The future CAMM memory standard for portable PCs will not only enable the development of potentially thinner frames, but also offer higher speeds. On the other hand, one must wait for DDR6 before hoping that this standard will replace the traditional SO-DIMM format.
Thinner, denser and faster: the future removable memory of our portable PCs called CAMM is promising. Originally developed by the American manufacturer Dell, which has already used it in a number of devices, the CAMM storage format has just been christened by JEDEC, the organization responsible for storage standards. Far from wanting to develop a closed format, Dell has actually opened up its work to an open standard. Who is called to replace our good old power bars called SO-DIMM.
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And it was about time, some will say, because the “Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module” or SO-DIMM is 25 years old. A quarter of a century is an eternity in the technological world: from heat dissipation to storage density, including thickness and bandwidth, SO-DIMMs have flaws. The CAMM format could fix that all.
No more plugging, hello compression
The contactors of the CAMM module are placed on one side only (the golden part, at the top of the green area of the PCB). © Dell
Comparing the schematics and the first CAMM memory modules produced, one notices the absence of the small connecting tabs that plug into the slots compared to traditional memory modules. The answer to this lack lies in the acronym of the CAMM standard: Compression Attached Memory Module or Modulated Memory Attached by Compression.
In the CAMM format, all memory modules are on the same side of the carrier (the PCB). And a gold band appears on the back: these are the connectors. The module is no longer installed by plugging it in, but rather by compressing it, as is the case with the processors in our tower PCs. Two screws on the other side of the hundreds of contact points provide maintenance. The fact that all memory modules are on one side has another advantage: a design that is up to 57% thinner compared to the thickest SO-DIMMs.
A mechanical design that improves electronic speed
This diagram from Dell’s 2020 patent shows the difference in complexity of transferring information from memory to CPU between SO-DIMM and CAMM. © Dell
Besides the improved bandwidth, the CAMM memory design has a major advantage over SO-DIMM. Advantage that we can glimpse if we look (above) at the excerpt from the patent filed by Dell in 2020: the simplification of the information path. Whereas in a double-sided SO-DIMM design, information flow convolutions are potential bottlenecks. Far from being anecdotal, the key to memory latency is physical distance and the complexity of the pathways that route information. Not for current memory, DDR5, but for the next generation, DDR6. And that’s a good thing, JEDEC has just started validating the CAMM standard’s certification work on time to be ready for DDR 6!
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The physical design of the CAMM format also offers two advantages in terms of durability. On the one hand, the mechanical compression avoids exposing the storage contactors to the air. This is especially important in hot and humid countries. Then the arrangement on one side as well as the wide contact area avoids the stagnation of a hot air zone, the contactor also serving as a heat dissipation zone.
Denser and configurable modules
With the CAMM format, multiple module sizes can be accommodated. © Dell
We don’t have the exact technical details on the theoretical maximum speed of the CAMM at this time… which makes sense since the standard is at version 0.5 and will only be released in the coming months. Still, the nature of the compression contactor would allow it to offer bandwidth “four times greater than DDR5 4800,” a Dell engineer told PC World.
In addition to this increased bandwidth, the CAMM format will also allow the density per bar to be increased to 128 GB per module. By the way, don’t be put off by the large dimensions of the first CAMM copies produced by Dell: this is the maximum size of the format. Dell designed it for its professional machines that require a large volume of RAM (Dell Precision 7770). More compact modules can be constructed on the basis of the same connector.
A DDR6-aligned standard
The radical change in format compared to SO-DIMM means that mass adoption of CAMM is more likely by the time DDR6 arrives, which is expected around 2025. © Dell
As our colleague from Minimachines rightly points out, “the golden age of CAMM will not be DDR5”. And with good reason: the standard is not yet in version 1.0 and DDR5 is already in laptops in the SO-DIMM format. Although some will no doubt try – or continue for certain types of machines like Dell that have already deployed it – the CAMM standard only really makes sense for DDR6. And only for the most powerful machines (games, workstations), since ultraportable PCs use memory modules soldered to the motherboard.
While DDR5 barely arrives on some platforms (e.g. AMD’s Ryzen 7000), DDR6 will arrive much later. According to Samsung, which is one of the top RAM producers in the world with compatriot and competitor SK Hynix, the first drafts of DDR6 are expected to be completed in 2024, with commercial use expected at least from 2025. The doubling of the official bandwidth from 6400 Mbit/s to 12,800 Mbit/s (JEDEC standard), DDR6 in CAMM format will therefore only be in our machines in a good two to three years. But it will hopefully help improve performance. An improvement that is increasingly needed as memory access is proving to be one of the major bottlenecks in modern computing.
Source: Hot Hardware