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Dell Defends its Controversial New Laptop Memory (CAMM)

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 27 2022, @05:08PM   Printer-friendly

takyon writes:

Dell defends its controversial new laptop memory

If you were triggered over word that Dell is pushing a proprietary memory standard, take a chill pill. Dell's new memory design isn't really proprietary and may actually lead to benefits for performance laptops.

The controversy kicked up last week when images of Dell's new CAMM, or Compression Attached Memory Module, leaked out. This immediately lead tech sites to declare that Dell was taking a path to "lock out user upgrades" and warning laptop users who like to upgrade their memory that they were "out of luck."

In an interview with PCWorld, however, both the person who designed and patented the CAMM standard, as well as the product manager of the first Dell Precision laptop to feature it, assured us the intent of the new memory module standard is to head-off looming bandwidth ceilings in the current SO-DIMM designs. Dell's CAMM, in fact, could increase performance, improve reliability, aid user upgrades, and eventually lower costs too, they said.

[...] [Dell's Tom] Schnell said that Dell isn't making the modules and has worked with memory companies as well as Intel on this. In the future, a person with a CAMM-equipped laptop will be able to buy RAM from any third party and install it in the laptop. Yes, initially, Dell will likely be the only place to get CAMM upgrades, but that should change as the standard scales up and is adopted by other PC makers. The new memory modules are also built using commodity DRAMs just like conventional SO-DIMMs.

[...] So why do we need CAMM anyway? Dell's Schnell said that SO-DIMM, or Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module, is headed for a glass ceiling within a generation of design. SO-DIMMs, which were first introduced almost 25 years ago, haven't changed much in all that time besides moving to newer and faster DRAM methods.

See also: Dell Launches Its Precision 2022 Laptop Lineup: Feature Intel Alder Lake-HX 16 Core CPUs, Up To 128 GB DDR5 CAMM Memory, Up To RTX 3080 TI GPUs

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2022, @06:38PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2022, @06:38PM (#1240119)

    I've been out of the build-your-own system for quite a while so I'm interested in hearing from those who know this stuff way better than I, particularly someone like takyon who not only submitted the article, but seems to follow hardware specs and details very well. I (vaguely) remember the RAMBUS saga, with the vendor consortium and torpedo patents and backstabbing and such, but this doesn't sound like that at all. I know you need to be cautious in taking their explanation at face value, but this sounds like they came up with their own solution, which they feel is superior to what is out there, and they're using them and expect others will follow. I don't find the fact that they've patented some aspects of it too frightening, because I'd be surprised if there wasn't a square inch on a motherboard that didn't have a patent attached to it.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday April 27 2022, @07:08PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday April 27 2022, @07:08PM (#1240131) Journal

    Laptops have been seemingly inexorably moving towards soldered memory. That includes some enterprise/workstation ones IIRC. This seems like it could be a better way.

    and save space, which can make it possible to make a thinner laptop.

    In fact, Dell points out, it’s not even “proprietary” on its own laptops. The first Precision workstations that come with CAMM will also eventually be offered with conventional SO-DIMMs using an interposer. Mano Gialusis, product manager for Precision workstations, said the interposer option goes into the same CAMM mount, too.

    I guess it wasn't so necessary for thinness? Or maybe the idea here is that chunky workstation laptops can use the SO-DIMM interposer/adapter, and that thinner laptops will only be able to use CAMM.

    RAM is built using parallel interfaces, which means multiple wires leaving the CPU going to the memory. Because of the intense signal timing and integrity requirements, that also means every wire must be exactly the same length and also have enough spacing to reduce interference. Schnell said that for most applications, SO-DIMM hasn’t hit its limit yet, but by the time DDR6 arrives, the design of SO-DIMM will be well past its prime.

    In fact, we’re already seeing a practical use for CAMM today. In a 12th-gen Intel laptop using two SO-DIMMs, for example, you can reach DDR5/4800 transfer speeds. But push it to a four-DIMM design, such as in a laptop with 128GB of RAM, and you have to ratchet it back to DDR5/4000 transfer speeds.

    With CAMM, however, you can reach 128GB of density and reach DDR5/4800 transfers speeds.

    DDR5 Demystified - Feat. Samsung DDR5-4800: A Look at Ranks, DPCs, and Do Manufacturers Matter? [anandtech.com]

    AnandTech recently found that 2 DIMMs per channel of DDR5 (4 sticks) leads to slowdowns:

    Using four sticks means data has to travel further along the memory traces, which combined with the overhead of communicating with two DIMMs, results in both a drop in memory performance as well as a sight increase in latency.

    CAMM appears to not have that problem.

    With CAMM now a reality, Dell’s next step is to get it in front of JEDEC, the memory standards organization, to make it available to others, he said.

    Well, that's good.

    In the short term, CAMM will probably be more expensive. But DDR5 SO-DIMM is not exactly cheap right now either.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2022, @08:07PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2022, @08:07PM (#1240160)

      Thank you for your input. Do you put any stock in the "Dell will lock everything down with their patents!" angle? Can they even drive the computer market like they once could? I figure with the rise and importance (meaning the amounts of money to spend) of the huge server farms, the ones who can carry the day with solutions that give higher speeds and/or lower power will steer the direction of motherboard components more than anything else.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday April 27 2022, @09:44PM

        by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday April 27 2022, @09:44PM (#1240201) Journal

        https://hothardware.com/news/dell-claims-camm-memory-modules-laptop-ram-future [hothardware.com]

        "One of the tenants of the PC industry is standards," said Tom Schnell, Senior Distinguished Engineer at Dell who designed most of CAMM. "We believe in that; we put standards into our products. We’re not keeping it to ourselves, we hope it becomes the next industry standard."

        [...] However, the message from Dell is that it feels CAMM is a better form factor for the future, and it hopes the industry at large will adopt it. To that end, CAMM still uses standard DRAM chips. The question that's not answered (not yet, anyway) is what that will mean in terms of royalties. In the interview, Dell downplayed things, pointing out that a typical laptop is rife with cross-licensed technologies, and that JEDEC requires standards adhere to its Reasonable and Non-Discretionary (RAND) terms. That latter point means licenses can't be cost prohibitive, nor would Dell be allowed to discriminate against competing companies if it wants JEDEC's backing (which it sounds like it does).

        Bolded something you basically said earlier.

        Everything they have said indicates that they are serious about making it an industry standard, but it remains to be seen if there will be more than one supplier (???) and customer (Dell). Dell could have squeaky clean conduct throughout this and still end up pushing expensive replacement memory.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]