Integrated RAM on MOBO.. Why not?

[BDSM]

I've been thinking.. Why don't Intel or AMD create a platform with integrated RAM?

Let's say we had a gig of very fast DDR.. Or GDDR3 or whatever.. Sure it would be expensive.. But maybe not THAT expensive because mobo makers would buy tons at a time.. And they wouldn't have to use cutting edge ram either. Today the fastest ram in production is Samsung 800 mhz (1600 mhz datarate) ram. Let's say we settled for half of that. It would yield 12.8 GB/sec on a p4 dual channel. Naturally the fsb would have to be upped accordingly and so on.

But think of it... if the price of such ram isn't HUGE.. which I think it shouldn't be.. cuz it is no longer cutting edge... Wouldn't it be nice to get a mobo with integrated ram that you know will work flawlessly and is well optimized for your mobo!.. No more compatibility issues there.. And the ram would ofcourse also be covered by the same waranty as the mobo itself.

Anyway.. Ofcourse such ram wouldn't be upgradable.. But if ya got 1 gig with the mobo it wouldn't have to be upgraded for some time.

I'm just speculating here.. no flames plz.

 

[tallman45]

Imagine if they did that 3 yrs ago with the P III and put in 64mb. I have upgraded a lot of rigs to 256 from 64mb that would have been trash had there not been empty ram slots.

 

[shiftomnimega]

I agree with tallman. Who knows, there might be programs for the common user in a year or two that fully utilize and maybe even bottleneck at 1 ghz.

However, there are a lot of consumers that aren't as hardcore as the folks on this board and onboard ram may work for them.

 

[Peter]

Oh, it is being done. Albeit very rarely on the desktop, for the sole reason of upgradeability.

Exceptions exist at the very bottom of the product line, where computers need to be one thing above all: Cheap. And where they are ending up with users who hardly ever upgrade before the entire thing is obsolete anyway.

This here board is one of the few.

 

[o1die]

They're doing it again. Not only with via, but a few amd boards are coming out with xp cpu's welded to the socket. They're called 3000a, truly misleading. They're really xp1900's. You don't save anything by using them, other than the minor convenience of not having to install the cpu.

 

[Peter]

Yes, these boards, now again w/o onboard RAM, are prefitted with obsoleting AMD processors. Elitegroup/PC-Chips have been eating through leftover CPU stocks from the bottom up, started out with 667 MHz VIA C3 two years ago, moved over to 800 MHz Durons last year, and now have munched through the AMD warehouse far enough to reach Mobile (!) Athlon-XP 1900+ on the latest batch that is now in the shops.
Apart from the ridiculously overinflated CPU ratings they are advertized with, they make quite fine low end home/office machines.

 

[BDSM]

Yes ofcourse it eould be impossible to upgrade. But I wasn't thinking of low end stuff that is basically outdated before it's released. I was thinking of very high end systems with double the current max bandwidth!

I believe 1 gig wouldbe enough for quite some time. most ppl still have 512 or less... Anyway.. one would have to trade in upgradability for performance and stability. Something I could be willing to do.

 

[Peter]

On the high end, you need to know that it's HARDER to layout a lot of RAM directly on the mainboard than to go DIMM. The reason is that if you lay the RAMs down flat, trace length goes up quite a bit, and layout gets a lot more complicated. And you'd have to fit RAM chips on the underside of the board as well - both to keep the traces short and to fit enough RAM onto the given form factor. You'll still only fit a few RAM chips, which means you'll have to use the highest density RAM chips you can possibly get.

This all means, there goes your affordable 4- or 6-layer design, now it's going to be REALLY expensive - and you still only fit a GByte or two, which, at the (serious) high end, is beginning to be a laughably small amount.

Graphics boards on the other hand have comparably small memory sizes, few chips, and core chip pinouts optimized for exactly one layout of exactly one kind and maybe a couple of sizes of RAM chip. It's a different world.

 

[SilverBack]

One memory chip goes bad and phffft no pc.

 

[Peter]

Memory chips don't go bad. They either are bad right from the start, or shall live happily thereafter.

But yes, the more chips you plant on a mainboard, the higher is the factory testing effort in the factory, also the rate of dead units straight out of manufacturing increases exponentially with component count. Again, a cost driving factor noone in the desktop/workstation/server market is willing to pay for.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

What if they made an L4 cache on the motherboard like if it existed now would be like drr800 1-2 gigs and then have dimms for expanding. This would probably be a feasilbe adaptation of his ideas. Ok maybe the fsb is excessive, but you get the idea. Also would probably need a huge motherboard for this... definitly not atx compatable...