Motherboard Memory Limitations

digitalunity asks: "When most motherboards with room for 3 DIMMs state their maximum memory as 768MB, it would seem that this is based upon the assumption that a 256MB DIMM is the largest available. I noticed that IBM has said that 1GB DIMMs will be available soon. Are the stated memory limitations of motherboards inherent to their design or can you really put more memory than they state?"

Comments

Re:How would they test 'em ??

[substrate]

Usually if you look at the datasheets the companies such as Supermicro put out you'll see an asterix next to any specifications that relied on options which were in the pipeline but didn't exist at manufacture. The asterix states that the board hasn't been tested with the parts in question.

The engineers who design the motherboard can make pretty educated guesses as to what the electrical performance required at the socket will be for these parts. As long as the mechanical interface doesn't change and the electrical interface either sticks with preliminary information or doesn't change much from existing implementations they're in good shape. They protect themselves with the disclaimer: If the external manufactures don't make say a 1 gigabyte SDRAM with the projected specifications you can't sue then as it was just a best effort attempt.