Comment by nsteel
10 hours ago
Except they don't use DDR5. LPDDR5 is always soldered. LPDDR5 requires short point-to-point connections to give you good SI at high speeds and low voltages. To get the same with DDR5 DIMMs, you'd have something physically much bigger, with way worse SI, with higher power, and with higher latency. That would be a much worse solution. GDDR is much higher power, the solution would end up bigger. Plus it's useless for system memory so now you need two memory types. LPDDR5 is the only sensible choice.
> LPDDR5 is always soldered.
No it isn't:
https://www.newegg.com/crucial-32gb-ddr5-7500-cas-latency-cl...
CAMM2 is new and most of the PC companies aren't using it yet but it's exactly the sort of thing Apple used to be an early adopter of when they wanted to be.
It looks like LPCAMM2 is shipping from one vendor and only started shipping in October- that’s a bit quick and early for Apple to adopt.
It wasn't too quick and early for Dell and Lenovo to adopt.
It's the new thing. All three of the DRAM manufacturers intend to produce it:
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20240916PD207/samsung-lpcamm...
And it's called "CAMM2" because it's not even the first version. Apple could have been working with the other OEMs on this since 2022 and been among the first to adopt it instead of the last:
https://www.techpowerup.com/294240/dells-ddr5-camm-appears-i...
Is it really useless for system memory or is it just too expensive and no manufacturer has bothered?