> That accounts only for a very small increase in power.

What are you basing this statement on?

PHY is only part of the DRAM chip, and trace length is only a part of what determines energy per bit, so increasing trace length by x % wouldn't increase overall power by x %, but a fraction of that. Thinking about it, there is a bigger problem than just energy/bit scaling; since LPDDR switches dynamically between high-speed and lower speed modes, the high speed mode is likely not used a lot. However, the low speed modes rely on being able to turn the termination off, which saves significant amounts of power. A socket may make that difficult to achieve, and if you have to run with ODT in the, I'm assuming, mostly-used low power mode, you might end up with a significant increase in power.

Of course there are multiple factors at play, but that observation doesn’t justify the conclusion that any particular factor makes only a ‘very small l’ contribution. Do you have even a back-of-an-envelope calculation to support this claim? The knock-on effects of increased trace length can be quite complex.