2 ms·

Lack of standardization is the problem for repairability at least, but it has helped with progress. It's not like the government mandated a standard for desktop

Lack of standardization is the problem for repairability at least, but it has helped with progress. It's not like the government mandated a standard for desktop PCs, it just made sense for the industry. I'm not convinced that phone upgrades would work too well, due to incompatibilities. Except for storage. I think if the govt wants to be helpful here, mandating a microSD slot (at least an internal one) would improve longevity far more than the other things combined.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Lack of standardization is the problem for repairability at least, but it has helped with progress. What progress? How would having a standard memory or storage connector suitable to the form factor stifle progress? > It's not like the government mandated a standard for desktop PCs, it just made sense for the industry. It makes sense in any industry where there are a large number of companies that have to interoperate with each other. The big problem with phones is that there aren't a large number of companies -- the SoCs are pretty much all made by Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung and Apple and Samsung don't sell a lot of chips to third party OEMs. What they ought to do is break them up so there is some real competition in the market, or at least stop letting them buy up their competitors. But if that isn't going to happen then something else needs to happen, because the status quo is broken. > I'm not convinced that phone upgrades would work too well, due to incompatibilities. There is a new form factor for memory called CAMM, quite space efficient. Suppose there was a smaller version of that suitable for phones, all the phones used it, and then compatibility exists in the sense that every phone using DDR5 is compatible with every other phone using DDR5, but if your phone takes DDR6 then you need DDR6, also a standard, just a newer one. Why would this not work? It works for everything else.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Standard memory connector already makes memory-on-chip a no-go. And we're past that even, cause we have storage-on-chip, which is both faster and more secure (in the "hardware security" sense which is of course sketchy but still a thing). Even on desktops now. I had a pretty loaded cheesegrater Mac Pro and replaced it with an M1 Mac mini, less upgradable but such a nice machine anyway. I could believe the phone chipmaking status quo is broken or monopolized if I saw a lack of progress and price increases. Instead, we've been getting remarkably faster and more versatile phone hardware at a steady pace. And most consumers care about that, not about modular upgrades. There are a few smaller areas I feel like the manufacturers are pushing consumers rather than listening to them, like removing headphone jacks to sell BT earbuds.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Standard memory connector already makes memory-on-chip a no-go. No it doesn't. You put the memory on the chip and then you add more via the connector. The memory on the chip is faster but there's less of it. Cache hierarchies are useful. This is already a thing. All modern CPUs have SRAM caches integrated into them. Xeon Max has integrated HBM. It still has memory slots. > And we're past that even, cause we have storage-on-chip, which is both faster and more secure (in the "hardware security" sense which is of course sketchy but still a thing). This is in no real sense more secure. You can secure data on an untrusted storage device simply by encrypting it. It's also not obvious how this would be any faster. NVMe with four PCIe lanes is enough for some of the fastest desktop SSDs, and if you wanted more you could always add more lanes. A PCIe lane isn't that many pins.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> Lack of standardization is the problem for repairability at least, but it has helped with progress. What progress? How would having a standard memory or storage connector suitable to the form factor stifle progress? > It's not like the government mandated a standard for desktop PCs, it just made sense for the industry. It makes sense in any industry where there are a large number of companies that have to interoperate with each other. The big problem with phones is that there aren't a large number of companies -- the SoCs are pretty much all made by Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung and Apple and Samsung don't sell a lot of chips to third party OEMs. What they ought to do is break them up so there is some real competition in the market, or at least stop letting them buy up their competitors. But if that isn't going to happen then something else needs to happen, because the status quo is broken. > I'm not convinced that phone upgrades would work too well, due to incompatibilities. There is a new form factor for memory called CAMM, quite space efficient. Suppose there was a smaller version of that suitable for phones, all the phones used it, and then compatibility exists in the sense that every phone using DDR5 is compatible with every other phone using DDR5, but if your phone takes DDR6 then you need DDR6, also a standard, just a newer one. Why would this not work? It works for everything else.

hot_gril 3y ago
Standard memory connector already makes memory-on-chip a no-go. And we're past that even, cause we have storage-on-chip, which is both faster and more secure (in the "hardware security" sense which is of course sketchy but still a thing). Even on desktops now. I had a pretty loaded cheesegrater Mac Pro and replaced it with an M1 Mac mini, less upgradable but such a nice machine anyway. I could believe the phone chipmaking status quo is broken or monopolized if I saw a lack of progress and price increases. Instead, we've been getting remarkably faster and more versatile phone hardware at a steady pace. And most consumers care about that, not about modular upgrades. There are a few smaller areas I feel like the manufacturers are pushing consumers rather than listening to them, like removing headphone jacks to sell BT earbuds.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Standard memory connector already makes memory-on-chip a no-go. No it doesn't. You put the memory on the chip and then you add more via the connector. The memory on the chip is faster but there's less of it. Cache hierarchies are useful. This is already a thing. All modern CPUs have SRAM caches integrated into them. Xeon Max has integrated HBM. It still has memory slots. > And we're past that even, cause we have storage-on-chip, which is both faster and more secure (in the "hardware security" sense which is of course sketchy but still a thing). This is in no real sense more secure. You can secure data on an untrusted storage device simply by encrypting it. It's also not obvious how this would be any faster. NVMe with four PCIe lanes is enough for some of the fastest desktop SSDs, and if you wanted more you could always add more lanes. A PCIe lane isn't that many pins.