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by mschuster9115 hours ago |
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upvoteby jve14 hours ago|
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Think it would have same memory bandwidth if the RAM was upgradeable?

Would be nice if someone knowledgeable about electrical engineering and manufacturing processes could lay out some valid reasons for manufacturers to integrate RAM onto the motherboard.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041256#49082206

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upvoteby mrheosuper2 hours ago|
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Each connector will introduce "insertion loss" to the chain, eating into your signal integrity budget.

The SO DIMM Ram slot, which is designed, idk, 30 years ago? is not really capable of handling the frequency we are targeting (close to 10GT/s)

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upvoteby enragedcacti13 hours ago|
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It isn't integrated into the motherboard, it's integrated onto the same package as the CPU/GPU which allows for better signal integrity and higher speeds. You can get somewhat close to the same speeds while modular with tech like LPCAMM2, but there are some pretty difficult challenges to overcome to close the gap completely. As an example, the Framework Laptop 13 Pro CPUs support up to 9600MT/s (same as M5), and Micron sells LPCAMM2 modules that can run at 8533MT/s, but the 13 Pro only officially supports 7467MT/s.
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upvoteby _kush14 hours ago|
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If it was upgradable, then yes, spending more on top of it every year would make it future proof, but that's not the point. It's that spending 10 grand doesn't get you a future proof computer today.
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upvoteby mhast14 hours ago|
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The main PCB is pretty much everything that has value. The rest is a heatsink, case and PSU.
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upvoteby fearmerchant14 hours ago|
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The way the Apple M-series does ram that might be difficult to pull off.
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upvoteby mschuster9114 hours ago|
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> The way the Apple M-series does ram that might be difficult to pull off.

Well it might be an idea to keep the layout of the mainboard and connectors the same.

That way, instead of having to upgrade the whole machine, all it would need is a new mainboard. Framework for example managed to pull that off, and in mobile at that, where constraints are much worse than for a desktop computer.

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upvoteby isgb14 hours ago|
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> Framework for example managed to pull that off, and in mobile at that, where constraints are much worse than for a desktop computer.

It's not the same thing though. On the M-series, CPU and GPU share a unified memory architecture and ram is much more tightly coupled to get it to go faster. A closer example would be the Framework desktop, actually, where memory is also soldered in for the same reason.

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upvoteby roughly13 hours ago|
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That actually would be interesting - yes, the computer itself is basically a PCB, but it’s also wrapped in a couple pounds of aluminum, a power supply, cooling fans, and a few other things that don’t need to be consumables. Upgrade a mini or a studio by swapping the new board into the old case - yeah, you’re not saving much money, but you also don’t need to throw out the entire rest of the case, and you can ship the main board in the space of a couple CD cases.

It’s a very non-Apple thing to do, but it’d be pretty awesome if they did.

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