It's been a minute since we first heard about the all-new memory standard for laptops, Compression Attached Memory Module, or CAMM for short. Dell first introduced its home-brewed memory standard almost two years ago, and then JEDEC ratified it to replace SO-DIMM in late 2023. Now, Lenovo is first out of the gate with a new workstation featuring the new memory standard, making it the first company to ship a product with the most recent version of CAMM for laptops.
Lenovo has announced the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 mobile workstation, including 64GB of LPDDR5x CAMM2 memory. The company said it worked with Micron to develop the standard, and it will consume up to 61% less "active power" compared with DDR5 SO-DIMM sticks. According to Lenovo, the CAMM2 module is also 64% smaller than the SO-DIMMs it is replacing. Despite that advancement, the new memory type will deliver more bandwidth than SO-DIMM while offering dual-channel performance from a single module.
Of course, those are the main reasons why CAMM was invented in the first place. It replaces the stacked design of SO-DIMM with a single, dual-channel chunk of memory that's wide and flat, so it's not really a "stick" anymore. However, it can be much more compact, which is crucial for a laptop, while remaining user-replaceable. However, CAMM modules are typically bolted to the motherboard instead of using a spring-loaded retention device. Also, though 64GB is high capacity for a single CAMM module, Dell has previously shown off 128GB CAMM modules too.
Otherwise, the new Lenovo P1 seems like a formidable machine, and the company says it's "AI-ready" since it has both an Intel Core Ultra CPU and Nvidia Ada Lovelace graphics. It's the first laptop we've heard of that offers the flagship Meteor Lake CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H. Intel famously launched Meteor Lake without that particular SKU being available to test. It also offers up to 8TB of NVME storage, Wi-Fi 7, HDMI 2.1, and a plethora of ports. According to TechSpot, pricing starts at $2,619 and will launch next month.
