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just brew it!
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Oct 24, 2017 11:23 am

DPete27 wrote:
I know very little about limitations in the server arena and if all RAM channels are being utilized. I wasn't suggesting "use two of these to equal one of those". That would be silly :)

Well, that's what I assumed you were suggesting when you said "even though, as shown above, you could stuff twice as many SODIMMs into the same size server mobo".
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the
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Oct 24, 2017 11:32 am

just brew it! wrote:
DPete27 wrote:
DancinJack wrote:
You don't need DIMMs for ECC

I know, but people are using high-density ECC DIMMs to burn my balls, so I'm having to admit defeat on the server tier side of things (even though, as shown above, you could stuff twice as many SODIMMs into the same size server mobo)

You'd need to have twice as many memory channels or twice as many modules per channel to support the same memory capacity though. That doesn't come for free. To add channels you'd need to redesign the memory controllers; and doubling the number of modules per channel would likely result in a speed penalty (lower clock speeds due to additional bus loading and trace length). Having twice as many memory sockets is also likely to pose some PCB layout challenges; if additional PCB layers are needed that'll drive costs up. So it's not just a simple "we can substitute two of these for one of those" deal.


Nothing comes for 'free' but there are solutions to aspects of these problems. For example, moving to point-to-point serial links a la FB-DIMMs addresses many of the above mentioned problems except for one: latency. It simply took too much time to perform the basic memory access due to the fully buffered memory chip on the DIMM. Similarly, by passing the signal DIMM-to-DIMM, physical slot count could go up rather high but this compounded the latency problem even more. The memory bus speed was high for the time and supported up to four FB-DIMMs per channel in quad channel config with the same number of PCB layers as dual channel motherboards of the time.

FB-DIMMs themselves did need memory controller support change (no way around that) but the raw DRAM type was abstracted by the buffer. Thus FB-DIMMs using DDR3 could be produced and mixed with FB-DIMMs using DDR2. So in a sense, this solved that memory type problem too.

Another nail in the FB-DIMM coffin was of course cost. Adding the buffer chip was not cheap. More expensive and slower is generally a losing strategy in the market and hence why FB-DIMMs were quickly forgotten.
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ludi
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Oct 24, 2017 12:08 pm

the wrote:
Another nail in the FB-DIMM coffin was of course cost. Adding the buffer chip was not cheap. More expensive and slower is generally a losing strategy in the market and hence why FB-DIMMs were quickly forgotten.

The buffer chip was also a miniature furnace. Lower-speed modules required a heatspreadder plate on the buffer chip and higher-speed models required a plate on the entire DIMM. We had Dell T5400 workstations back when, and those had an extra 120mm fan blowing directly into the memory slots. Even so, the FB-DIMMs in a freshly shut-down system could burn errant fingers, so they must have been running around 150-160F with forced air.
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Oct 24, 2017 12:53 pm

ludi wrote:
the wrote:
Another nail in the FB-DIMM coffin was of course cost. Adding the buffer chip was not cheap. More expensive and slower is generally a losing strategy in the market and hence why FB-DIMMs were quickly forgotten.

The buffer chip was also a miniature furnace. Lower-speed modules required a heatspreadder plate on the buffer chip and higher-speed models required a plate on the entire DIMM. We had Dell T5400 workstations back when, and those had an extra 120mm fan blowing directly into the memory slots. Even so, the FB-DIMMs in a freshly shut-down system could burn errant fingers, so they must have been running around 150-160F with forced air.


IIRC the chip was HUGE too (at least compared to RAM dies). I mean, I think you could fit two more dies into the space that the buffer took up.
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DPete27
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Oct 24, 2017 2:22 pm

just brew it! wrote:
DPete27 wrote:
I know very little about limitations in the server arena and if all RAM channels are being utilized. I wasn't suggesting "use two of these to equal one of those". That would be silly :)

Well, that's what I assumed you were suggesting when you said "even though, as shown above, you could stuff twice as many SODIMMs into the same size server mobo".

TR news to the rescue!! "one DIMM slot per channel" So that's where I was going with the whole idea of fitting 2 SODIMMs in the same physical space as a single DIMM (capacity notwithstanding, 768GB/12 slots = 64GB/slot which is higher than SODIMMs have to offer). Just wasn't sure if that was a limitation or not. Again, this is outside my area of expertise.
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DPete27
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:05 pm

Interesting article on Double-Height DDR4 DIMMS reminded me of this thread:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13694/double-height-ddr4-gskill-zadak-2x32gb-ddr4-3200

I still think my idea is better than this, haha. Especially 4 SODIMMS on mITX boards.
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The Egg
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Re: SO-DIMMS for Everything?

Tue Feb 12, 2019 2:40 pm

The double-height stuff is stupid, and would probably cause heatsink/cooling clearance problems in many systems, not to mention it's somewhat of a solution in search of a problem.

On the original topic, I suppose it would be nice to unify mobile and desktop on a single form factor, but you'd want to do it as a new type of RAM is introduced (such as DDR5), rather than create a mess mid-cycle.

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