Rumours have it that Intel could be planning to bring back its on-package memory architecture, with the future Razor Lake-AX being the potential candidate for its return. The rumour comes by way of Haze via X.
Haze’s rumour is, as it is with all rumours, devoid of any detail. Clearly, the possibility of Intel bringing back on-package memory remains unconfirmed, but there’s also no detail about the memory type, its capacity, or even bandwidth. For that matter, very little is known about Razor Lake-AX.
What is known is that Intel’s future processor is alleged to be a competitor to AMD’s Halo-class APUs, which include Strix Halo, Gorgon Halo, and the upcoming Medusa Halo. We’ve already seen the prowess of Strix Halo in the form of both the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and 392.
Post-Lunar Lake Return
It technically hasn’t been that long since Intel introduced on-package memory, too. Back in 2024, the blue chipmaker launched Lunar Lake, its successor to Meteor Lake just a year before that. Lunar Lake was, for lack of a better word, revolutionary. As per the theme of this article, the architecture was redesigned from the ground up to be all-encompassing and, technically speaking, served as the company’s first attempt at making its own APU.
This was also the mobile CPU generation in which Intel ditched its Hyperthreading technology. Intel says that this decision was made after it managed to improve the performance-per-watt.
The main appeal of Lunar Lake, though, was its construction. Built on a 3nm process — part of it being made by TSMC — it also introduced on-package memory design, offering LPDDR5X configurations soldered directly onto the same die, with capacities of either 16GB or 32GB, but at frequencies of 8,533MT/s across the board.
This design provided several benefits to laptop manufacturers, the biggest boon being the space: because its memory is soldered directly onto the same package, laptop makers could save space in the construction of their products. As a direct result of this space-saving, they were also able to dramatically reduce the weight of their laptops. The downside to this design, though, is that there is no room of RAM expansion.
In the case of Razor Lake-AX, Intel is likely resurrecting this design due to the ongoing memory shortage and absurd price tags that are being driven up by said shortage. On that note, and assuming that this will be the case, here’s to hoping that the chipmaker will come up with variants of the CPU that have more than just 32GB. It would be nice to see 64GB and 128GB options.
(Source: Haze via X, TPU, Videocardz)
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