised power limit anyway.
- hajile 3y agoWe need a new form factor that allows a small motherboard to be parallel to a back-mounted GPU/PCIe. This is what people are already trying to do with SFF cases and those wonky PCIe cables/boards.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoTrue enough but not so so awful. > Nominal module dimensions listed in the standard point to "various" form factors for the modules, with the X-axis measuring 78 mm (3.07 inches) and the Y-axis 29.6–68 mm (1.17–2.68 inches). From Artechnica. Whereas a regular DIMM is 5.5 inches long & narrow on the Y.
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoThe footprint of a DIMM slot is not just the area the slot itself takes. DIMMs force you to do a lot of length-matching, which takes a lot of PCB space (and layers). The actual footprint of the DIMMs also includes all the space between the slots and the CPU. Especially LPCAMM2 does this inside the connector, and you can place the connector as close as you can without causing clearance issues.
- Dylan16807 3y agoIsn't the main advantage of soldering RAM the speed you can run the bus at? I don't see how it affects width much when we're only talking about 4 slots and 256 bits.
- AdrianB1 3y agoAlso the space for traces is a problem with sockets. At 256 bits you need lots of traces with very precise equal lengths.
- Dylan16807 3y agoIf you soldered DDR5 memory, wouldn't you still need to have a lot of precise trace lengths and a lot of wasted space to make that match across banks of chips? If the solution is to compensate for delays in a smarter way, then I would assume that solution could be applied to sockets too. Which goes back to asking what took them so long.
- rbanffy 3y agoIIRC, some of that can be configured with the memory controller - doesn't it check the bus to make sure the timings are known in the board setup code?
- wtallis 3y agoDoubling the bus width means more wiring and probably more PCB layers than offering two slots per channel. Right now, using DDR5 SODIMMs instead of LPDDR5 would throw away half of the benefits of doubling the bus width, so that's a non-starter. Using CAMM style modules may allow for full-speed operation, but those have almost zero adoption so far and I think it's too soon to tell how widespread they'll become. Whatever option for connecting the DRAM, doubling the bus width doubles the amount of DRAM the OEMs must populate the system with, adding another cost on top of the more expensive SoC and MLB.
- rbanffy 3y ago