alt Hacker NewsIs the problem truly down to physics or is it down to the stovepiped and conservative attitudes of PC part manufacturers and their trade groups like JEDEC? (Not that consumers don't play a role here too).
The only essential part of sockets vs solder is the metal-metal contacts. The size of the modules and the distance from the CPU/GPU are all adjustable parameters if the will exists to change them.
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> The only essential part of sockets vs solder is the metal-metal contacts.
Yeah... And that’s a pretty damn big difference. A connector is always going to result in worse signal integrity than a high-quality solder joint in the real world.
> The only essential part of sockets vs solder is the metal-metal contacts
And at GHz speeds that matters more than you may think.
> Is the problem truly down to physics
Yes. The "conservative attitudes" of JEDEC et al. are a consequence of physics and the capabilities of every party involved in dealing with it, from the RAM chip fabricators and PCB manufacturers, all the way to you, the consumer, and the price you're willing to pay for motherboards, power supplies, memory controllers, and yield costs incurred trying to build all of this stuff, such that you can sort by price, mail order some likely untested combination of affordable components and stick them together with a fair chance that it will all "work" within the power consumption envelope, thermal envelope, and failure rate you're likely to tolerate. Every iteration of the standards is another attempt to strike the right balance all the way up and down this chain, and at the root of everything is the physics of signal integrity, power consumption, thermals and component reliability.