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Looks like they still use LPDDR3, with no 32GB option even in the 15-inch. I wonder if they want to go to LPDDR4 when Intel supports it.
by yuhong 10y ago
Looks like they still use LPDDR3, with no 32GB option even in the 15-inch. I wonder if they want to go to LPDDR4 when Intel supports it.
- op00to 10y agoWhat do you need 32GB for? Not saying you don't, but what's the use case vs. using someone else's cloud machine in a datacenter?
- walterbell 10y agoVirtual machines Edit: for comparison, Lenovo T460p can be configured with quad-core i7, Nvidia GPU, 32GB RAM, 1 SSD + 1 HD/SSD, replaceable battery, 1.9mm key travel, base starts at $800 with many components user-replaceable, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460p/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460p...
- sliverstorm 10y agoHas much work been done on truly memory-light virtual machines? It seems like a really big opportunity, even if it's really hard.
- tonylemesmer 10y agoYeah if someone worked out how to use less memory in a VM we could use it in normal machines too ;)
- walterbell 10y agoUnikernels are one area of research, http://unikernel.org http://unikernel.org
- _joel 10y agoIt's not that it's hard, it's just the logistics of running the virtual machines(s) and the applications they contain. You could use a minimal linux distro like Alpine or Tiny Core, but you still need to run applications on top of that if you're testing or developing. Spinning up a basic devstack instance (for example) take a minimum of 6GB and that's before you even deploy any test vms inside that infrastructure. Another example, if you're doing config management development you may need several VMs running which in turn may have (say) large java apps with heavy memory requirements even when fairly unladen. So, I guess the answer is, it depends on what you're doing and what the memory requirements of the thing you're running on VMs is.
- Sanddancer 10y agoHyper-V has dynamic memory, so memory resources can be reallocated as needed, and has driver hooks so that linux vms can be resized too. There's also Intel's clear containers push which virtualizes for linux but shares a lot of kernel structures between the host and the VM.
- imtringued 10y ago>It seems like a really big opportunity, even if it's really hard. It's not because it's a problem that is easily solvable by spending a small amount on better hardware. 16GB RAM costs $80 which is cheap if you're only going to use it for VMs.
- jlgaddis 10y agoHell, my three and a half year old W530 has a quad-core i7, Nvidia GPU (Optimus), 32 GB RAM, and a pair of Samsung PRO 850 SSDs. My one year old MBP (which is really a "2013 MBP") has half the memory and storage of the ThinkPad. In fact, pretty much the only noticeable difference between it and the "new" one is the touch strip. :/
- op00to 10y agoWhat kind of battery life do you get on the W530 vs your 2013 MBP?
- j45 10y agoI have a rMBP, but these T460p's are excellent machines, even can come with a touchscreen. If I had to have only one laptop, and it had to be windows....
- aioprisan 10y agoFor a 512GB SSD, no upgrade option vs 2TB, 14" vs 15" screen, and the crappiest NVidia graphics option even at the high end $1500 model.. What a joke, those are MBP 2013 specs.
- walterbell 10y agoThe point was that even the low-end Lenovo has 32GB RAM, the topic of this subthread. If you want the latest hardware features, there's a 15" Xeon P50 model with USB-C, etc, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/
- op00to 10y agoDifferent use cases. Any laptop that offers 32GB is going to need a more powerful chipset, which affects heat, battery life, and portability.
- gambiting 10y agoI'm a programmer with 64GB machine and I'm running out of RAM daily. Can't wait until IT upgrades our machines to 192GB some time next year.
- Artemis2 10y agoI don't think I've ever used more than a gigabyte of RAM programming. I could even do it on a Raspberry Pi. What exactly in your workflow uses 64GB of RAM?
- gambiting 10y agoC++ games programming. Build process uses several gigabytes, but running the game in debug configuration takes 50-55GB because we store every allocation at the moment. If I need to run my own servers or bake data I go over that easily.
- Artemis2 10y agoMakes sense. Thank you!
- eridius 10y agoWhen you say "store every allocation" do you mean you never release anything, or do you just mean you store info about every allocation? If it's the former, that sounds kind of crazy, is it common for game developers to do that? If it's the latter, you could always write it to disk (which is what malloc stack logging does).
- gambiting 10y agoWe had a random memory corruption problem recently, so we started storing every allocation without releasing, to verify periodically. We do free up old memory, but only every 10 million allocations or so. Maybe it's not super common for games programming, but it's definitely common to not use ref counted pointers or anything that could help you here.
- deleted 10y ago
- vegabook 10y agoyou are the entirely predictable, and, sorry, but very irritating, "who needs more RAM than I have ever needed" stereotype of every comment board ever. 16GB is peanuts for anybody doing anything serious in graphics, video, machine learning, statistics, or finance, or ....[put your professional subject here]. Not everybody wants to have the weight on their back of a clock-ticking cost of doing their R&D online in the cloud. Many of us, including me, want a highly capable machine with an upfront, quantifiable cost, but that is professionally credible.
- benhardy 10y agoHear hear. The anecdata being thrown around in these comments is ridiculous. Like the above, and also the people saying "everyone i know has a desktop". So what? I need a powerful laptop, and i don't need to justify it to you. End of story. Apple's insistence on limitations are ridiculous and just as offensive as Bill Gates'.
- tdkl 10y agoIt's not someone else's cloud.
- DominikR 10y agoThat's the beauty of Capitalism. It doesn't matter if someone, no matter the position in society, doesn't understand why someone would need 32GB. As long as there's sufficient demand, it'll be produced by some business.
- tedunangst 10y ago4 tabs.
- pasta 10y agoI wish this was a joke
- gm-conspiracy 10y agoSeriously? Somebody reply with a link so I can be more upset, please.
- mi100hael 10y agoIt's not hard to bump into the 16 GB limit when doing video editing, photo editing, software development with virtual machines, etc. All of those tasks are commonly done by freelancers on-the-go, which necessitates a pro-level laptop. Instead we got a gimmicky touch bar and lost compatibility with decades of peripherals.
- aledalgrande 10y agoThis.
- j45 10y agoNot to mention the perfectly reasonable expectation to leave a few hundred tabs open, each with a window for their own project.
- Pokepokalypse 10y agoWell, this fact coupled with os x being absolutely SHITTY at managing and task-switching when you're doing this, and you've got a good argument for abandoning the platform.
- j45 10y agoUsed windows for 15 years, osx for the last 10, haven't found a panacea between the OS, applications I need to run, and my essential human right to run 100+ tabs. Maybe 32 GB of RAM will do it.
- slantyyz 10y agoThis is highly subjective and anecdotal, but I find OSX to use a lot of RAM. The in-OS memory compression helps, but when I still had a 16GB Macbook Pro, the system always found a way to use up all of the RAM to the point that the compression would kick in to handle the overage over my physical memory. My habits aren't any different in terms of extraneous windows/apps open on Windows, and I rarely hit 100% RAM utilization on my 16GB Windows machine.
- robotresearcher 10y agoThe system should use all the RAM. You paid for RAM, why have it sit there unused? As long as the next user process gets the RAM it asks for, I want the system to use all my RAM to cache everything. Edit: even to the point of compressing pages, since it's faster to uncompress them than fetch from disk.
- jlgaddis 10y agoIf your 16 GB machine is sitting around with 8 GB free, it's not doing you any good. It's much better for the OS to be actively using it.
- andromeduck 10y agoA lot of major projects recommend 32 GB RAM to compile including Android and Chrome.
- ridgeguy 10y agoModeling, like COMSOL. Runs very much faster when RAM is enough to keep it from accessing disk, even when disk is an SSD.
- ynniv 10y ago640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- amiga-workbench 10y agoRubbish, I've got 1280k EMS for borland C++ http://mos6581.com/pictures/5170-canvas/DCSF0009.jpg http://mos6581.com/pictures/5170-canvas/DCSF0009.jpg
- poorman 10y agoThis is why: https://twitter.com/NickPoorman/status/737647940026634240 https://twitter.com/NickPoorman/status/737647940026634240
- gutnor 10y agoNo that's not why. If you have any application that sucks memory without releasing it, adding more memory just delay the inevitable. As for the RAM in the rMBP. I'm only half disappointed compared to what I would have been 1 year ago. My workflow is pushing more and more stuff in the cloud, so instead of running a bunch of small VM locally I can have VM sized properly to the task at hand rather than limited to my laptop configuration.
- vacri 10y agoWhat do you need "a brighter display" for? Or "2.5x more bass in the speakers"?
- doggydogs94 10y agoI run VMWare Fusion on my 2012 Macbook Pro; call it a travel/demo computer. 16GB allows only a couple of minimally configured VMs to run at once.
- vegabook 10y agoNo 32gb? Is this true? Someone please tell me that's not true. I was (against all odds), hoping for 64! If this is true, consider me disgusted. I had 16GB in my (long lost, loved) 17-inch Macbook Pro, in 2009! I really cannot fathom what this company is thinking. I'm bewildered, disappointed, angry, in equal measure. I've been waiting for a killer Macbook Pro for literally 18 months! Sorry. I'm going Lenovo/Dell or why not, Surface Studio. For the first time in 20 years. I'm going Windows. I will not support a company which insults me with this. If this is Jony Ive's work, if they are so self-confident in their "design" that they cannot put a decent hardware spec together, then these people need to be retired. Or maybe I just haven't cottoned on? They just don't care about high end users? Or are they completely out of touch? I don't understand.
- gommm 10y agoYep that's the one thing that pisses me off to no end.
- vegabook 10y agoI just don't understand. The chips have been available for 12 months. It's almost like they're doing it on purpose.
- ghshephard 10y agoGiven that 99% of users don't require more than 8GB in a MacLaptop, it's hard to justify increasing the maximum ram beyond 16 GB for that fraction of 1% of users who do. Not impossible, mind you - because there is always value in chasing after the 1%, but to some degree, Apple's efficiency at running their operating system and applications on small memory footprints makes it less valuable to increase their maximum ram footprint.