CAMM to Replace the Decades-old SO-DIMM Laptop Memory, JEDEC and Dell Argue

[Fouquin]

Funny how desktops with longer trace lengths have no issue pushing far higher speeds then laptops.

They overcome this issue by pumping a lot more power into the bus. Power is not something to be wasted on a mobile form factor.

 

[Prima.Vera]

WTH is that crap!?? Instead of making the modules smaller and with better design, they came up with that abomination??
Are they for real or just trolling us, like nGreedia with that 5 slots GPU ??

 

[trsttte]

Even though the screw holes are places in the same spaces, the physical size difference is going to be too big depending on how notebooks are designed, that it might prevent upgrades in the future.
However, keep in mind that there will only be one CAMM module in a laptop, as each CAMM module already operates in dual-channel mode. The really small modules might end up being limited to only 32 GB, depending on the DRAM chip density, as they only seem to house eight chips in total, or four per channel. In fact, the orignal small module was only 16 GB as per the picture below.

The bottom right is what I call "half lenght" and supports 64gb and uses about the same footprint as the smaller module (the same 2 crews and slightly longer). The top right - let's call it "full lenght" - supports 128gb use that for bigger problems- Hell, just add another slot on te motherboard if it's designed for so much memory and use the smaller size as the spec

 

[randomUser]

ultrabooks will still use soldered ram no matter how awesome this new ideas are.
everything will be glued so you don't have the right to repair. Remember what happened to NY right to repair?

 

[konga]

Jesus, look at the footprint of that thing! It looks like another mobo for crying out loud! And Dell is proud with that?


More like sCAMM...

The point is to keep a slim profile. Modern laptops have a lot of unused horizontal space, but vertical space comes at a premium. And so, they've come up with a module that takes up more horizontal space while cutting down on vertical space used. This seems fine to me.

 

[Chrispy_]

That's what happens when inferior proprietary ideas are shoved down consumers throats instead of the perfectly acceptable solution we already have.

Everything's proprietary when it's brand new. At least CAMM is an open standard that anyone can use and JEDEC are likely to ratify as a standard.

CAMM is barely any smaller then two SODIMMs. There's barely any savings there. As pointed out by TheLostSwede, all the modules over 16GB are larger then two SoDimms. So if you use dense memory it's actually BIGGER then the current solution.

When talking about size, it's also not about the x*y area savings - those are obviously dominated by the size of the DRAM chips themselves - it's about trace lengths and z-height.

Funny how desktops with longer trace lengths have no issue pushing far higher speeds then laptops.

At higher voltages, with far more pins at their disposal. If SoDIMMs weren't a problem, we'd see SoDIMM kits at the same speeds and timings as desktop kits, but we don't. Money no object, they simply don't exist because it's impossible to reach desktop kit speeds at reduced voltages and with fewer pins for signal integrity.

Additionally, desktop trace lengths are actually shorter. It's why the DIMM slots are immediately adjacent to the CPU socket and prioritised for trace-routing on the PCB. With a laptop motherboard there is far more contention for CPU>SoDIMM PCB trace routing and the physical layout of the board often has the SoDIMM slots off-center and offset from the CPU to accomodate other logic for which there simply isn't room to put anywhere else.

 

[Xajel]

I think it will be future proof if it supports CXL as well, I think future APUs from AMD and maybe Intel will have some sort of opDRAM, like how Apple silicon. But they should have extra x8~16 PCIe lanes for CXL memory expansion.

Choosing between NVMe storage or RAM expansion will be a big move in thin and light workstation laptops, even prosumer or content creators.

 

[Wirko]

The point is to keep a slim profile. Modern laptops have a lot of unused horizontal space, but vertical space comes at a premium. And so, they've come up with a module that takes up more horizontal space while cutting down on vertical space used. This seems fine to me.

I understand the goal is to keep the whole stack slim but ... how are they going to achieve it with a Big Mac-like structure?

I think it will be future proof if it supports CXL as well, I think future APUs from AMD and maybe Intel will have some sort of opDRAM, like how Apple silicon. But they should have extra x8~16 PCIe lanes for CXL memory expansion.

Choosing between NVMe storage or RAM expansion will be a big move in thin and light workstation laptops, even prosumer or content creators.

CXL is for servers, it's going to be (among other things) a costly, slow (low BW and high latency) RAM expansion with an added flexibility that consumer PCs can never take advantage of. In servers, multiple processors can share a pool of CXL memory and the amount can change dynamically.

 

[Chrispy_]

I understand the goal is to keep the whole stack slim but ... how are they going to achieve it with a Big Mac-like structure?

Slim is one of the benefits - arguably not the most important one - and while it's only 15% slimmer than a single-sided SODIMM, it is still slimmer. The biggest advantage I can see is when you need lots of RAM because it's still the same height even when replacing four SODIMM slots.

• If you're a gamer, you care about speed - and CAMM promises to offer the trace length and pin count advantages of soldered, but with the flexibility of user-replaceable RAM.
• If you're a productivity user, you care about capacity and CAMM promises to offer the capacity advantages of four-SODIMM systems in less physical thickness than dual-SODIMM systems.

I see that as a win-win for end-users with no disadvantages. Like any new standard there will be an economies-of-scale thing where the large marketshare of SODIMMS means they are cheaper than the small marketshare of the new CAMM modules, but if the manufacturers adopt it because it's better and thinner, then it will eventually cost the same as SODIMMS because the BOM for both form factors is basically the same.

I LOVE SODIMMS and actively avoid buying soldered-RAM laptops wherever possible, but it's an ancient standard that is starting to become incompatible with the goals of modern laptops manufacturers and their users.