The idea of integrating memory chips on the same substrate or in the same case as the central processor is not new: AMD has been discussing it for a long time, and Apple and Intel are already putting it into practice. The latter company this week unveiled a sample of the Meteor Lake mobile processor, which has two Samsung-made LPDDR5X memory chips embedded on its substrate.
Image source: Intel
As the publication explains Tom’s hardwareIn a single case, a pair of LPDDR5X-7500 chips with a total volume of 16 GB are located in the same case with a Meteor Lake processor, providing a peak bandwidth of 120 GB/s. Apple packs LPDDR chips in the same package as its M1 and M2 processors, and Intel itself has experience integrating other types of RAM into its CPUs, such as in Lakefield. In general, the EMIB substrate and Foveros packaging technology allow Intel to combine several different chips in one package at the same time. For example, the same Meteor Lake processors use four separate crystals combined on one substrate.
Combining a processor with memory chips has both advantages and disadvantages. The former include reducing the area occupied by components on a circuit board and increasing the speed of information transfer. The latter include the complication of the design of the cooling system and the increased susceptibility of the entire system due to the failure of integrated memory chips. Well, the main disadvantage is the impossibility of increasing the RAM of a given laptop. For laptop manufacturers, the need to buy processors with built-in memory means that contract terms with memory manufacturers are getting worse, since they can no longer influence the price to the same extent due to smaller purchase volumes.
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