The Curse of Soldered RAM (blog.hardill.me.uk)

14 points by gsky 22 hours ago

RetroTechie 15 hours ago
Bash me all you want, but after CPU, GPU, memory controller & a host of other things integrated in modern System-on-Chips (SoC), I've long held the belief that next logical step would be to integrate RAM.
Optimal: piecemeal. As in: X sockets on a board, each socket takes a chip that adds CPU core(s), GPU cores, and some amount of main RAM. More chips, more powerful computer.
Keyword: socket. Read: replaceable. Bad chip out, good chip in. Slow chip out, faster chip in. Soldered onto board = reliable, but a defect could junk the whole machine.
- musicale 15 hours ago
  > Bash me all you want, but after CPU, GPU, memory controller & a host of other things integrated in modern System-on-Chips (SoC), I've long held the belief that next logical step would be to integrate RAM
  Haven't Apple (A-series, M-series) and others been copackaging memory for a while? (SiP or MCM?)
musicale 14 hours ago
> I then had to manually transcribe this, which [w]as “fun”.
Can't you select and copy the text in the photo (on most smartphones and PCs at least)?
potamic 20 hours ago
LPCAMM2 sockets were supposed to provide all the benefits of soldering while still being a socket. Anyone know the state of adoption?
- rasz 18 hours ago
  the fact no component supplier, not even alibaba sells LPCAMM2 sockets tells you everything you need to know. The only prices I can find are in $30 range per socket
pseudohadamard 9 hours ago
Since the OP mentions Lenovo, look at their other product lines for ones that still have socketed RAM. I'm currently running an E16 with 40GB RAM, 8GB soldered, 32GB socketed. And aside from that it leaves my previous X1 for dead in terms of performance. Lenovo's replacing the carbon fiber case, the whole reason the X1 line is called "Carbon", with crappy black plastic was the last straw.