Open
DIMM
DRAM design made accesible...
The fully open hardware and software DIMM DDR ecosystem for research and evaluation.
View on GitHub
OpenDIMM
The fully open hardware and software DIMM DDR ecosystem for research and evaluation.
View on GitHub
For more than twenty years the DIMM form-factor (a.k.a. RAM stick) memory has been a consumable for laptops, personal computers and servers. Despite its widespread market availability and affordable pricing, the technological and engineering details has never been revealed to the public in an open source manner. Documentation and reference designs are not easily discoverable and understandable by the public. Complex PCB design requirements is another factor that has distanced startups, enthusiast and makers from attempting to design and manufacture DRAM modules.
The OpenDIMM project is anopen
source
initiative
todesign the following three components for every DDR
generation (starting from DDR4):
1. Pinout Tester Board
2. SPD Programmer (RPi Hat)
3. Memory Stick (the DIMM module itself)
In the spirit of the European and American Chips Acts, I believe that the OpenDIMM project will become a solid ground for geographically independent and robust Random Access Memory (RAM) manufacturing cycles and ecosystems, spreading across the academia, businesses and individual makers.
The DDR4 version (code named “The Freestyler”) of the OpenDIMM initiative is now available on GitHub.
Compared to the other DIMM modules that use at least 8-layer PCB stackups, “The Freestyler” lowers this requirement to only 6 layers, uses only through-hole vias for the fanout and implements an alternative termination routing path for the address and control signal lanes. As a result of the simplified design, the board can be manufactured by one of the cheapest PCB facilities worldwide (JLCPCB).
The project has been developed with all Altium products (an
evaluation version of Altium Designer and a licensed version of
Altium CircuitStudio). But don’t worry... It is also available as a
public Altium CircuitMaker project - so that OpenDIMM is now fully
explorable and editable with this fantastic freeware CAD/CAM
software.
KiCAD6 export and further development should also be considered in
the near future. Community contributions are more than welcome!
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