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takyon writes:

Following HP's announcement of new ZBook mobile workstations, Intel has confirmed that the memory controller in 9th generation Intel Core processors will support up to 128 GB of DRAM. AMD's memory controller should also support 128 GB of DRAM:

Normally mainstream processors only support 64GB, by virtue of two memory channels, two DIMMs per memory channel (2DPC), and the maximum size of a standard consumer UDIMM being 16GB of DDR4, meaning 4x16GB = 64GB. However the launch of two different technologies, both double height double capacity 32GB DDR4 modules from Zadak and G.Skill, as well as new 16Gb DDR4 chips coming from Samsung, means that technically in a consumer system with four memory slots, up to 128GB might be possible.

With AMD, the company has previously stated that its memory controller can support future memory that comes to market (with qualification), however Intel has been steadfast in limiting its memory support on its chips specifically within the specification. HP is now pre-empting the change it its latest launch with the following footnote:

1. 128GB memory planned to be available in December 2018

This has forced Intel into a statement, which reads as the following:

The new 9th Gen Intel Core processors memory controller is capable of supporting DDR4 16Gb die density DIMMs which will allow the processors to support a total system memory capacity of up to 128GB when populating both motherboard memory channels with 2 DIMMs per Channel (2DPC) using these DIMMs. As DDR4 16Gb die density DIMMs have only recently become available, we are now validating them, targeting an update in a few months' time.

Here's an example of double height, double capacity 32 GB memory modules from G.Skill, which uses 8 Gb DRAM chips.

These are the Samsung 32 GB SO-DIMM DDR4 modules for laptops mentioned in the article. They are of a normal size but use Samsung's latest 16 Gb chips instead of 8 Gb.

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