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Hardware

Dell Defends Its Controversial New Laptop Memory (pcworld.com) 100

After Dell's new Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) leaked out last week, several tech sites led many to believe that the company was taking a path to "lock out users upgrades." However, according to PCWorld citing both the person who designed and patented the CAMM standard, as well as the product manager of the first Dell Precision laptop to feature it, "the intent of the new memory module standard is to head-off looming bandwidth ceilings in the current SO-DIMM designs." They claim that CAMM could increase performance, improve reliability, aid user upgrades, and eventually lower costs too. From the report: Most of the internet hot takes last week, however, reacted to CAMM being proprietary, which is typically viewed as a method to lock people into buying upgrades only from one company. Dell officials, however, insist that's not the case at all. "One of the tenants of the PC industry is standards," said Dell's Tom Schnell, the Senior Distinguished Engineer who designed much of it. "We believe in that; we put standards into our products. We're not keeping it to ourselves, we hope it becomes the next industry standard."

Schnell said that Dell isn't making the modules and has worked with memory companies as well as Intel on this. In the future, a person with a CAMM-equipped laptop will be able to buy RAM from any third party and install it in the laptop. Yes, initially, Dell will likely be the only place to get CAMM upgrades, but that should change as the standard scales up and is adopted by other PC makers. The new memory modules are also built using commodity DRAMs just like conventional SO-DIMMs.

In fact, Dell points out, it's not even "proprietary" on its own laptops. The first Precision workstations that come with CAMM will also eventually be offered with conventional SO-DIMMs using an interposer. Mano Gialusis, product manager for Precision workstations, said the interposer option goes into the same CAMM mount, too. With CAMM now a reality, Dell's next step is to get it in front of JEDEC, the memory standards organization, to make it available to others, he said. Why not create a standard from scratch? Schnell said its far easier to get a standard minted once it's proven to work rather than trying to simply create something anew every time.
The report goes on to say that Dell does hold patents on the CAMM design "and there will be royalties," but "no standard can go forward through JEDEC unless the licensing is not anti-competitive, is reasonably priced, and cannot discriminate against a company."
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Dell Defends Its Controversial New Laptop Memory

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  • we don't need thinner in all systems even more so for an pro system. Like an Precision.
    Now what is so bad about bigger systems?? with more room for bigger battery's, room for an cheaper 2.5 ssd or sshd or hdd vs an m.2 one.

    At least it's in some kind of slot and not soldered down like other thin systems.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. It is some kind of fetishism, some kind of "mine is thinner" personality prosthetic, apparently. There is a lower end to thickness when things start to deteriorate with regards to sturdiness, reliability, battery life and price. I just bought a completely new business-capable Lenovo notebook for something like $800. Memory, 2 NVME slots (one short with the preinstalled disk), wireless, all standard components, full-HD screen. Not heavy, decent battery life. Battery replaceable with a screw-driver an

      • > There is a lower end to thickness when things start to deteriorate with regards to sturdiness, reliability, battery life and price.

        And if you were cynical enough, you'd read that as a list of features for the manufacture. Well, maybe not battery life so much. But the rest? With the good-old-days of continuous substantial performance improvements driving new sales firmly behind us, where's the profit in selling a physically durable, long-lived product?

        Heck - especially with the drive for thinner, how

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          > There is a lower end to thickness when things start to deteriorate with regards to sturdiness, reliability, battery life and price.

          And if you were cynical enough, you'd read that as a list of features for the manufacture.

          I am cynical enough. That is why I put in the list.

          where's the profit in selling a physically durable, long-lived product?

          Depends on what you want. If it is "Get rich, now!", making a quality product is certainly the wrong approach. If you want your company to be stable and long-lived, that long-lived, reliable quality product is the way to go. Sure, you only get a small market segment, but these people do not go away. And if they do, many will come back again after experience the crappy "innovation" others sell to them. I do understand that this collides with the ideals of ma

      • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @12:09AM (#62483006)

        Similar experience here regarding Lenovo devices.
        I own a Lenovo X1 and its SSD became defective. My knee-jerk reaction was "oh crap", but after investigating how to replace it (took a few minutes), I realized it's very easy to service it.
        Took me about 15 minutes, working slowly, to open the laptop, pull out the bad SSD and put in a new one. No weird plastic clamps, no hidden, proprietary screws, every step was simple and straightforward.
        Guess which brand I am going to keep using...

        • by Anonymous Coward

          That's interesting. I also just replaced two mechanical HDD with SSD in my two Dell laptops. It also took me about 15 minutes with just a screwdriver, not counting the time needed to clone the original drive to the SSD. New Crucial MX500 was about $55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

          I've had very good luck with Dell computers. They are the only brand we use at work and I've had to call on-site replacements about 6 times in the last 6 years on over 230 laptops. However, it's a fact that some people

          • I've had very good luck with Dell computers. They are the only brand we use at work and I've had to call on-site replacements about 6 times in the last 6 years on over 230 laptops. However, it's a fact that some people will have problems. Some models from each OEM will also have some design flaws, but overall I think most OEMs are doing a pretty good job.

            I did a 20+ year career as a sysadmin and the last 10 years of it was supporting Dell systems. My experience is similar to yours, VERY well made systems, and in the few cases where there was a problem, a quick call to the US-based support got a quick resolution.

            Now that I'm retired, I've stayed with Dell on my personal systems, of course, now they're off-lease refurbs, as my budget doesn't have room for new machines.

        • Ugh, I've owned various X1's over the years, the current one isn't a genuine Carbon any more AFAICT but white plastic with a thin, easily-flaked-off layer of black paint over it. There are three places on the surface where it's flaked off revealing white plastic underneath, and two of the three aren't anywhere that gets any use or wear. if you google this problem you'll see lots of other users who have encountered this, on Lenovo's flagship, and most expensive, line of business laptops. So it's a brand I
          • I got the new X1 Yoga (the Gen 6, not the 7 that is supposed to be out by now) and it's all metal, which I had no idea they did for some reason. Frankly I would've prefered a good plastic/carbon construction.

            It still seems reasonably servicible by taking out a handful of visible screws on the back. But I can easily feel that the keyboard is already much shorter travel than the past ThinkPads. The memory is soldered in anyway so I hope any further thickness reduction (it is pretty thin, but thinner would be

          • I guess that affects people differently, I use mine with my 3D printers, it's never moved out of the house, just from one room to another. I needed something light and portable, with good battery life, limited power, and I got it.

        • by fuzzyf ( 1129635 )
          I can't take Lenovo seriously after the Superfish scandal. It just made it very clear that management have no clue what they are doing. I'm blaming management because I'm certain some technical dude was "wtf ppl?!", but as ignored.

          Completely braking HTTPS (as in remove any validation from the site you are actually connecting to) on all their laptops is a monumentally stupid move. Every security mechanisms we have on the web is dependent on HTTPS working properly. They handled it by saying "We thought our
          • Same here. I switched our corporate purchases away from Lenovo due to superfish. I have enough to deal with, and don't need worries about compromises delivered by the manufacturer. If you've got a Lenovo, does the next driver security update include the next superfish? How much time would verifying it doesn't take? Want to do that for every update?!? No thanks!
        • by Tora ( 65882 )

          The one with CCP spyware embedded in it's firmware?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It isn't about "locking out user upgrades". It's about forcing users to buy proprietary -- i.e., more expansive -- components that are only sold by Dell.

      I made the mistake of buying a Dell computer once. It was the most retarded piece of shit I've ever seen.

      I wanted to add a second hard drive but discovered that even though there were 2 empty SATA ports on the motherboard, they were unusable because the tiny, joke of a power supply only had 2 wires. One for the motherboard and one (with a splitter)
      • I had a problem with a Latitude laptop which came with space for 2.5 SATA drive and an M.2 SATA drive. It came from the factory with an M.2, and because it wasn't ordered from the factory with a 2.5 SATA, it didn't include the bracket or the connector cable (which historically have been just there).

        I even tracked down what those specific part numbers were, but you could not get them for love or money. I was even working for a Dell partner and went through the channel guys I knew. Their take was it was on

    • by Zuriel ( 1760072 )
      Battery, thermals, and a better keyboard are all great reasons to make a laptop bigger. Making room for big, slow, power hungry storage really isn't. Hardly anyone wants tons of storage on their laptop, and the people who do already own USB hard disks or NAS systems.
    • Well, there's two things at work here. Yes, this allows for a thinner system, but it also improves latency and memory speed by just being a better design. Let's remember that the SODIMM form factor is almost 20 years old. In the latest gen laptops available today, if you go over a certain amount of RAM installed, they actually downlock the memory due to the nature of SODIMM design.

      So this isn't just about "thin" - that's actually a byproduct of engineering for better performance as well. And if you can

    • Agreed, the need for thin makes little sense to me. The apples are thin so that means it must be great and desired by all, right? Not. I am perfectly happy with my Lenovo P15G. It ain't light or thin but it will take up to 128GB in its four SO-DIMMs and I am not worried about over heating or it being so delicate because it is an exercise in miniaturization for no real reason. Looks rather expensive and licenses are expensive regardless of what Dell says. One mans reasonable is anothers ass rape!
  • Have you seen what they're charging for Server hard drives lately when spec'ing out a server? Even the SATA drives are nearly $1k for 1 TB! Time to start buying from other vendors.
    • Not just Dell. All the used-to-be-reputable manufacturers are doing blatantly stupid design changes these days. Most of them feel like those companies hit the glass ceiling and are improving for the sake of improvement.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        As one smart guy from the military spectrum told the audience at a conference a long time ago "You do not need the logo on the box.". Saves you often 2x or more and if you have at least one person that does understand hardware (or use a consultant that does) you get the same or better quality. With standards you also very much do not need original replacement parts if something breaks. This sales model is historic and makes currently no sense anymore, but too many people have not found out and too many comp

    • Have you seen what they're charging for Server hard drives lately when spec'ing out a server? Even the SATA drives are nearly $1k for 1 TB! Time to start buying from other vendors.

      Shame that's not even in the slightest bit true. You can get a 960Gbyte SSD cheaper than that from Dell in their servers, even on web prices, which are often considerably higher than the prices you can pay via other routes.

  • Tenants (Score:5, Informative)

    by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @08:42PM (#62482630)

    "One of the tenants of the PC industry is standards," said Dell's Tom Schnell . . . .

    The word should be "tenets".

  • by jmccue ( 834797 )
    Well this dude is not getting a Dell
  • by StevenMaurer ( 115071 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @08:59PM (#62482662) Homepage

    That really the bottom line.

    No one is saying a company shouldn't get fair compensation for new substantial innovation, but for it to be a standard, it really has to be open. No submarine patents or contractual clauses.

    The same sort of thing happened when DDR originally came on line as well.

    • I believe they are looking to submit this to JEDEC as a standard, and JEDEC requires any standards with patents attached to be licensed on F/RAND terms.

      So, yes.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @09:17PM (#62482698)

    The same company that changed the position of two pins on their PSUs and Mobos just to force you to buy replacements from them?

    Please, give me a break.

    • by JakFrost ( 139885 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @12:21AM (#62483018)

      I was about to post the same thing about Dell desktop PCs using proprietary and purposefully changed power supply unit connectors and pins. Dell has been doing this for decades and because they are such a large purchaser of OEM parts they can dictate how to sabotage the standard that they "so call" without offering any benefits.

      Smells a lot like Apple being able to throw their weight around to demand proprietary connectors and avoid standardization, even though I like their lightning connector design myself.

      Sony does the same thing with their proprietery format for their memory stick cards instead of using standard SD formats.

      So many examples of so many companies doing this once they get large enough to be able to use the standards only to pervert them to their own purpose.

      Sounds a lot like Microsoft's long term goals of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish usage of standards.

    • Of course they follow standards. They reuse the same shitty case design with the same non-ATX motherboard that fits their own internal case design standard.

      No one said "open standards". Just Dell standards :-)

    • Yeah, I learned that expensive lesson after buying one of their midi PCs on sale. It was so non-standard that I had to replace literally everything but the CPU and RAM in order to upgrade the graphics card.
  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @09:24PM (#62482712)

    Every now and then some scummy company tries crap like this. As long as buyers go along with it and let themselves be screwed over, that is on them.

  • It looks like a good idea if they can get the rest of the industry to go along with it ...except for one thing... I'm getting bad vibes from the design being too much like those LGA sockets with lots of tiny little metal fingers that are really easy to break, permanently, if you're not careful, or rather if someone else is an idiot. Except in this case every pin is important. With a CPU socket, a pin might be the 10th PCI channel of the third slot, so maybe only half of them would be essential.
  • JEDEC standards are always in long discussion before any products come out, and are often finalized before products come out as well. The entire reason for the standard is that it's interoperable. Dell is just post hocing their own BS lock in attempts after it backfired.
    • JEDEC standards are always in long discussion before any products come out, and are often finalized before products come out as well.

      JEDEC is nothing more than a consortium. There is zero requirement for every process in a consortium to follow the same process for getting a standard approved, just because DDR5 is in discussion before products exists doesn't mean connectors and form factors can't be based on existing products.

      The IEC is no different. Sometimes they discuss standards before they come out, sometimes they adopt industry or even vendor specific standards (e.g. digital audio was adopted as an IEC standard a few years ago, a co

  • I smell Rambus
  • It really comes down to how often the bulk of people upgrade their ram. Both this and the GPU socket sound like a cheap way for dell to customize the system. Its not that they are locking you in, they might just don't care one way or another. They look at the market and determine people want to buy a thin, light laptop with x specs and they can't do that with SO-DIMMS right now. They aren't in the used market, they are in the bulk business market

    I buy a dell laptop, not because the Warranty but because

    • I have a Precision 7540. It has four slots. Two of them require removing the bottom of the case--no big deal. The other two require removing the keyboard, which requires removing the bottom of the case. They fit those slots where they could. When I went to upgrade the RAM, it took a bit longer than I expected because of the extra disassembly. I would have welcomed quicker access like this.

  • by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @10:32PM (#62482878)

    Look at the diagrams;
    https://www.techpowerup.com/29... [techpowerup.com]
    https://www.aroged.com/2022/04... [aroged.com]
    https://www.extremetech.com/co... [extremetech.com]

    The module board and chips might be thin, but the compression connector on the main board / mobo seems fairly thick. Does this negate the thickness savings from the memory board itself?

    • Not really. Surface compression connectors aren't new and they are used precisely because of how incredibly thin they are especially compared to connectors which hold daughterboards by the edge.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It looks like it's not really any thinner than SO-DIMMs, it's just got a larger surface area for attaching memory ICs to. So instead of having two SO-DIMMs stacked you can have one CAMM module with the same capacity.

      • by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @10:22AM (#62484030) Journal

        Which, according to Dell, means that you can have uniform wire lengths that are actually shorter going to each memory IC, resulting in better latency and higher speed. They use the example of one of their own current laptops where fully populating 128GB of RAM in the SODIMM slots will result in downlocking the memory in order to keep it stable, because there's measurable difference in wire length.

        This isn't just about "thin" - if they wanted to be the thinnest they could be, they would have gone the Apple route and just soldered the memory to the main board. This seems to be a good compromise of still retaining modularity, while replacing the 20-year old SODIMM connector that is becoming a bottleneck. The next question is if Dell is going to throw this thing at JEDEC for standardization under F/RAND terms so the rest of the industry can cross-license and everyone wins.

        Well, except Apple customers, because Apple will continue to Apple.

  • OK, it's only an anecdote, but I had a Dell XPS (so, one of their higher-end series) laptop and almost everything on that piece of shit broke. The SD reader broke, the optical drive broke, even the tacky chrome trim around the outside of the computer snapped off. There was room on this 15 inch laptop for a number pad, but Dell put two stupid speakers beside the chicklet keyboard instead. The keyboard was backlit but the labels wore off the keys (and I don't type THAT much! My generic desktop keyboard is jus

  • How did it go when someone introduced a revolutionary, expensive, proprietary new kind of memory module [wikipedia.org]?
  • All things aside, these new CAMM modules look like a rough DIY project from somebody's garage. They are really inelegant with sprouting screw holes, uneven chip layouts and a bulky header (compression back side). Overall, just this reason is enough to turn me off from their designs...

    • Some people care about how their computers function. For everyone else, well you could take a tour of an Apple facility and go masturbate over a motherboard.

      Personally I only get turned off by things I see, not things I don't. But since you get turned off by things you can't see just remember I'm a 150kg middle aged balding person with acne sitting here typing this to you naked. :-P

  • by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:09AM (#62483042)
    But yes, there ARE technical reasons at this point to abandon DIMM.

    While none of the DDRs are compatible with each other, the sockets are so similar as to be electrically indistinguishable. Which means an interconnect originally finalized in 1998 to carry signals at 200-400MHz is trying to carry signals at literally microwave frequencies: 3200MHz for DDR4, and starting at 5000MHz for DDR5.

    Thanks to what are practically miracles in link integrity management*, PCI express - which originally came out in 2003 - has gone from carrying 2.5 gigabaud signals using 8/10 encoding to carrying 32 gigabaud signals using PAM4 and encoded 256/260, all on the original socket, but that's the end of it. There is probably not going to be a PCIe-6 because it will all be CXL by then, because it is simply no longer possible to increase the bandwidth in the PCIe connector.

    The socket has had a good run, y'all. Time to give it up.

    Another issue on the server side: Two modern sockets with 8-channel memory now occupy the full, entire width of the inside of a chassis. Sapphire Rapids may still "only" have 8 channels, but the socket is going to be so gigantic it may not fit in a normal dual-socket side-by-side any more. Memory sockets must get thinner.

    * seriously - open up a server chassis, and there are little BGAs near the ends where the pcie cables go from the mainboard into the risers. Those little BGAs are PCI express 4 link retimer/regenerator/conditioner circuits that program both dozens of levels of preemphasis and an overall gain spanning close to 80dB as part of link training... for a link that's maybe a few feet long.
  • by gTsiros ( 205624 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:13AM (#62483044)

    > we hope it becomes the next industry standard."

    In other words, it is *not an industry standard*

    Which is the definition of proprietary (more or less)

    Rarely can I distill an entire article in one sentence, but I'm happy when I can.

    • I read this as saying it is not an industry standard now, which is merely a statement of fact, but we intend it to be an industry standard in the future. That is, Dell intend to open the design to allow anybody to implement it.

      Presumably, many new technologies started out as something proprietary in the early stages, then maybe licensed out to form a de facto standard, and finally some committee sits down and works out a standard that everybody agrees with. Industry standards codify existing industry practi

      • by Holi ( 250190 )
        I see it as Dell may want to license the design, they have never been a company to give anything away for free.
        • Literally every single hardware company out there has some kind of patent on something, that is probably cross-licensed to other hardware companies for in-kind licenses to their respective patents.

          It's only when you get someone like Rambus who manages to submarine patent a standard and sneak it through the standards process that we really end up with problems. And that's why the industry dropped them like a lump of cesium.

        • From what I read of the JEDEC rules for standardisation, the originator of a technology is not obliged to give it away, but any licensing terms must be reasonable. That means not screwing your competitors in such a way as to prevent them from competing.

      • As a customer, I would still say "come back when it is a Jedec standard. Because at this point, it is far from guaranteed the industry will follow Dell and adopt their design. In the meantime, I've heard Lenovo is not so bad...

        • I entirely agree with that, if only because I tend to avoid the bleeding edge, and prefer current technology that has a bit of a track record. Of course, a technology is not going to get a positive track record if nobody adopts it. It may well be that the rest of the industry turn their noses up at Dell's idea, which would put an end to any standardisation effort. We will have to wait and see.

          • Sometimes, the rest of the industry turn their noses up at an idea because they dislike the licensing fees, even if the tech is quite good. Has happened with Rambus and Firewire.

            But in this context, I'd mostly want to avoid vendor lock-in. To two of my aging PCs, I have added more (DDR3) memory at some time. With a vendor-exclusive standard, that would be much more difficult.

    • There is a time in the history of almost every industry standard, where it was not an industry standard. Then the industry adopted it as a standard.

  • Because that's all this is.

    A lock-in method that turns the crap Dell produces into e-waste faster.

  • Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)

    by paul_engr ( 6280294 ) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:40AM (#62483060)
    Picked up another 5560 yesterday for work. My MO is to buy with the least memory possible and then get corsair or crucial sodimms on the aftermarket for 35% of what dell wants for OE memory preinstalled. Fuck proprietary lock-in. Hopefully this fails hard like rdram
    • It's even worse in the server world. Dell charges well over $400 per DIMM when you can buy the same memory elsewhere for around $100-120. When you've got 32 memory slots per machine, that really adds up.

      Hard drives are the same. Sure, they use enterprise drives, but does it really cost $600 for a 2TB 7200 RPM spinning disk? I can buy a 12-16 TB Exos for half that. That's often the cheapest option, and they don't let you buy without a drive (or without at least one DIMM per CPU).

      • You're missing the point of every major computer OEM. They spent the years *before* the parts were available on newegg/etc making sure the technology will work. None of the DIMMS or disks come out of the factory first time, perfect. There is a huge bit of infrastructure making sure the stuff works well- and that infrastructure has to be paid for.

        I used to work for that company that Rhymes with "Hell" - I even worked with Tom Schnell when he was in ESG (in RR5, to be specific). The major OEMs work with Intel

        • Thank you for the reply. That's interesting to hear, and makes sense for new technologies. I've only seen it from the consumer side, where it comes across as major sticker shock. However, I also assume a lot of these costs are paid for by the companies that develop the memory and hard drives too, and by the time many of the nth-generation servers are available, the memory/drives have been available elsewhere off-the-shelf for a long time. I'd expect OEMs to have a small markup, and I'd be fine paying it

          • Profit margins on computers are surprisingly small, with too many companies doing the "wal-mart" and insisting on quarter/quarter price reductions. Unfortunately, to be competitive, you have to factor that into the initial cost to even get the business in the first place. Not sure about drives, but the profit margin on DRAM is INCREDIBLY small. To pay for the R&D you must make a massive investment- enough so that most of the tech of the silicon is actually purchased intellectual property- and everyone i

  • If you you look at the various bus technologies that have been used on the PC over the years, it is clear that ever increasing bandwidth requirements mean existing technology can't cope, and something new is needed, that breaks the old standard. This CAMM idea looks like a case in point. According to the article, it solves some genuine problems with SO-DIMM.

    What people seem to be objecting to is that Dell will keep this technology to themselves, as a tool for proprietary lock-in. I think that is a bit prema

  • "One of the tenants of the PC industry"... did you mean: "tenets"?
  • Should be " tenets " [merriam-webster.com] and not " tenants ".

    Interesting would be to know where the mistake crept in from. Is that what the person said, how a reporter transcribed it, a spell-check correction, or an NLP making best guess?

  • What a sell-out, if he's such a distinguished engineer then he would be upset and being the Kingpin in this drama.

    The guy could care less and lock-in is clearly the strategy with all of this talk about how it's not the strategy yet there's going to be royalties.

    F*ck your royalties. And screw you Tom.

  • I'm a Lenovo and HP kind of guy, so I probably won't have to worry about this.
  • Most people missed that is also about redesigning PCB so you have less complicated lines translating to less power consumption and/or more Hz.
  • Elon Musk buys DELL
  • Dell claims 128GB modules will be available.

    They will not be available in 2022, nor will they be available in 2023, if they are ever available.

    Dell is lying.

    Prove me wrong.

    • Err, they have released photos of it. 64 2GB DRAM chips on one board. It's listed as an option on the Precision 7670 and Precision 7770 spec sheets. Seems like they're pretty serious about selling it. Should be on sale in about two weeks, check back and see.
  • Oh really? Wouldst thou care to explain this then:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Guess they didn't learn their lesson from Rambus...

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