The first Macs equipped with processors designed by Apple have finally arrived.
But inside, they’re not like other computers. Apple first introduced its approach to systems design, learned over years of iterating on the iPhone and iPad, on the Mac.
Those of us who are used to thinking of personal computers in certain terms are going to have to adapt to this new reality. It’s a world where Apple sells three different Mac models without even revealing the internal processor clock speed. (This isn’t the case for the iPhone or iPad, after all.)
But perhaps the item on the datasheet that will require the biggest deviation from the old way of thinking is system memory. This is a feature that is already often misunderstood (and often confused with storage size). Now, Apple’s Macsilicon use it in a completely different way.
The old way of thinking about RAM is gone. Welcome to the world of unified memory architecture.
Part of the package
Like Intel’s integrated graphics chips, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor, and system memory is shared by both the processor and graphics cores. (And also, in the case of M1, the nuclei that make up the neural motor.)
But by changing its terminology to describe a unified memory architecture, Apple tries to emphasize that the M1’s approach is a little different.
The biggest difference is that on the M1, memory is part of the M1’s own architecture. There are no memory slots or slots on a Mac M1 motherboard, nor an area where a memory chip has been permanently soldered. Instead, the memory is built into the same package that contains the M1 itself.
This means that when you buy an M1 based Mac and choose a memory configuration, that’s it. There have been many other Macs soldered to memory that couldn’t be upgraded, but it’s a little different, as memory is basically part of the M1 package itself.
Looking at the first Mac M1 series, it looks like the M1 is only capable of using 8GB or 16GB of memory. That might not be a hard limit, maybe Apple is holding back on limiting those low-end systems. But it’s more likely that we won’t see a Mac using Apple’s silicon with more than 16GB until Apple supplies a high-end variant of the M1.
The advantages of being united
But Apple is not putting memory into its on-chip systems out of spite. It does so because it is an approach that can lead to dramatic speed benefits.
The M1 processor memory is a single set accessible from anywhere in the processor. If your system requires more memory for graphics, you can allocate it.
If you need more memory for the neural engine, anyway. Best of all, since all aspects of the processor can access all of the system’s memory, performance is unaffected when graphics cores need to access something that was previously accessible by a processor core.
In other systems, the data must be copied from one memory part to another, but in the M1 it is only accessible instantly.
These new Macs are, in their own way, something of an alien. The tradition in personal computers was that everything was modular, a result of the start of the PC era.
Although the Mac was never a part of the PC building spirit, the parts Apple used to put Mac together came from that industry. Compare that to the smartphone, where Apple continued to integrate more parts of the system into its single-processor package to increase efficiency. These new Macs look a lot more like smartphones than traditional PCs.
You need it?
One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of these undergraduate M1 Macs is that they don’t offer enough memory, maxing out at 16GB. Since these are the models less powerful Macs, future models will likely offer more RAM options.
But it’s also worth considering how light the need for more memory can be when you put it to the test. Sure, a lot of people feel like they need it, but really?
Yes, when a Mac runs out of physical memory, it sends the contents of memory to disk, and even super-fast SSDs are slower than main memory! Although the speed differences are much smaller than when we were using slowly rotating discs.
Why is your Mac running out of physical memory? If you leave many applications open at once, or if your browser has hundreds of tabs open, or if you are using an application that loads a very large file (such as a Photoshop file) into memory.
If you’re someone who does this a lot, you probably want more memory … but then again, if you’re someone who does this a lot, you might not want to buy a Mac M1 just yet. . Mid-range and high-end models that will undoubtedly offer more RAM options and more processor power will undoubtedly arrive next year.
But if you combine the efficiency of unified memory architecture with the speed of SSD storage, and consider most everyday use cases, I’m pretty sure most regular users could get by with 8GB of memory. unified or If you want to be absolutely sure go to 16 GB. (I did.)
And after
I can’t imagine going through 2021 without Apple rolling out a new set of Macs with more powerful processors and more memory options. The high-end MacBook Pros and iMacs, at the very least, could use upgrades that offer a few options beyond the base M1.
In the long run, is it possible for Apple to build systems with external graphics processors with its own dedicated memory? It seems inevitable, at least at the high end, what good is a Mac Pro if you can’t fit a ridiculous graphics card into it?
But it’s very likely that Apple will continue to expand memory options as it expands its processors, adding more memory as it adds cores, and these chips will likely be offered in most Mac models. .
The M1’s unified memory architecture is one of the reasons these Macs are so surprisingly fast, but all Mac users will have to give up some of our assumptions about how our computers work and how they are configured. And if you really can’t bear to buy a Mac with just 16GB of RAM, don’t be mad, be patient. More Apple silicone Macs are on the way.
Original article published in English on our sister website igamesnews.com.
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