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submitted 6 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 88 points 6 months ago

For the curious (and lazy):

According to repair biz iFixit, the issue with the power-frugal LPDDR memory chips is that the lower voltage they operate at calls for more attention to be paid to signal integrity between the CPU and memory. In practice, this has meant shorter track distances on the circuit board, leading to LPDDR being soldered down as close to the processor as possible.

LPCAMM2 is intended to address this by putting LPDDR onto a circuit board module that is "cleverly designed to mount right up next to the CPU," with "very short traces to help maximize signal integrity," the iFixit team explains in a blog and video detailing their hands-on with the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7.

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 74 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

the lower voltage they operate at calls for more attention to be paid to signal integrity between the CPU and memory

And they aren't kidding around, modern high speed signals are so fast that a millimeter or less of difference in length between two traces might be enough to cause the signals to arrive at the other end with enough time skew to corrupt the data.

Edit: if you ever looked closely at a circuit board and seen strange, squiggly traces that are shaped like that for seemingly no reason, it's done so that the lengths can be matched with other traces.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 45 points 6 months ago

A millimeter is huge in these situations. USB3 requires 5 mil tolerances, just over 0.1 mm. This scales with the inverse of data rate.

Electronics are so fast that we gotta take the speed of light into account. God help you if you put too sharp a bend in a trace, too ...

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 6 points 6 months ago

Haha, I'm still over here messing with 10/100 Ethernet and USB 2 on my home projects. I'm used to bigger tolerances than the truly high tech stuff.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

Same, but now I'm working on very high-speed stuff for work and starting to get into that hobby-wise as well. Just yesterday had a conversation with a colleague about how things are getting too small to hand-solder.

[-] GluWu@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

My dedicated AI machine uses 1866mhz DDR3. Consumers don't know what they need and will buy whatever the latest new thing is. Smart phones are so dumb. Like wow, your brand new $2500 phone has a benchmark 4x faster than my refurbished $250 phone. Now tell me what you do with all that power. "...well I save 27ms per Instagram post which adds up with how much I use it". I want to run headfirst into a brick wall.

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[-] Threeme2189@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

What is a mil in this context? I'm genuinely curious.

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Probably one thousandth of an inch.

[-] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 6 months ago
[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago
[-] kaboom36@ani.social 1 points 6 months ago

Hey thousands of an inch are the only part of our imperial system that actually makes sense

[-] Threeme2189@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

I've heard it referred to as 'thou' but not 'mil'

[-] curiousPJ@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

A couple old metrology equipment dated back from the 80s I still use calls them 'mil'. It's got dual dials for mil/mm. Gets me confused sometimes because the gauge can go down to couple millionths of an inch/couple 10s of nanometers.

LVDT for those curious.

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I’ve never heard of that before either. What I have heard of is either MOA or MIL reticles. In that context a Mil stands for milliradian, which is a representation of angle. That definitely doesn’t track with the post though.

[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 months ago

And it's especially confusing for people who use sane measurement systems where "mil" is short for "millimetre", because it's just the start of the word. I think anyone that still insists on measuring things in thousandths of an inch should keep their own bespoke lingo too, and everyone else should steadfastly refuse to acknowledge "mil" in this context.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago
[-] flying_gel@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

A millimeter i.e a thousands of a meter.

edit: I was wrong, confusingly enough it is a thousands of an inch

[-] Threeme2189@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

5 mm isn't 'just over 0.1 mm'. That can't be right.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

Well, it depends on your margin of error.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

In the design and manufacture of PCBs (aka circuit boards) a "mil" is a one thousandth of an inch, so it makes sense that's what is being used in this context.

Also the maths check out: 0.005 inches is equal to aprox 0.12mm, "just over 0.1mm".

[-] flying_gel@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

I stand corrected, and I see I didn't read the comment thoroughly enough either.

Colloquially as a non-pcb maker I would use and hear the term "mill" as short form millimeter so I assumed it was that.

so TIL :)

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I found it wierd too when I started designing PCBs (as hobby) that "mill" actually stood for thousanth of an inch.

Probably for historical reasons, there are tons of things in the older domains within electronics that are based on inches rather than metric units: for example the spacing between the legs of a microchip in the older chip package formats (so called DIP, the ones with legs that go into holes) is exactly 0.1"

The sizes in more modern electronics isn't usually based on inches anymore, but circuit boards are old tech (even if done with new materials) so there are still a number of measures in there which are based on inches.

this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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