5 ms·
Will we be able to get similar bandwidth with socketed ram with CAMM / LPCAMM modules in the near future?
by schmorptron 1y ago
Will we be able to get similar bandwidth with socketed ram with CAMM / LPCAMM modules in the near future?
- topspin 1y agoMaybe, but due to the physics of signal integrity, socketed RAM will always be slower than RAM integrated onto the same PCB as whatever processing element is using it, so by the time CAMM / LPCAMM catches up, some newer integrated RAM solution will be faster yet. This is a matter of physics. It can't be "fixed." Signal integrity is why classic GPU cards have GiBs of integrated RAM chips: GPUs with non-upgradeable RAM that people have been happily buying for years now. Today, the RAM requirements of GPU and their applications has become so large that the extra, low cost, slow, socketed RAM is now a false economy. Naturally, therefore, it's being eliminated as PCs evolve into big GPUs, with one flavor or other of traditional ISA processing elements attached.
- cge 1y agoIt’s possible that Apple really did a disservice to soldered RAM by making it a key profit-increasing option for them, exploiting the inability of buyers to buy RAM elsewhere or upgrade later, but in turn making soldered RAM seem like a scam, when it does have fundamental advantages, as you point out. Going from 64 GB to 128 GB of soldered RAM on the Framework Desktop costs €470, which doesn’t seem that much more expensive than fast socketed RAM. Going from 64 GB to 128 GB on a Mac Studio costs €1000.
- topspin 1y agoAsk yourself this: what is the correct markup for delivering this nearly four years before everyone else? Because that's what Apple did, and why customers have been eagerly paying the cost. Let us all know when you've computed that answer. I'll be interested, because I have no idea how to go about it.
- tracker1 1y agoI had 128gb of ram in my desktop from nearly a decade ago. I'm not sure what exactly Apple invented here.
- kbolino 1y agoIs the problem truly down to physics or is it down to the stovepiped and conservative attitudes of PC part manufacturers and their trade groups like JEDEC? (Not that consumers don't play a role here too). The only essential part of sockets vs solder is the metal-metal contacts. The size of the modules and the distance from the CPU/GPU are all adjustable parameters if the will exists to change them.
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago> The only essential part of sockets vs solder is the metal-metal contacts And at GHz speeds that matters more than you may think.
- topspin 1y ago> Is the problem truly down to physics Yes. The "conservative attitudes" of JEDEC et al. are a consequence of physics and the capabilities of every party involved in dealing with it, from the RAM chip fabricators and PCB manufacturers, all the way to you, the consumer, and the price you're willing to pay for motherboards, power supplies, memory controllers, and yield costs incurred trying to build all of this stuff, such that you can sort by price, mail order some likely untested combination of affordable components and stick them together with a fair chance that it will all "work" within the power consumption envelope, thermal envelope, and failure rate you're likely to tolerate. Every iteration of the standards is another attempt to strike the right balance all the way up and down this chain, and at the root of everything is the physics of signal integrity, power consumption, thermals and component reliability.
- kbolino 1y agoAs I said, consumers play a part here too. But I don't see the causal line from the physics to the stagnation, stovepiping, artificial market segmentation, and cartelization we see in the computer component industries. Soldering RAM has always been around and it has its benefits. I'm not convinced of its necessity however. We're just now getting a new memory socket form factor but the need was emerging a decade ago.
- jmb99 1y ago
- gautamcgoel 1y agoHow much higher bandwidth, percentage wise, can one expect from integrated DRAM vs socketed DRAM? 10%?
- wtallis 1y agoIntel's Arrow Lake platform launched in fall 2024 is the first to support CUDIMMs (clock redriver on each memory module) and as a result is the first desktop CPU to officially support 6400MT/s without overclocking (albeit only reaching that speed for single-rank modules with only one module per channel). Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max processors launched in fall 2021 used 6400MT/s LPDDR5. Intel's Lunar Lake low-power laptop processors launched in fall 2024 use on-package LPDDR5x running at 8533MT/s, as do Apple's M4 Pro and M4 Max. So at the moment, soldered DRAM offers 33% more bandwidth for the same bus width, and is the only way to get more than a 128-bit bus width in anything smaller than a desktop workstation. Smartphones are already moving beyond 9600MT/s for their RAM, in part because they typically only use a 64-bit bus with. GPUs are at 30000MT/s with GDDR7 memory.
- cptskippy 1y agoPerhaps it's time to introduce L4 Cache and a new Slot CPU design where RAM/L4 is incorporated into the CPU package? The original Slot CPUs that Intel and AMD released in the late 90s were to address similar issues with L2 cache.