4 ms·

AIUI Intel's non-Xeon chipsets won't go over 16GB for DDR3 in most cases.

Dylan16807 10y ago
Does Apple not have enough pull to get that already-existing feature on the chips they're buying? My ivy bridge laptop supports 32GB of DDR3, for what it's worth.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  I would guess that it would require more than one vendor, even one as large as Apple, to request it aggressively earlier in the dev process for something like that to get done, because of the amounts of QA required. I would further guess that 4 DIMMs, more than just memory controller support, might have required too much precious board space - which, when combined with the power requirements and additional feature enhancement requirements for Intel, might have made it a nonstarter.
- chx 10y ago
  That's the big question, right there, indeed. This is an artificial limit by Intel, after all. 16GB DIMM DDR3 modules do exist, it's just that Intel put an assert into the firmware to not allow for those.
k_sze 10y ago
Then maybe Apple can start putting Xeons in MacBook Pros. I'm only half joking. The Lenovo ThinkPad P50 has Xeon options, for instance.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > I'm only half joking. It would make for a great pro laptop and I'm not joking at all, especially since there's no other way to get ECC support from Intel. There are issues with that though, at least in Skylake: * Mobile Xeon now require Xeon-decidated chipsets (C23X) which AFAIK don't exist in mobile form (and thus have a TDP ~double that of the regular mobile skylake chipsets). * The mobile Xeon range (15X5Mv5) is very limited with just two Iris Pro 580 and two Intel HD parts. * While the 1575Mv5 is higher-specced than any non-xeon mobile chip (3.0/3.9, graphics 0.35/1.1) it's also twice as expensive as the 6970HQ, which is already a $600 part. Still, might have been nice on the 15".
Const-me 10y ago
Intel’s spec for the CPUs in that macbooks say “Max Memory Size: 32GB” for dual-code models, 64GB for quad-core models: http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/91166/Intel-Core-i5-6267U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91166/Intel-Core-i5-6267U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/91164/Intel-Core-i5-6287U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91164/Intel-Core-i5-6287U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/88967/Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88967/Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ-Pro... http://ark.intel.com/products/88972/Intel-Core-i7-6920HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88972/Intel-Core-i7-6920HQ-Pro...
- undersuit 10y ago
  >Max Memory Size >>>(dependent on memory type)<<< It's literally hiding right there on every link you provided. Let's just blame everything on Apple, am I right!?! It's not like Intel hasn't hampered previous Apple products with arbitrary limitations... http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-3-gb-memory-limitation-details.html http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macboo...
  - Const-me 10y ago
    Funny you’ve linked an article from 2008. The same year, Intel has made two CPUs, L7500 and L7700, exclusively for Apple to power their then-new MacBook Airs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2422 http://www.anandtech.com/show/2422 If Apple wanted more energy-efficient RAM for their MacBook's, with their volumes, Intel would be happy to help.
    - undersuit 10y ago
      Intel is only so flexible. They didn't make new cpus they accelerated the development of chip packages by a few months so the installed processor could take up less room. >If Apple wanted more energy-efficient RAM for their MacBook's, with their volumes, Intel would be happy to help. The lack of support for the LPDDR3 greater than 16GB is a problem in the memory controller. Intel would have to respin the silicon to fix this issue for DDR3 when they are moving to DDR4. Intel is not going to fix an silicon issue on a product(Skylake) when they have already released the successor(Kabylake).

Does Apple not have enough pull to get that already-existing feature on the chips they're buying? My ivy bridge laptop supports 32GB of DDR3, for what it's worth.

rincebrain 10y ago
I would guess that it would require more than one vendor, even one as large as Apple, to request it aggressively earlier in the dev process for something like that to get done, because of the amounts of QA required. I would further guess that 4 DIMMs, more than just memory controller support, might have required too much precious board space - which, when combined with the power requirements and additional feature enhancement requirements for Intel, might have made it a nonstarter.
chx 10y ago
That's the big question, right there, indeed. This is an artificial limit by Intel, after all. 16GB DIMM DDR3 modules do exist, it's just that Intel put an assert into the firmware to not allow for those.

k_sze 10y ago

Then maybe Apple can start putting Xeons in MacBook Pros. I'm only half joking. The Lenovo ThinkPad P50 has Xeon options, for instance.

masklinn 10y ago
> I'm only half joking. It would make for a great pro laptop and I'm not joking at all, especially since there's no other way to get ECC support from Intel. There are issues with that though, at least in Skylake: * Mobile Xeon now require Xeon-decidated chipsets (C23X) which AFAIK don't exist in mobile form (and thus have a TDP ~double that of the regular mobile skylake chipsets). * The mobile Xeon range (15X5Mv5) is very limited with just two Iris Pro 580 and two Intel HD parts. * While the 1575Mv5 is higher-specced than any non-xeon mobile chip (3.0/3.9, graphics 0.35/1.1) it's also twice as expensive as the 6970HQ, which is already a $600 part. Still, might have been nice on the 15".

Const-me 10y ago

Intel’s spec for the CPUs in that macbooks say “Max Memory Size: 32GB” for dual-code models, 64GB for quad-core models: http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91156/Intel-Core-i5-6360U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/91166/Intel-Core-i5-6267U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91166/Intel-Core-i5-6267U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/91164/Intel-Core-i5-6287U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/91164/Intel-Core-i5-6287U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/88967/Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88967/Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ-Pro... http://ark.intel.com/products/88972/Intel-Core-i7-6920HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88972/Intel-Core-i7-6920HQ-Pro...

undersuit 10y ago
>Max Memory Size >>>(dependent on memory type)<<< It's literally hiding right there on every link you provided. Let's just blame everything on Apple, am I right!?! It's not like Intel hasn't hampered previous Apple products with arbitrary limitations... http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-3-gb-memory-limitation-details.html http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macboo...
- Const-me 10y ago
  Funny you’ve linked an article from 2008. The same year, Intel has made two CPUs, L7500 and L7700, exclusively for Apple to power their then-new MacBook Airs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2422 http://www.anandtech.com/show/2422 If Apple wanted more energy-efficient RAM for their MacBook's, with their volumes, Intel would be happy to help.
  - undersuit 10y ago
    Intel is only so flexible. They didn't make new cpus they accelerated the development of chip packages by a few months so the installed processor could take up less room. >If Apple wanted more energy-efficient RAM for their MacBook's, with their volumes, Intel would be happy to help. The lack of support for the LPDDR3 greater than 16GB is a problem in the memory controller. Intel would have to respin the silicon to fix this issue for DDR3 when they are moving to DDR4. Intel is not going to fix an silicon issue on a product(Skylake) when they have already released the successor(Kabylake).