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16GB SO-DIMM Availability

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When will 16GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs be available?

The Ivy Bridge chipset is in the Macbook Pro 2012 models, so there may be a latent ability to support 32GB of RAM via the two SO-DIMM slots.
 
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You know operating systems can cache stuff in RAM, right? The more RAM you have, the more it can cache in advance so it doesn't have to load from secondary storage. Sure, for those who can afford large SSDs, they're faster than disk, but RAM is "more faster" than an SSD is faster than a disk. You don't really need some kind of special application to take advantage of large amounts of RAM (though having a decent operating system (*cough* Linux *cough*) that actually knows how to cache stuff helps :)
 
Wikipedia says JEDEC DDR 3 standard only allows up to 8 GB modules (though HP makes a 32 GB DDR 3 DIMM).

Random wild guesses:
The biggest multi-channel right now is "quad-channel" (Intel 2011 and AMD G34). So, I'm going to guess that the CPUs really only support 4 channels, and a 6-slot "tri-channel" board is really only connected on two channels, and each channel has three slots. The inverse, a single slot connected to multiple channels, doesn't make sense. For a CPU supporting quad-channel, I'd guess the maximum memory support must be divided by four to determine the maximum DIMM size supported. For a dual-channel CPU (e.g. 2760QM), divide by two. So, dual-channel and 32GB suggests it should support 16GB per channel/slot. Maybe Wikipedia is out of date, or maybe some manufacturers are violating standards.
 
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The wikipedia article doesn't cite the JEDEC standard for the sentence about "chips", but says "chips" have capacities of up to 8GB, and the remainder of the article uses "chip" to refer to the packages of memory sitting on DIMMS. I'm guessing, if the figure is correct, that the DDR3 standard can support 8GB packages on a DIMM... with 8 or more packages on a DDR3 DIMM, that could be 64GB on a single module! :thup:

Still, I sad. :shrug:
 
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G.Skill replied to my inquiry that they were investigating the availability of the necessary ICs - but has no ETA for time to market.
 
I've come to understand that 16 and 32 gig sticks have been made in the past-- I also understand not too many boards supported them.

I'd keep in mind that these high capacity sticks are most definitly going to have loose timings and probably a pretty low operating frequency. I would personally perfer 16 gigs of fast memory, but if you're going to be running enough VMs, I could see where you'd need an excessive amount of ram-
 
JEDEC recently added official specs for DDR3 16GB non-ECC modules but it doesn't mean that motherboards/memory controllers are going to work with them.

It's actually miracle that AMD platform from the link works with this memory. AMD boards have often issues to run with 4x8GB without bumping voltages not to mention 16GB modules. Also memory in link is ECC while new modules specified by JEDEC can be also non-ECC.

So far every new desktop DDR3 board has support for max 8GB modules. Some X79 boards should work with higher capacity but I haven't seen fully stable 128GB on X79 boards yet ... sounds like a challenge, if I only had free 128GB DDR3 laying around ...
 
Woomack said:
So far every new desktop DDR3 board has support for max 8GB modules
Click to expand...

Many AMD desktop boards have listed support for 64 GB (which would obviously require 16 GB modules) for a long time. Regarding the difficulty of running that much RAM, spend a little extra (or a little less, if you find a nice deal like I did :)) for low-profile low-voltage stuff.
 
I saw that in some boards but I think it's more like max in theory for memory controller. The same some X79 boards have support for 128GB but no one really tested it as there was no memory in so high density.
 
Woomack said:
I saw that in some boards but I think it's more like max in theory for memory controller. The same some X79 boards have support for 128GB but no one really tested it as there was no memory in so high density.
Click to expand...

Those boards have 8 slots. 32 GB ECC DDR 3 modules have been available for at least a year and a half (see my post in this thread from November 2012). I highly doubt they skipped over 16 GB modules before going to 32 GB. So, "there was no memory in so high density" isn't a reasonable claim. It was probably even more hideously expensive than it is now, but it definitely existed.
 
But before it was ECC Registered memory in 16 and 32GB sticks. ECC non-registered wasn't available in more than 8GB sticks till couple of months ago ( about 3-4 ) and regarding that is the link from Anand in this thread.
JEDEC added non-ECC , non-registered specs couple of weeks ago but so far there is no memory like that on the market and no board with official support.
Also have you seen any desktop board with ECC Registered memory support ? X79 boards support ECC memory the same as latest AMD or Haswells but it's un-buffered memory.

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/X79AGD45_Plus.html#?div=Detail
• Supports eight unbuffered DIMM of 1.5 Volt DDR3 1066/1333/1600/1800*/2133*/2400* (*OC) DRAM, 128GB Max

* The maximum 128 GB of system memory can be reached while using 16 GB (or above) memory modules. We will update the memory test report on the website when the new memory modules are available on the market.

This board is about a year on the market and they didn't test it with more than 8GB sticks.

The same is with AMD boards and 64GB support:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/990FX Extreme9/?cat=Specifications

and also here they had no 16GB+ sticks to check if it's working:
**To reach the maximum 64GB of system memory, memory modules with 16GB capacity or above are required. ASRock will update the memory support list on the official website once these memory modules are available on the market.
 
Come on, have you ever seen a board where they actually tested every module in existence? Just because they don't list them doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm making the assumption that if a store doesn't list something as registered/buffered, then it isn't, though that might be a bad idea if stores are just slow getting their systems updated to track those attributes.

That anybody expects a single CPU to handle so much memory without a buffer/register seems a bit naive, though.
 
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petteyg359 said:
Come on, have you ever seen a board where they actually tested every module in existence? Just because they don't list them doesn't mean they don't exist.
Click to expand...

Motherboard manufacturers couldn't test it because 16GB+ non-ECC, non-registered modules were simply not existing ( I'm not talking about single engineering samples not available on the market ). That's what I want to tell you.

The only 16GB or higher capacity modules were Registered ECC.

That's why article on Anand is saying about it. Here is again this link:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7742/im-intelligent-memory-to-release-16gb-unregistered-ddr3-modules
They wouldn't make separate article with tests if it wasn't something new.

I don't know how to explain that in the other way.

Desktop = unbuffered ECC or non-ECC memory
Server ( mainly 2 CPU+ ) = Registered ECC

Memory controllers are not supporting memory in other config. In this case no manufacturer would make memory that they couldn't sell.
Also probably all memory manufacturers are in JEDEC and have to make their memory within JEDEC specification. They simply couldn't manufacture any rank 4+ memory for desktop boards till it was added couple of weeks/months ago.

About a month ago JEDEC added additional ranks to DDR3 specs:
http://www.techpowerup.com/198234/jedec-publishes-release-6-of-the-ddr3-spd-standard.html
Now it's available to manufacture up to 64GB modules and up to 8 ranks but I doubt we will see anything like that in this year.
 
Hello, Sorry for offtopic. Dell website says 8GB RAM max. Dell Support Center reported 16GB as max RAM that can be installed. Now I don't know if I should try 2x 8GB modules or not...
 
Depends what motherboard. Ivy Bridge/Haswell desktops and small servers have official support for 8GB per slot so in most cases 32GB max. Laptops the same but since they have ( usually ) 2 slots then 16GB will be max.
 
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