Thin And Light Intel Apollo Lake Notebook Designs May Do Away With Replaceable RAM
Notebook makers have answered the call for increasing thin and light solutions, but at what cost? The quest for even thinner waistlines and lighter profiles has been met with sacrifices, such as the demise of the removable battery (there are exceptions, though comparatively few). That's just the start of things—there's chatter that laptops built around Intel's Apollo Lake processors will kick replaceable RAM to the curb, as well.
Citing sources from Taiwan's notebook supply chain, Digitimes claims that numerous notebook manufacturers are trending towards onboard memory memory designs rather than traditional DIMM slots. By going that route, notebook makers can introduce even slimmer designs, an infectious goal as major players try to one-up each other with bragging rights.
All of the major players seem to be going this route with Apollo Lake. Acer has a pair of new laptops on tap, the Aspire S 15 and Aspire S 17, that are said to be less than 17mm thick. If things go to plan, we'll get a glimpse of these ultra-thin systems at the IFA event in September.
Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are also focusing on slimmer laptops and 2-in-1 designs. The supply chain sources didn't say exactly how thin each vendor's respective systems will be, noting only that they'll appear sometime in the second half of 2016.
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. Thin and light tablets and 2-in-1 systems are all about portability. Very few sport DIY repair amenities, and in many cases, there's no easy way to crack open the chassis. With that being the case, it's almost a moot point whether or not the RAM modules on the inside are replaceable.
Bear in mind that we're only talking about Apollo Lake systems here. Apollo Lake is a new family of low power System-on-Chips (SoCs) designed to replace Cherry Trail and Braswell. They'll feature Goldmont CPU cores built on the same 14nm manufacturing process as Intel's Airmont cores found in Cherry Trail SoCs and will end up in low power systems, including thin and light laptops, 2-in-1 devices, and small form factor PCs like the NUC.
Citing sources from Taiwan's notebook supply chain, Digitimes claims that numerous notebook manufacturers are trending towards onboard memory memory designs rather than traditional DIMM slots. By going that route, notebook makers can introduce even slimmer designs, an infectious goal as major players try to one-up each other with bragging rights.
All of the major players seem to be going this route with Apollo Lake. Acer has a pair of new laptops on tap, the Aspire S 15 and Aspire S 17, that are said to be less than 17mm thick. If things go to plan, we'll get a glimpse of these ultra-thin systems at the IFA event in September.
Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are also focusing on slimmer laptops and 2-in-1 designs. The supply chain sources didn't say exactly how thin each vendor's respective systems will be, noting only that they'll appear sometime in the second half of 2016.
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. Thin and light tablets and 2-in-1 systems are all about portability. Very few sport DIY repair amenities, and in many cases, there's no easy way to crack open the chassis. With that being the case, it's almost a moot point whether or not the RAM modules on the inside are replaceable.
Bear in mind that we're only talking about Apollo Lake systems here. Apollo Lake is a new family of low power System-on-Chips (SoCs) designed to replace Cherry Trail and Braswell. They'll feature Goldmont CPU cores built on the same 14nm manufacturing process as Intel's Airmont cores found in Cherry Trail SoCs and will end up in low power systems, including thin and light laptops, 2-in-1 devices, and small form factor PCs like the NUC.
