HOWEVER, it all comes down to adoption, adoption, adoption. Until several board makers are making boards with CAMM2 support and manufacturers are making CAMM2 format memory - it'll struggle to gain any adoption. If we're lucky it'll become popular in the enthusiast space with some very high-end boards, and gradually work its way down to mainstream.

Or maybe backwards, through things like laptops - where maybe the packaging benefits are higher.

It looks like a daughter board to me. From another site it appears these can hold anywhere from 8GB to 128GB, 256GB planned. Some additional discussion on Reddit [1]

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1dipisg/what_is_c...

I would have expected the ram slots to be on the other side of the motherboard, on the opposite side of the CPU pins to shorten the traces even more. Why do they have to be side by side?

In short:

RAM sticks aren't dying anytime soon, but DDR6/LPDDR modules may come in CAMM(2) formats for faster data transfer rates. It's still chips on a module, just with shorter traces to the CPU due to the orientation.

Also, given RAM shortage and the fact that DDR6 isn't anywhere near consumer availability, this will take a while, probably at least until mid-2028 for any kind of wide adoption. And it's likely that DDR6 will also still be available as sticks, at least in the budget/lower speed sector?

I doubt I will ever get a system with this type of ram, but if it can be easily upgraded then that is an improvement. I usually buy used or in reality I take Laptops from people I know who went and bought the latest and greatest hardware.

I am typing this on a T430 with NetBSD I got from a relative a year ago. I upgraded the ram to 16G back then and today I replaced the keyboard. The keyboard's power button stopped working, seems a small piece broke off over the years and it got to the point it needed replacement.

FWIW, I want a laptop where if you throw it at someone they will know it/s.