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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: 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.

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