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The RAM is soldered on all Halo Strix platforms because physics is getting in the way. With pluggable DIMMs the memory bandwidth would be halved, at best.
by sethops1 1y ago
The RAM is soldered on all Halo Strix platforms because physics is getting in the way. With pluggable DIMMs the memory bandwidth would be halved, at best.
- wishinghand 1y agoWhy is that? Why would soldering the connections vs plugging them in affect how much data per second they transfer?
- tejtm 1y agomind the gap
- colejohnson66 1y agoSockets have resistance and crosstalk, which affects signal integrity.
- aeonik 1y agoWait, your telling me, I should have been desoldering the sockets off my motherboard, and directly soldering my RAM to the leads this entire time?
- ElectricalUnion 1y agoCompression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) tries to be a middle-term solution for that, by reducing how crappy your average RAM socket is to latency and signal integrity issues. But, at this point, I can see CAMM delivered memory being reduced to a sort of slower, "CXL.mem" device.
- aeonik 1y agoSeriously though, Would desoldering the sockets help? Why are the sockets bad?
- komali2 1y agoAs stated previously, the sockets reduce signal integrity, which doesn't necessarily make them "bad," but is why Framework wasn't able to used socketed ram to maximize the potential of this CPU. This sort-of-interview of Nirav Patel (ceo of framework) explains in a bit more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lErGZZgUbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lErGZZgUbY Basically, they need to use LPDDR5X memory, which isn't available in socketed form, because of signal integrity reasons. Which means you won't see an improvement if you solder your ram directly, I think mostly because your home soldering job will suffer signal integrity issues, but also because your RAM isn't LPCAMM and isn't spread across a 256 bit bus.
- aeonik 1y agoThey "why" hasn't been answered. I understand the previous statements very clearly. It makes intuitive sense to me, but I want to know more. Like physics PhD-level more.
- 418tpot 1y agoI believe the reason is, at the frequencies these CPUs are talking to RAM, the reflection coefficient[1] starts playing a big role. This means any change in impedance in the wire cause reflections of the signal. This is also the reasoning why you can't just have a dumb female to female HDMI coupling and expect video to work. All of such devices are active and read the stream on the input and relay them on the output. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_coefficient
- geerlingguy 1y agoSee also RF insertion loss and how that's dealt with, PCIe retimers, etc. Above certain frequencies, you start running into major issues with signal integrity, and fixing them is very difficult without any extra circuitry.
- wmf 1y agoYes. (That isn't actually possible because the pinouts are different but soldered RAM is faster.)
- undersuit 1y agoYou might be able to dial in a higher memory overclock.
- yencabulator 1y agoOnly if you were pushing data through so fast that the bits got corrupted before. That's literally why AMD told Framework they won't support any other configuration than soldered RAM, in this case.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- onli 1y agoHe is still right. It is a desktop PC that is less repairable than all other desktop PCs, from a brand that is known to champion repairability. They had a reason for it, but could've chosen to not create more throwaway things.
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoThe 128GB version wouldn't be throwaway, since that's the maximum the platform as a whole supports anyway- more memory than that would require a new mainboard and CPU at the same time.
- nemomarx 1y agoNot for upgrade reasons but what if you have a fault in one of the dimms or etc? Now you can't just drop in a replacement without changing everything.
- cyanydeez 1y agoit's basically the same as asking what happens when your M4 Apple has a fault. It's soldered based on the desire to use the ram as part of the GPU. Without that, it's really not a interesting solution. demanding replaceable ram means also not wanting the benefits of the integrated memory
- rs186 1y agoI wonder why so few people ask Apple products of such questions -- "what if my SSD goes bad, does it mean my computer is now completely useless?"
- nemomarx 1y agoI would also ask this! But part of the framework brand was selling a laptop where the answer to that question was being able to replace it on your own. So it's just kind of a contrast for their desktop to be less repairable than their laptop. Personally I think it's bad that apple products are so poorly repairable and so expensive to upgrade.
- beeflet 1y agoWhy not make a platform with a greater number of channels
- aDyslecticCrow 1y agoThat's a question for AMD and TCMC. They only have so much space on the silica. More memory channels means less of something else. This is not a "framework platform" issue, it's the specification of that CPU.
- beeflet 1y agoWell they chose to use this hardware platform. It all sounds like market segmentation to me, now that AMD is on top.
- wmf 1y agoTo be clear, AMD is giving you 2x the bandwidth of competing chips and you're complaining that it isn't 4x.
- beeflet 1y agoMy complaints are the maximum RAM of the system and the modularity of the RAM. With an increased number of channels, you could have a greater amount of RAM at a lower frequency but at the same bandwidth. So you would at least be able to run some of these much larger AI models.
- wmf 1y agoI don't think that would fit in a laptop which was the original market for this chip.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y agoThis isn't ram. this is unified memory. It's shared between GPU and CPU. Soldered VRAM for GPUs have been the norm for probably 20 years because of the latency and reliability required, so why is this any different? The only way to achieve what you're after is to do any of; - Give up on unified memory and switch to a traditional platform (which there are thousands of alternatives for) - Cripple the GPU for games and some productivity software by raising latency beyond the norm. - Change to a server-class chip for 5x the price. This is an amazing chip giving server-class specs in a cheap mobile platform, that fill a special nieche in the market for for both productivity and local AI at a very competitive price. What you're arguing for makes no sense.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- undersuit 1y agoI wonder if there were similar complaints when cache moved from motherboards to soldered on the cpu package.
- beeflet 1y agoThe difference in performance between DRAM and flash memory is far greater than SRAM and DRAM. The total RAM of a system is a hard limit on the type of programs you can practically run because swapping is slow.
- undersuit 1y agoThe old motherboard cache was socketed SRAM and it was replaced with soldered SRAM just as the socketed DRAM was replaced with soldered DRAM. L2 CPU cache used to be on the motherboard and user expandable.
- Jtsummers 1y agoThat's fine, but not what I was commenting on so your comment is mostly irrelevant. I was commenting on a brand based on repairability selling a product that's deliberately not repairable. It's a curious choice to throw away the branding that brought them to where they are, and hopefully not the start of a trend for their other devices.
- rs186 1y agoThe only non repairable part is RAM due to technical constraints. The rest is as repairable as any other desktop, if not more so (e.g. power supply). Why are you accusing them of "throwing away the branding" and holding such a purist view, when they are doing their best and just making compromises in order to release a decent product.