7 ms·

Can someone explain the 8gb obsession (edit: 16gb is possible, but why not more)? is there a real limitation with this architecture or are they just making a b

Can someone explain the 8gb obsession (edit: 16gb is possible, but why not more)? is there a real limitation with this architecture or are they just making a business decision so they can sell multiple models over 2-3 years instead of creating what the market wants immediately

fastball 6y ago
Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). It's just about scale for the time being, probably. The M1 chip is now in 5 different devices. That is 100% worth not fulfilling everyone's RAM needs for the fantastic economies of scale and engineering simplicity that brings. They'll come out with an M2 soon enough, which will undoubtedly have more RAM and they'll stick in the iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and MBP 16" (and possibly "backport" to other devices). That being said I just "downgraded" from an Intel 16" MBP with 32GB RAM to an M1 13" with 16GB RAM and haven't noticed much of a difference, even though I was regularly getting to 80-90% RAM utilization on my 16".
- slantyyz 6y ago
  > Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). I think that only applies to their mobile devices. I have had Intel Macs that can't run the latest MacOS but can still Boot Camp into Windows 10. Of course, this is all moot in a post-Intel Apple world.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Windows 10 was released in 2015. Apple releases a new major macOS update every year. Not really surprised that you can run 6 year old software + minor updates on an 6-10 year old machine but can't run a major software revision from the past couple years.
    - slantyyz 6y ago
      Yeah but the point still stands that you can still run new applications on Windows 10 in Boot Camp an old Mac. There's a good chance that if you're using a "left behind" Mac, that you can't even update your apps because they stopped supporting your version of MacOS, even though it's working perfectly fine. Also, Windows 10 in 2021 is far from being exactly like Windows 10 in 2015. There have been a lot of changes, Microsoft just doesn't increment the major number any more.
    - oblio 6y ago
      > Windows 10 was released in 2015. Apple releases a new major macOS update every year. Not really surprised that you can run 6 year old software + minor updates on an 6-10 year old machine but can't run a major software revision from the past couple years. If you're saying that Windows 10 from 2021 is Windows 10 from 2015 with "minor updates", you haven't been paying attention to Windows updates :-) Windows 10 updates are probably bigger than MacOS updates.
    - Rhedox 6y ago
      Windows 10 consistently gets updates just like Mac OS gets updates. This is like saying Mac OS X is 10 year old software.
  - ahlschwede 6y ago
    Most non-technical people don't share the same definition of obsolete. I know a few people who have gone more than 10 years between hardware purchases using Apple computers.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  > Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). I agree with the latter, but tell that to their previous default of 4gb ram and 120gb ssd (for so long) and 16gb of storage on iPads.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Not really sure how you can agree that the resale value is excellent and in the same breath complain about features of the device being somehow egregious. Every single device ever made has to make tradeoffs. No device can be everything to everyone. Apple has (correctly) identified that RAM is really not the end-all-be-all that people obsessed with specs seem to think it is. If you spend more time working on other aspects of the device you can get away with less RAM and still have a device that people resell years later for good money.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Because I think we're using two different definitions of obselete. Just because people will buy a thing years down the road, doesn't mean it wasn't already obselete then or when it was brand new or that those second purchasers can't make some use of it, however strained. I disagree about ram, at least at the minimum threshold, evidenced by numerous naive customers I've witnessed being incredulous as to why a few chrome tabs and some temp files are bringing their $1k+ computer to a halt. Would you have bought a MacBook air or pro in 2017 with 4gb of non-replaceable ram for $1000? No, because it's obselete and you know that. What if they told you it was a great computer, and you didn't know anything about computers? Probably.
MrOxiMoron 6y ago
I don't get it either, max 16gb? I want/need more.
- floatboth 6y ago
  The way they did memory on the M1, they can only use two LPDDR4X chips. DRAM is on package, so they can only physically fit two on their package and presumably they do not have pins that would go off package for more memory channels at all. Micron and Samsung make 12 Gb LPDDR4X chips, but Apple probably decided that having a 24 Gb option wouldn't be worth it, or would be an ugly number, or couldn't get enough supply, or all of that. The M1 is for "consumer" tier devices anyway. Wait for M1X or Mwhatever – when they port the larger MBPs to their own silicon, that will have larger memory.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Good answer! Apple doesn’t seem to shy away from “odd” numbers, like 4.5K resolution model I would go with supply combined with having enough supply of the 8gb modules but not enough of the 12gb ones that it would create strange tiers, while they would lean towards a 24gb machine
    - bzzzt 6y ago
      They make the odd resolution because they've committed to a certain amount of dpi ('super retina' resolution) and are marketing it as such. While it would be fun to be able to run a complete k8s cluster locally that's quite a niche usecase. There's not much software on the consumer side where having 32gb+ really makes a huge amount of difference. At least not the software Apple is showing in their presentations. Lots of people think they want a huge amount of memory, but macOS seems to be able to handle memory pressure (with transparant compression and swapping) quite well, even on machines with little memory.
    - skunkworker 6y ago
      They still are doing 16:10 displays. Which I wish I could find more of but everyone is doing 16:9 desktop at the moment. I don't know why it's so hard to find a 3840x2400 24" display.
otterley 6y ago
There's no 8GB limitation. You can order one with 16GB memory.
- greedo 6y ago
  The tech specs page shows up to 16GB of unified memory, but the store itself only shows 8gb?
  - selsta 6y ago
    > Configurable to 16GB unified memory https://www.apple.com/imac-24/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac-24/specs/
klelatti 6y ago
One theory: we'll see the iPhone strategy applied to Macs with this year's mainline models becoming next year's budget option at lower prices. All as part of a move to grab more of the desktop / laptop mid-range market. They have cut CPU costs with M1 so keeping RAM costs down ready for material price cut on these models next year.
kllrnohj 6y ago
The M1 is using LPDDR4X-4266. It's possible that packages bigger than 8GB just don't exist (8GB was all that was announced just a few years ago, and the RAM announcements usually come far ahead of shipping usages https://www.anandtech.com/show/11021/sk-hynix-announces-8-gb-lpddr4x4266-dram-packages https://www.anandtech.com/show/11021/sk-hynix-announces-8-gb... ). That'd then be 1 module = 8GB, and 2 modules in a daisy chain or T-topology gets you 16GB, and there just isn't anything more to be done without a bigger memory controller (more channels) or bigger DRAM modules.
- hajile 6y ago
  Samsung claims to have very large chips (96Gb) in mass production. It really seems like a reason to upgrade next year when the CPU isn't getting much faster. https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x/ https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x/
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    I think you've got a bits vs. bytes confusion there. Samsung is only claiming up to 12GB modules. 96Gb(its) = 12GB(ytes). So that'd get you +50% max RAM on the M1's, which would be a nice offering, but still won't be enough to reach the 32GB+ of the outgoing Intel lineup.
    - hajile 6y ago
      I knew (thus the lowercase b) That's likely the largest that LDDR4x is ever going to go because the tech is outdated. If they had a 24GB option, you'd hear a lot fewer complaints (and the cost difference isn't massive). They announced 16GB (128Gb) LPDDR5 chips were in mass production in Q3 of last year. These both use less power and have better performance than LPDDR4x. Both Intel and Qualcomm have support for LPDDR5 in their chips that launched last year. No excuse for Apple here.
bombcar 6y ago
As far as I know there are only three (four?) M1 chips in existence: M1 8GB, M1 16GB, M1 7-core GPU 8GB. There may be an M1 7-core GPU 16GB but I suspect that there is actually only ONE M1 chip (M1 16GB 8-core) and the rest are binned versions.
- yarcob 6y ago
  The CPUs are binned, the RAM is added after binning them. The RAM is created separately from the processor.
  - bombcar 6y ago
    Interesting, I was under the impression the RAM was on the same die.
    - bsharitt 6y ago
      Same package different die.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  I have a 16GB Air with 7 GPU cores. So as the sibling said: CPU is binned (but apparently only for the 7/8 GPU cores), RAM is added separately in the package, not on the die.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
As a developer who moved from a 16gb Intel MBP to an 8gb Air, I see no difference at all. I think a combination of the nature of the SOC and the massively faster retain/release cycle just make it much less of an issue. That said, I did straight up run out of RAM the other day, but my editor was chewing up something like 32gb of swap. Still no slowdown, though. (I suspect a memory leak, it's very new software)
- busymom0 6y ago
  I can’t use one with less than 16gb because iPhone or Android simulator will chew up memory.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    I'm having no trouble running xCode + iOS simulators at all. In fact I think there's some possibility that the iOS simulator could be lighter weight due to ARM -> ARM rather than ARM -> Intel, but that's pure speculation. Not currently doing any Android work so I can't comment.
- roody15 6y ago
  Using that much swap frequently sounds like it might wear out your ssd early(thrashing)
  - hyakosm 6y ago
    Do we have a proof of this?
layer8 6y ago
> why not more? From the marketing, it's clearly a consumer-oriented device. Presumably there will be "pro" versions at a later time.
icedchai 6y ago
8 gigs RAM is a bit of a joke for 2021. My 2014 iMac came with the same amount of memory. At least I could upgrade it though.
arvinsim 6y ago
Not sure why people are still confused about this. Apple is a company. It is beholden to focus on profits for it's shareholders. Why give users more RAM for free?

fastball 6y ago

Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). It's just about scale for the time being, probably. The M1 chip is now in 5 different devices. That is 100% worth not fulfilling everyone's RAM needs for the fantastic economies of scale and engineering simplicity that brings. They'll come out with an M2 soon enough, which will undoubtedly have more RAM and they'll stick in the iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and MBP 16" (and possibly "backport" to other devices). That being said I just "downgraded" from an Intel 16" MBP with 32GB RAM to an M1 13" with 16GB RAM and haven't noticed much of a difference, even though I was regularly getting to 80-90% RAM utilization on my 16".

slantyyz 6y ago
> Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). I think that only applies to their mobile devices. I have had Intel Macs that can't run the latest MacOS but can still Boot Camp into Windows 10. Of course, this is all moot in a post-Intel Apple world.
- fastball 6y ago
  Windows 10 was released in 2015. Apple releases a new major macOS update every year. Not really surprised that you can run 6 year old software + minor updates on an 6-10 year old machine but can't run a major software revision from the past couple years.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    Yeah but the point still stands that you can still run new applications on Windows 10 in Boot Camp an old Mac. There's a good chance that if you're using a "left behind" Mac, that you can't even update your apps because they stopped supporting your version of MacOS, even though it's working perfectly fine. Also, Windows 10 in 2021 is far from being exactly like Windows 10 in 2015. There have been a lot of changes, Microsoft just doesn't increment the major number any more.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > Windows 10 was released in 2015. Apple releases a new major macOS update every year. Not really surprised that you can run 6 year old software + minor updates on an 6-10 year old machine but can't run a major software revision from the past couple years. If you're saying that Windows 10 from 2021 is Windows 10 from 2015 with "minor updates", you haven't been paying attention to Windows updates :-) Windows 10 updates are probably bigger than MacOS updates.
  - Rhedox 6y ago
    Windows 10 consistently gets updates just like Mac OS gets updates. This is like saying Mac OS X is 10 year old software.
- ahlschwede 6y ago
  Most non-technical people don't share the same definition of obsolete. I know a few people who have gone more than 10 years between hardware purchases using Apple computers.
brailsafe 6y ago
> Planned obsolescence has never really been Apple's style (their devices generally get longer software support and have better resale value than anyone else). I agree with the latter, but tell that to their previous default of 4gb ram and 120gb ssd (for so long) and 16gb of storage on iPads.
- fastball 6y ago
  Not really sure how you can agree that the resale value is excellent and in the same breath complain about features of the device being somehow egregious. Every single device ever made has to make tradeoffs. No device can be everything to everyone. Apple has (correctly) identified that RAM is really not the end-all-be-all that people obsessed with specs seem to think it is. If you spend more time working on other aspects of the device you can get away with less RAM and still have a device that people resell years later for good money.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Because I think we're using two different definitions of obselete. Just because people will buy a thing years down the road, doesn't mean it wasn't already obselete then or when it was brand new or that those second purchasers can't make some use of it, however strained. I disagree about ram, at least at the minimum threshold, evidenced by numerous naive customers I've witnessed being incredulous as to why a few chrome tabs and some temp files are bringing their $1k+ computer to a halt. Would you have bought a MacBook air or pro in 2017 with 4gb of non-replaceable ram for $1000? No, because it's obselete and you know that. What if they told you it was a great computer, and you didn't know anything about computers? Probably.

MrOxiMoron 6y ago

I don't get it either, max 16gb? I want/need more.

floatboth 6y ago
The way they did memory on the M1, they can only use two LPDDR4X chips. DRAM is on package, so they can only physically fit two on their package and presumably they do not have pins that would go off package for more memory channels at all. Micron and Samsung make 12 Gb LPDDR4X chips, but Apple probably decided that having a 24 Gb option wouldn't be worth it, or would be an ugly number, or couldn't get enough supply, or all of that. The M1 is for "consumer" tier devices anyway. Wait for M1X or Mwhatever – when they port the larger MBPs to their own silicon, that will have larger memory.
- vmception 6y ago
  Good answer! Apple doesn’t seem to shy away from “odd” numbers, like 4.5K resolution model I would go with supply combined with having enough supply of the 8gb modules but not enough of the 12gb ones that it would create strange tiers, while they would lean towards a 24gb machine
  - bzzzt 6y ago
    They make the odd resolution because they've committed to a certain amount of dpi ('super retina' resolution) and are marketing it as such. While it would be fun to be able to run a complete k8s cluster locally that's quite a niche usecase. There's not much software on the consumer side where having 32gb+ really makes a huge amount of difference. At least not the software Apple is showing in their presentations. Lots of people think they want a huge amount of memory, but macOS seems to be able to handle memory pressure (with transparant compression and swapping) quite well, even on machines with little memory.
  - skunkworker 6y ago
    They still are doing 16:10 displays. Which I wish I could find more of but everyone is doing 16:9 desktop at the moment. I don't know why it's so hard to find a 3840x2400 24" display.

otterley 6y ago

There's no 8GB limitation. You can order one with 16GB memory.

greedo 6y ago
The tech specs page shows up to 16GB of unified memory, but the store itself only shows 8gb?
- selsta 6y ago
  > Configurable to 16GB unified memory https://www.apple.com/imac-24/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac-24/specs/

klelatti 6y ago

One theory: we'll see the iPhone strategy applied to Macs with this year's mainline models becoming next year's budget option at lower prices. All as part of a move to grab more of the desktop / laptop mid-range market. They have cut CPU costs with M1 so keeping RAM costs down ready for material price cut on these models next year.

kllrnohj 6y ago

The M1 is using LPDDR4X-4266. It's possible that packages bigger than 8GB just don't exist (8GB was all that was announced just a few years ago, and the RAM announcements usually come far ahead of shipping usages https://www.anandtech.com/show/11021/sk-hynix-announces-8-gb-lpddr4x4266-dram-packages https://www.anandtech.com/show/11021/sk-hynix-announces-8-gb... ). That'd then be 1 module = 8GB, and 2 modules in a daisy chain or T-topology gets you 16GB, and there just isn't anything more to be done without a bigger memory controller (more channels) or bigger DRAM modules.

hajile 6y ago
Samsung claims to have very large chips (96Gb) in mass production. It really seems like a reason to upgrade next year when the CPU isn't getting much faster. https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x/ https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x/
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  I think you've got a bits vs. bytes confusion there. Samsung is only claiming up to 12GB modules. 96Gb(its) = 12GB(ytes). So that'd get you +50% max RAM on the M1's, which would be a nice offering, but still won't be enough to reach the 32GB+ of the outgoing Intel lineup.
  - hajile 6y ago
    I knew (thus the lowercase b) That's likely the largest that LDDR4x is ever going to go because the tech is outdated. If they had a 24GB option, you'd hear a lot fewer complaints (and the cost difference isn't massive). They announced 16GB (128Gb) LPDDR5 chips were in mass production in Q3 of last year. These both use less power and have better performance than LPDDR4x. Both Intel and Qualcomm have support for LPDDR5 in their chips that launched last year. No excuse for Apple here.

bombcar 6y ago

As far as I know there are only three (four?) M1 chips in existence: M1 8GB, M1 16GB, M1 7-core GPU 8GB. There may be an M1 7-core GPU 16GB but I suspect that there is actually only ONE M1 chip (M1 16GB 8-core) and the rest are binned versions.

yarcob 6y ago
The CPUs are binned, the RAM is added after binning them. The RAM is created separately from the processor.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Interesting, I was under the impression the RAM was on the same die.
  - bsharitt 6y ago
    Same package different die.
mpweiher 6y ago
I have a 16GB Air with 7 GPU cores. So as the sibling said: CPU is binned (but apparently only for the 7/8 GPU cores), RAM is added separately in the package, not on the die.

Eric_WVGG 6y ago

As a developer who moved from a 16gb Intel MBP to an 8gb Air, I see no difference at all. I think a combination of the nature of the SOC and the massively faster retain/release cycle just make it much less of an issue. That said, I did straight up run out of RAM the other day, but my editor was chewing up something like 32gb of swap. Still no slowdown, though. (I suspect a memory leak, it's very new software)

busymom0 6y ago
I can’t use one with less than 16gb because iPhone or Android simulator will chew up memory.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  I'm having no trouble running xCode + iOS simulators at all. In fact I think there's some possibility that the iOS simulator could be lighter weight due to ARM -> ARM rather than ARM -> Intel, but that's pure speculation. Not currently doing any Android work so I can't comment.
roody15 6y ago
Using that much swap frequently sounds like it might wear out your ssd early(thrashing)
- hyakosm 6y ago
  Do we have a proof of this?

layer8 6y ago

> why not more? From the marketing, it's clearly a consumer-oriented device. Presumably there will be "pro" versions at a later time.

icedchai 6y ago

8 gigs RAM is a bit of a joke for 2021. My 2014 iMac came with the same amount of memory. At least I could upgrade it though.

arvinsim 6y ago

Not sure why people are still confused about this. Apple is a company. It is beholden to focus on profits for it's shareholders. Why give users more RAM for free?