Tommy Thorn
tommythorn@chaos.social
I wish more #FPGA dev board creators embraced SODIMM (and other widely available mass-market, price-competitive memory modules). It's depressing to see an interesting board saddled with a small dab of token DRAM as not to "blow up the price of the board". Screw that, give me an even cheaper option, a socket, and let me decide how many kidneys to sacrifice to the Memory Gods.
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Tommy Thorn
tommythorn@chaos.socialOne bonkers argument I had endued goes that "oh noes, SODIMM is 64-bit, that's too much IOs". Ok, then just use part of it, say 32-bit or (shudder) 16-bit. "but I don't want to waste half of the module" -- that is the most insane argument yet. Used SODIMMs are _cheaper_ than the components they are made of. There are so many used DDR3 SODIMMs around from upgrades that people throw them away. Waste what again?
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Linus Torvalds
torvalds@tommythorn you don’t think it’s because with a fixed DRAM chip, the FPGA people in question don’t have to worry about all the nasty timing detection details (SPD etc)?
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The only valid arguments against are: PCB design becomes harder, PCBs might require more layers, and a SODIMM takes more space than a single DDR3 chip. I, for one, welcome our PCB overlords and will gladly pay for the possibilities that large memory enables, but since I can't design boards I can only evangelize.
EDIT: IO power also goes up a bit, but I doubt it would matter for many.
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