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> LPDDR4 is just 128-bits per chip.

It is? I thought it was up to 32.



32-bits per channel. Multiple channels per chip.

I'm doing this from memory btw, so I might have gotten something wrong. But my understanding of LPDDR4x is 32-bits per channel, 4x channels per chip (typical: different LPDDR4x chips can have different configurations).


My understanding is 16 bits per channel, and 2 channels per chip, typical.

Wikipedia says the same and here's a randomly selected datasheet where you can see the pinout https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/198/43_46LQ32256A_AL-1877...


Sounds like time to look things up!

I just went to Micron's page for LPDDR4: https://www.micron.com/products/dram/lpdram/automotive-lpddr...

Automotive grade, but allegedly still LPDDR4. Looks like they're x16 and x32, as you said.

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Hmmm, I know that the M1 is specified as 128-bits on Anandtech's site. If its 4-dies per chip, then 32-bits per die, 4-total dies of LPDDR4? I know Anandtech is claiming a 128-bit bus, so I'm reverse-engineering things from that tidbit of knowledge.

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Either way, these 128-bit or 64-bit numbers are all very much smaller than 1024-bit per stack HBM2 (high-bandwidth memory). Much, much, much much smaller. Its clear that the M1 isn't using HBM at all, but some kind of LPDDR4x configuration.


https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16252/M1_575px.png This states 8 channels but teardowns have shown that there are only 2 memory chips so I'm not sure exactly what's going on.


LPDDR4x can have multiple dies per chip.

Based on your discussion point, then I'm thinking x16 per channel, 4-dies per chip, 2-chips for a total of 8-dies for the 8-memory controllers.


But is there a standard pinout with that many data pins?


https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/micron-technology...

Hmm... I don't know what's going on.

This chip claims to be LPDDR4x, but it is a 556-pin package. This is in contrast to your earlier data-sheet, which only has 200-pins. Maybe LPDDR4x doesn't have any standardized pinouts?

This isn't exactly where I normally work, so I'm not entirely sure what is going on.


Most likely, it's two DRAM dies per package. Those DRAM packages look ridiculously wide, so the DRAM dies might not even be stacked.


> LPDDR4x is 32-bits per channel, 4x channels per chip

DDR4 bus width is 64 bits per channel. Are you saying DIMMs include a sufficiently fast and complex controller chip?


Clearly, this discussion has proven that I'm a bit out of my area here.

But my understanding is that LPDDR4 have multiplie dies of RAM stacked on top of a chip. There's only two RAM chips on the Apple M1.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Apple_M1...

You can clearly see the two LPDDR4x chips packaged with the Apple M1. There's no question that the M1 package contains two DRAM chips. The only question is the configuration of the "insides" of these DRAM chips.

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Anandtech's interviews give us a preview: 128-bit wide bus (8 x 16-bit it seems), two chips, LPDDR4x protocol. The details beyond that are pure speculation on my part.




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