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> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The big problem is as you get l

> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The big problem is as you get larger and larger amounts of RAM, the demand drops precariously. The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. Making a custom package for those kind of numbers becomes prohibitively expensive. > I don't mean to pick on you as you're not alone in what is a very natural skepticism. However, it is somewhat amusing to watch the comments about the M1 over time. When Apple announced the M1 based products many critics were crying impossible, faked, rigged benchmarks, etc I've figured from the start that Apple wouldn't make this transition unless there were a significant win here. In my above comment, I think I made it quite clear that I expect Apple's upcoming CPUs to outperform Intel. I'm just not as certain the delta between Apple's top end CPUs and Intel/ AMD will be as great as the delta between the M1 and the Intel CPU it replaced. So for example, the M series chip might be 20-30% faster than the Intel in the 16" MacBook Pro, not double the performance as it was in the MacBook Air.

astrostl 6y ago
> The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. "need" can be a combination of objective and subjective takes, but I would posit that the amount who would at least purport to need 256GB+ is radically, radically higher than the low thousands.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  In a laptop, low thousands might be about right. And for RAM, need captures it pretty well. Either you will once in your life need to do something that uses 256GB ram, in which case you need it, or you don't.
  - astrostl 6y ago
    Where was the discussion scoped to laptops? As for need, as alluded to in my previous reply generally I agree in an objective sense (although uses 256GB does not necessarily mean it needs it either). On the subjective side, I have long-observed that people will blindly assert that more memory is better even when they don't profile their peak physical usage and may easily never make use of the amount they have outside of disk caching. Even if folks don't need incredible amounts of memory, that doesn't necessarily stopping them from wanting it even if it provides little to no benefit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I have no idea, but I suspect the number of people willing spend $5000 to upgrade a desktop Mac from 32GB to 256GB is quite low. The process to provision 8 or 16GB of memory spread over millions of units doesn't seem like it would work well at smaller scales. Whether that's low 1000s or tens of thousands isn't really important.
  - astrostl 6y ago
    It's less than $2000 to upgrade an iMac Pro to 256GB: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DID2627DS256/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DID2627DS256/ (and that's a branded kit with a lifetime warranty)
- Czarcasm 6y ago
  Nearly every engineer I know would benefit from =>32GB of RAM as opposed to 16GB. On the consumer side, if more of the market has 32GB available, you can bet that applications will expand to utilize the available space.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  Where I work I have a cloud instance with more than 256GB of RAM. But I don't need that on my laptop.
  - astrostl 6y ago
    Where was the discussion scoped to laptops?
_ph_ 6y ago
Yes, I expect an ARM MacBook Pro not to be that massively faster in the peak pearformance, but it should run considerably cooler. This means sustained peak performance and overall less fan noise. If I have anything to critisize about the MB Pro, it is that there is just too much fan noise with even not so big loads and the machine just getting very hot. Adding more battery lifetime would also be a welcome improvement. (Though, 8 high performance cores would also deliver a quite impressive speed)
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  This is kind of what I expect of the 16" MBP and the higher end 13" MBP, cooler running with low/ no fan noise, tremendous battery life, 20-50% better performance than the M1, drop 8GB RAM and offer 32GB, better video performance (support dual 5k displays). It's possible they will launch the iMac with the same chip as the MBP 16 as well.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I've had problems with MB Pros getting too hot for at least a decade. My 2008 model was actually too hot to use on my lap. Sun-burn level of hot if I wore shorts, or even something like pajama pants.
dev_tty01 6y ago
Fair enough. I may have projected a number of other comments onto yours a bit. Sorry about that. If the delta is similar it would certainly be crazy fast. As far as the packaging, I agree with your general assertion. However, they ship about 20 million computers and about 240 million iOS devices per year, all of which require custom SOC packages. Needless to say, they are a very large customer with their packaging suppliers. I could be wrong, but I think the leverage they get will keep the costs in line even for a smaller slice of their premium priced products.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Apple has always billed their big selling point in terms of performance per watt. That narrative might change. I suspect even if the 16" Pro has more modest performance gains than the Air, it will still have massively better battery life. The iMac and Apple's bigger devices have a lot of thermal and power headroom to make up for the shortcomings of Intels CPUs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 6y ago
It seems like Apple walked away from a bad PowerPC situation into Intel's arms only until they could do something like this... Especially after the past few years where Intel can't execute on the fab process and forced Apple to switch vendors when Intel couldn't execute on 5g.

astrostl 6y ago

> The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. "need" can be a combination of objective and subjective takes, but I would posit that the amount who would at least purport to need 256GB+ is radically, radically higher than the low thousands.

gameswithgo 6y ago
In a laptop, low thousands might be about right. And for RAM, need captures it pretty well. Either you will once in your life need to do something that uses 256GB ram, in which case you need it, or you don't.
- astrostl 6y ago
  Where was the discussion scoped to laptops? As for need, as alluded to in my previous reply generally I agree in an objective sense (although uses 256GB does not necessarily mean it needs it either). On the subjective side, I have long-observed that people will blindly assert that more memory is better even when they don't profile their peak physical usage and may easily never make use of the amount they have outside of disk caching. Even if folks don't need incredible amounts of memory, that doesn't necessarily stopping them from wanting it even if it provides little to no benefit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ogre_codes 6y ago
I have no idea, but I suspect the number of people willing spend $5000 to upgrade a desktop Mac from 32GB to 256GB is quite low. The process to provision 8 or 16GB of memory spread over millions of units doesn't seem like it would work well at smaller scales. Whether that's low 1000s or tens of thousands isn't really important.
- astrostl 6y ago
  It's less than $2000 to upgrade an iMac Pro to 256GB: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DID2627DS256/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DID2627DS256/ (and that's a branded kit with a lifetime warranty)
Czarcasm 6y ago
Nearly every engineer I know would benefit from =>32GB of RAM as opposed to 16GB. On the consumer side, if more of the market has 32GB available, you can bet that applications will expand to utilize the available space.
Aperocky 6y ago
Where I work I have a cloud instance with more than 256GB of RAM. But I don't need that on my laptop.
- astrostl 6y ago
  Where was the discussion scoped to laptops?

_ph_ 6y ago

Yes, I expect an ARM MacBook Pro not to be that massively faster in the peak pearformance, but it should run considerably cooler. This means sustained peak performance and overall less fan noise. If I have anything to critisize about the MB Pro, it is that there is just too much fan noise with even not so big loads and the machine just getting very hot. Adding more battery lifetime would also be a welcome improvement. (Though, 8 high performance cores would also deliver a quite impressive speed)

ogre_codes 6y ago
This is kind of what I expect of the 16" MBP and the higher end 13" MBP, cooler running with low/ no fan noise, tremendous battery life, 20-50% better performance than the M1, drop 8GB RAM and offer 32GB, better video performance (support dual 5k displays). It's possible they will launch the iMac with the same chip as the MBP 16 as well.
ineedasername 6y ago
I've had problems with MB Pros getting too hot for at least a decade. My 2008 model was actually too hot to use on my lap. Sun-burn level of hot if I wore shorts, or even something like pajama pants.

dev_tty01 6y ago

Fair enough. I may have projected a number of other comments onto yours a bit. Sorry about that. If the delta is similar it would certainly be crazy fast. As far as the packaging, I agree with your general assertion. However, they ship about 20 million computers and about 240 million iOS devices per year, all of which require custom SOC packages. Needless to say, they are a very large customer with their packaging suppliers. I could be wrong, but I think the leverage they get will keep the costs in line even for a smaller slice of their premium priced products.

ogre_codes 6y ago
Apple has always billed their big selling point in terms of performance per watt. That narrative might change. I suspect even if the 16" Pro has more modest performance gains than the Air, it will still have massively better battery life. The iMac and Apple's bigger devices have a lot of thermal and power headroom to make up for the shortcomings of Intels CPUs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ineedasername 6y ago

It seems like Apple walked away from a bad PowerPC situation into Intel's arms only until they could do something like this... Especially after the past few years where Intel can't execute on the fab process and forced Apple to switch vendors when Intel couldn't execute on 5g.