Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1523825
JULY 2024 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 37 I was sitting in Rick Hartley's class, and he was talking about trying to route four DRAMS together and fixing the clock. is was Dell proprietary, and I thought, "What can I say?" en, I looked at my phone, and I found that everything was online. ere was even a pic- ture of it. So, I spoke up and said, "We're put- ting 64 DRAMS on one board, and it's work- ing." Everybody went into shock. What are the advantages of the CAMM2? McCauley: It allows for high-speed DDR5 to be closer to the CPU. e CAMM2 connector sits next to the CPU. en you have these CAMM2 modules for all the different capacities from 16GB to 128GB and even higher. Your routing is short and provides short distances for high- speed lines. is is a replacement for SO-DIMM. On a motherboard, SO-DIMM clogs up the board. If you put SO-DIMM on the board, you can't route past it; you have to route around it. ere's not a lot of routing space. e CAMM2 module is about the same length as a CPU and can be placed close to the chip. Your high-speed routing is short. e memory modules just plug down through the CAMM2 connector to the mother- board. e CAMM2 sits up off the board a little bit, and you can put parts under or around it. ere's no soldering in the connector, and the memory module is attached by compression. at opens the door for the high speeds. Terrie Duffy: e SO-DIMM has been around for years and is reaching a speed threshold— a maximum speed it can hit before it star ts having more issues. Mc Ca u l e y: W i t h C A M M 2 , we're already tal k ing ab out DDR6. D u f f y : C A M M 2 b e c a m e a JEDEC stan- dard in December. It's now an open standard. McCauley: So, as far as standards, you have DDR5, and you have LPDDR5, which is low power DDR5. Micron just published their ver- sion of the board. So, you two basically drove this design? McCauley: Well, we helped to drive it. It was our starting design. Most of the CAMM2 mod- ules were designed and built by my team. We created the footprint, helped with the stan- dard, and built the board. Duffy: It's an open standard. is was kind of a conglomeration, because anything JEDEC involves several companies combining their ideas. McCauley: If you want to adopt this, you can go to JEDEC, just like with any other con- nector, and you can build these boards. We're also here to help with that process. We have a lot of knowledge to help a company get into CAMM2. We're providing this to Dell, but now that it's become a world standard, we're here to help others. We've been working with the big names as we've been going through this process. at's why we've decided to start speaking. is is our first presentation. We will be teach- ing at PCB West and maybe PCB Carolina. Terrie Duffy