The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen • Hacker News Board

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#11

Post by antisthenes » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

jmclnx wrote: post #9

Can it be upgraded ? I heard many newer laptops went back to soldered ram because people want thin. I doubt I will ever get a system with this type of ram, but if it can be easily upgraded then that is an improvement. I usually buy used or in reality I take Laptops from people I know who went and bought the latest and greatest hardware. I am typing this on a T430 with NetBSD I got from a relative a year ago. I upgrad…

Motherboards will likely have less CAMM slots than current RAM slots, but the modules should come in higher capacity.

So you should be able to upgrade easily, unless you already have the max capacity module.

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#12

Post by Night_Thastus » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

CAMM2 has definite advantages over normal sticks.

HOWEVER, it all comes down to adoption, adoption, adoption. Until several board makers are making boards with CAMM2 support and manufacturers are making CAMM2 format memory - it'll struggle to gain any adoption. If we're lucky it'll become popular in the enthusiast space with some very high-end boards, and gradually work its way down to mainstream.

Or maybe backwards, through things like laptops - where maybe the packaging benefits are higher.

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#13

Post by jiehong » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

Isn’t RAM soldered on the SoC just plain better than farther away slotted technology? (Except for upgrading).

I would have expected the ram slots to be on the other side of the motherboard, on the opposite side of the CPU pins to shorten the traces even more. Why do they have to be side by side?

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#14

Post by jauntywundrkind » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

Night_Thastus wrote: post #12

CAMM2 has definite advantages over normal sticks. HOWEVER, it all comes down to adoption, adoption, adoption. Until several board makers are making boards with CAMM2 support and manufacturers are making CAMM2 format memory - it'll struggle to gain any adoption. If we're lucky it'll become popular in the enthusiast space with some very high-end boards, and gradually work its way down to mainstream. Or maybe backwards,…

Adoption is probably at 33%+ (by ram volume).

Nvidia has been using socamm now socamm2 for a while. In terms of real estate, the motherboard is dominated by socamm2: look at the photo on link #2. https://www.techpowerup.com/341002/nvidia-moves-to-socamm2-p... https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/vera-cpu/

(Interestingly those links are getting a little long (because there's so many socamm2 modules). I wonder if socamm3 will be not dual channel but quad channel, to shorten the link lengths.)

The future is already here, we plebes just don't have access to the post-PC market that has formed anymore.

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#15

Post by burnt-resistor » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 4:16 AM UTC

perching_aix wrote: post #5

Now if only ECC became a baseline feature.

Exactly. Untold silent corruption and security issues because of unnoticed bit flips.

Re: The RAM stick is dying, and the replacement is something most have never seen

#16

Post by Kab1r » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:22 AM UTC

I think CXL, perhaps more specifically cxl.mem on edsff, is a more relevant replacement for DDR, that most have also not seen