A turbocharger ball-bearing assembly incorporates a cageless set of ceramic bearing balls operating within outer and inner bearing raceways, wherein the outer bearing raceway is on the inside of a fractured outer race. The fractured outer race is located in a counterbore of a center body of a turbocharger. The center body, in cooperation with the ball-bearing assembly, provides for rotationally supporting, and axially restraining, a rotor shaft of the turbocharger. The outside diameter of the fractured outer bearing race is less than a corresponding inside diameter of the counterbore, and the center body provides for supplying lubricant to an isolation annulus therebetween, so as to provide fir squeeze-film damping the ball-bearing assembly within the counterbore.