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Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

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Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#81
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are saying it from the perspective rather than two separate banks which are rarely both full it's one bank which is only ever full when 100% of the hardware is full. That said I think many miss that's how integrated graphics memory management had been working on x86 systems for many many years already. I.e. the "dedicated RAM" slider in the boot firmware is a legacy holdover that should be set to a minim…

They are saying it from the perspective of the RAM being on the same die as the CPU. This is one of the innovations of the Apple Silicon architecture as it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces memory access latency. It's not just TSMC's 3nm process. It's also Apple engineering.

It's not on die, it's separate dies on chip.

This engineering was common in x86 CPUs by 2013 when AMD introduced Heterogeneous System Architecture which utilized Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access. The approach has its upsides and downsides, the latter generally being a unified bus tends to have much lower overall bandwidth (even in the Max) and runtime scalability issues. Upsides are more obvious for the types of systems people want APUs for in the first place though so that's usually fine.

The main bit of engineering Apple should be lauded for in the memory department is the gumption to throw the hundreds of GB/s at the mid and high end models.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#82

I wonder whether we'll pay for it with bumped prices too. Time will tell. And also how much of the extra RAM will be taken up by MacOS AI bloat?

Zero in the EU

Are Apple not allowed to offer AI features in the EU?

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero in the EU

Are Apple not allowed to offer AI features in the EU?

There's a concern that they would have to make AI pluggable so you could use different providers. So far they haven't done that, so for now they simply aren't offering AI at all (on the iPhone; I don't think DMA applies to Macs).

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has to be, even a small model is 4gb of RAM. Open up any O365 based product in Chrome and kiss another 2gb goodbye if you only have 8gb you're left with very little after the OS...

So no actual increase in available RAM and no improvement in performance then. That'll be an extra £999, sir.

> So no actual increase in available RAM and no improvement in performance then.

yes, once you open a bunch more applications, you will have the same amount free as before… the scandal of it all!!!

this is like the tech equivalent of “once I spend all my money I barely have anything left”.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#89
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are saying it from the perspective of the RAM being on the same die as the CPU. This is one of the innovations of the Apple Silicon architecture as it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces memory access latency. It's not just TSMC's 3nm process. It's also Apple engineering.

It's not on die, it's separate dies on chip. This engineering was common in x86 CPUs by 2013 when AMD introduced Heterogeneous System Architecture which utilized Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access. The approach has its upsides and downsides, the latter generally being a unified bus tends to have much lower overall bandwidth (even in the Max) and runtime scalability issues. Upsides are more obvious for the types of s…

HSA was not “unified” in the modern sense. It still required designating memory as gpu or cpu side and these implied different cache coherency rules that meant memory couldn’t actually be shared, by default. To actually share memory you had to use a special “garlic bus” that guaranteed visibility and ordering and massively slowed down performance. Similarly, it was also impossible for the gpu to see cpu memory unless it was pinned and tagged for a special “onion bus”, but at least this was relatively fast iirc.

https://www.realworldtech.com/fusion-llano/3/

In contrast apple actually has everything tied into a single unified space with a single controller that immediately makes all writes visible regardless of where the happen.

They’ve also got enormously more memory bandwidth to play with. M1 Max is close to PS5 in both shader configuration and memory bandwidth.

Re: Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models

#90
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay I'll bite... Which hardware are you using that has more longevity than a typical Mac laptop? I've become increasingly annoyed by the software deterioration, with my laptop losing gobs of power while "sleeping". The only thing stopping me from changing back to windows for my next laptop is (my perception of) the terrible hardware choices on that side. My mental model for typical windows laptops is that they are w…

It's about a specific issue known in the 2016+ laptops, I just don't want to carry the risk of this known issue bricking my laptop out of warranty. And still exists in the current ones. I have a 2012 i7 Thinkpad T530, that is still useful. My whole life desktop machines are usually useful for about a decade. Cheap laptops don't seem to last more than 4-5 years at most, but the top end laptops built really well can la…

there isn’t an “issue” beyond the TPM being a potential point of failure, and all x86 laptops nowadays have a similar TPM and similar point of failure.

What do you think happens if your AMD cpu dies? That cpu has a pluton security module inside and if it dies, bye bye bitlocker keys.

you’re getting downvoted because you’re spreading decade-old FUD from the days before the tech community had wrapped their head around TPM. Any secure system is going to be equally dead if your TPM dies and this very much includes every windows laptop etc.

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