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Just some genuine honest curiosity here; how many workloads actually require 64gb of ram? For instance, I'm an amateur in the music production scene, and I know

Just some genuine honest curiosity here; how many workloads actually require 64gb of ram? For instance, I'm an amateur in the music production scene, and I know that sampling heavy work flows benefit from being able to load more audio clips fully into RAM rather than streaming them from disk. But 64g seems a tad overkill even for that. I guess for me I would prefer an emphasis on speed/bandwidth rather than size, but I'm also aware there are workloads that I'm completely ignorant of.

AdrianB1 5y ago
Not many, but there are a few that need even more. My team is running SQL servers on their laptops (development and support) and when that is not enough, we go to Threadrippers with 128-256GB of RAM. Other people run Virtual Machines on their computers (I work most of the time in a VM) and you can run several VMs at the same time, eating up RAM really fast.
dylan604 5y ago
On a desktop Hackintosh, I started with 32GB that would die with out of memory errors when I was processing 16bit RAW images at full resolution. Because it was Hackintosh, I was able to upgrade to 64GB so the processing could complete. That was the only thing running.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  What image dimensions? What app? I find this extremely suspect, but it’s plausible if you’ve way undersold what you’re doing. 24Mpixel 16bit RAW image would have no problem generally on an 4gb machine if it’s truly the only app running and the app isn’t shit. ;)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I shoot timelapse using Canon 5D RAW images, I don't know the exact dimensions off the top of my head but greater than 5000px wide. I then grade them using various programs, ultimately using After Effects to render out full frame ProRes 4444. After Effects was running out of memory. It would crash and fail to render my file. It would display an error message that told me specifically it was out of memory. I increased the memory available to the system. The error goes away. But I love the fact that you have this cute little theory to doubt my actual experience to infer that I would make this up.
    - currency 5y ago
      Not the person you're replying to. >> I was processing 16bit RAW images at full resolution. >> ...using After Effects to render out full frame ProRes 4444. Those are two different applications to most of us. No one is accusing you of making things up, just that the first post wasn't fully descriptive of your use case.
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      > But I love the fact that you have this cute little theory to doubt my actual experience to infer that I would make this up. The facts were suspect, your follow up is further proof I had good reason to be suspect. First off, the RAW images from a 5D aren’t 16 bit. ;) Importantly, the out of memory error had nothing to do with the “16 bit RAW files”, it was video rendering lots of high res images that was the issue which is a very different issue and of course lots of RAM is needed there. Anyway, notice I said “but it’s plausible if you’ve way undersold what you’re doing”, which is definitely the case here, so I’m not sure why it bothered you.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Yes, Canon RAW images are 14bit. Once opened in After Effects, you are working in 16bit space. Are you just trying to be argumentative for the fun?
        jsjohnst 5y ago
        >> die with out of memory errors when I was processing 16bit RAW images > Canon RAW images are 14bit You don’t see the issue? > Are you just trying to be argumentative for the fun? In the beginning, I very politely asked a clarifying question making sure not to call you a liar as I was sure there was more to the story. You’re the one who’s been defensive and combative since, and honestly misrepresenting facts the entire time. Where you wrong at any point? Only slightly, but you left out so many details that were actually important to the story for anyone to get any value out of your anecdata. Thanks to my persistence, anyone who wanted to learn from your experience now can.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
I can exhaust my 64GB just opening browser tabs for documentation.
- kaba0 5y ago
  In case your statement is only a slight sarcasm: Isn’t that just the OS saying “unused memory is wasted memory”? Most of it is likely cache that can easily be evicted with higher memory pressure.
  - kasabali 5y ago
    It is the OS saying “unused memory is wasted memory”, and then every other application thinking they're OS and doing the same.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Since applications have virtual memory, it sort of doesn’t matter? The OS will map these to actual pages based on how many processes are available, etc. So if only one app runs and it wants lots of memory, it makes sense to give it lots of memory - that is the most “economical” decision from both a energy and performance POV.
      - kasabali 5y ago
        > So if only one app runs You answered yourself.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    It’s a slight exaggeration, I also have an editor open and some dev process (test runner usually). It’s not just caching, I routinely hit >30 GB swap with fans revved to the max and fairly often this becomes unstable enough to require a reboot even after manually closing as much as I can. I mean, some of this comes down to poor executive function on my part, failing to manage resources I’m no longer using. But that’s also a valid use case for me and I’m much more effective at whatever I’m doing if I can defer it with a larger memory capacity.
jackjeff 5y ago
Can’t answer for music, but as a developer a sure way to waste a lot of RAM is to run a bunch of virtual machines, containers or device simulators. I have 32GB, so unless I’m careless everything usually fits in memory without swapping. If you got over things get slow and you notice.
- 00deadbeef 5y ago
  Same, I tend to get everything in 32GB but more and more often I'm going over that and having things slow down. I've also nuked an SSD in a 16GB MBP due to incredibly high swap activity. It would make no sense for me to buy another 32GB machine if I want it to last five years.
  - miohtama 5y ago
    Don’t run Chrome and Slack at the same time :)
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      So run Slack inside Chrome? :)
  - xcskier56 5y ago
    How do you track the swap activity? What would you call “high” swap activity?
    - discordance 5y ago
      Open Activity Monitor, select Memory and there's "Swap used" down the bottom
- secondcoming 5y ago
  My laptop has 128GB for running several VMs that build C++ code, and Slack.
hatsubai 5y ago
Another anecdote from someone who is also in the music production scene - 32GB tended to be the "sweet spot" in my personal case for the longest time, but I'm finding myself hitting the limits more and more as I continue to add more orchestral tracks which span well over 100 tracks total in my workflows. I'm finding I need to commit and print a lot of these. Logic's little checker in the upper right showing RAM, Disk IO, CPU, etc also show that it is getting close to memory limits on certain instruments with many layers. So as someone who would be willing to dump $4k into a laptop where its main workload is only audio production, I would feel much safer going with 64GB knowing there's no real upgrade if I were to go with the 32GB model outside of buying a totally new machine. Edit: And yes, there is does show the typical "fear of committing" issue that plagues all of us people making music. It's more of a "nice to have" than a necessity, but I would still consider it a wise investment. At least in my eyes. Everyone's workflow varies and others have different opinions on the matter.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  I know the main reason why the Mac Pro has options for LRDIMMs for terabytes of RAM is specifically for audio production, where people are basically using their system memory as cache for their entire instrument library. I have to wonder how Apple plans to replace the Mac Pro - the whole benefit of M1 is that gluing the memory to the chip (in a user-hostile way) provides significant performance benefits; but I don't see Apple actually engineering a 1TB+ RAM SKU or an Apple Silicon machine with socketed DRAM channels anytime soon.
  - sharikous 5y ago
    I wonder about that too. My bet is that they will get rid of the Mac Pro entirely. Too low ROI for them at this point. My hope is to see an ARM workstation where all components are standard and serviceable. I cannot believe we are in the era of glued batteries and soldered SSDs that are guaranteed to fail and take the whole machine with them.
  - 5y ago
FpUser 5y ago
I ran 512GB on my home server, 256GB on my desktop and 128GB on small factor desktop that I take with me to summer cottage. Some of my projects work with big in memory databases. Add regular tasks and video processing on top and there you go.
ellisv 5y ago
> how many workloads actually require 64gb of ram? Don't worry, Chrome will eat that up in no time! More seriously, I look forward to more RAM for some of the datasets I work with. At least so I don't have to close everything else while running those workloads.
mnw21cam 5y ago
Working with video will use up an extraordinary amount of memory. Some of the genetics stuff I work on requires absolute gobs of RAM. I have a single process that requires around 400GB of RAM that I need to run quite regularly.
halhen 5y ago
As a data scientist, I sometimes find myself going over 64 GB. Of course it all depends on how large data I'm working on. 128 GB RAM helps even with data of "just" 10-15 GB, since I can write quick exploratory transformation pipelines without having to think about keeping the number of copies down. I could of course chop up the workload earlier, or use samples more often. Still, while not strictly necessary, I regularly find I get stuff done quicker and with less effort thanks to it.

AdrianB1 5y ago

Not many, but there are a few that need even more. My team is running SQL servers on their laptops (development and support) and when that is not enough, we go to Threadrippers with 128-256GB of RAM. Other people run Virtual Machines on their computers (I work most of the time in a VM) and you can run several VMs at the same time, eating up RAM really fast.

dylan604 5y ago

On a desktop Hackintosh, I started with 32GB that would die with out of memory errors when I was processing 16bit RAW images at full resolution. Because it was Hackintosh, I was able to upgrade to 64GB so the processing could complete. That was the only thing running.

jsjohnst 5y ago
What image dimensions? What app? I find this extremely suspect, but it’s plausible if you’ve way undersold what you’re doing. 24Mpixel 16bit RAW image would have no problem generally on an 4gb machine if it’s truly the only app running and the app isn’t shit. ;)
- dylan604 5y ago
  I shoot timelapse using Canon 5D RAW images, I don't know the exact dimensions off the top of my head but greater than 5000px wide. I then grade them using various programs, ultimately using After Effects to render out full frame ProRes 4444. After Effects was running out of memory. It would crash and fail to render my file. It would display an error message that told me specifically it was out of memory. I increased the memory available to the system. The error goes away. But I love the fact that you have this cute little theory to doubt my actual experience to infer that I would make this up.
  - currency 5y ago
    Not the person you're replying to. >> I was processing 16bit RAW images at full resolution. >> ...using After Effects to render out full frame ProRes 4444. Those are two different applications to most of us. No one is accusing you of making things up, just that the first post wasn't fully descriptive of your use case.
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    > But I love the fact that you have this cute little theory to doubt my actual experience to infer that I would make this up. The facts were suspect, your follow up is further proof I had good reason to be suspect. First off, the RAW images from a 5D aren’t 16 bit. ;) Importantly, the out of memory error had nothing to do with the “16 bit RAW files”, it was video rendering lots of high res images that was the issue which is a very different issue and of course lots of RAM is needed there. Anyway, notice I said “but it’s plausible if you’ve way undersold what you’re doing”, which is definitely the case here, so I’m not sure why it bothered you.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Yes, Canon RAW images are 14bit. Once opened in After Effects, you are working in 16bit space. Are you just trying to be argumentative for the fun?
      - jsjohnst 5y ago
        >> die with out of memory errors when I was processing 16bit RAW images > Canon RAW images are 14bit You don’t see the issue? > Are you just trying to be argumentative for the fun? In the beginning, I very politely asked a clarifying question making sure not to call you a liar as I was sure there was more to the story. You’re the one who’s been defensive and combative since, and honestly misrepresenting facts the entire time. Where you wrong at any point? Only slightly, but you left out so many details that were actually important to the story for anyone to get any value out of your anecdata. Thanks to my persistence, anyone who wanted to learn from your experience now can.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

I can exhaust my 64GB just opening browser tabs for documentation.

kaba0 5y ago
In case your statement is only a slight sarcasm: Isn’t that just the OS saying “unused memory is wasted memory”? Most of it is likely cache that can easily be evicted with higher memory pressure.
- kasabali 5y ago
  It is the OS saying “unused memory is wasted memory”, and then every other application thinking they're OS and doing the same.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Since applications have virtual memory, it sort of doesn’t matter? The OS will map these to actual pages based on how many processes are available, etc. So if only one app runs and it wants lots of memory, it makes sense to give it lots of memory - that is the most “economical” decision from both a energy and performance POV.
    - kasabali 5y ago
      > So if only one app runs You answered yourself.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  It’s a slight exaggeration, I also have an editor open and some dev process (test runner usually). It’s not just caching, I routinely hit >30 GB swap with fans revved to the max and fairly often this becomes unstable enough to require a reboot even after manually closing as much as I can. I mean, some of this comes down to poor executive function on my part, failing to manage resources I’m no longer using. But that’s also a valid use case for me and I’m much more effective at whatever I’m doing if I can defer it with a larger memory capacity.

jackjeff 5y ago

Can’t answer for music, but as a developer a sure way to waste a lot of RAM is to run a bunch of virtual machines, containers or device simulators. I have 32GB, so unless I’m careless everything usually fits in memory without swapping. If you got over things get slow and you notice.

00deadbeef 5y ago
Same, I tend to get everything in 32GB but more and more often I'm going over that and having things slow down. I've also nuked an SSD in a 16GB MBP due to incredibly high swap activity. It would make no sense for me to buy another 32GB machine if I want it to last five years.
- miohtama 5y ago
  Don’t run Chrome and Slack at the same time :)
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    So run Slack inside Chrome? :)
- xcskier56 5y ago
  How do you track the swap activity? What would you call “high” swap activity?
  - discordance 5y ago
    Open Activity Monitor, select Memory and there's "Swap used" down the bottom
secondcoming 5y ago
My laptop has 128GB for running several VMs that build C++ code, and Slack.

hatsubai 5y ago

Another anecdote from someone who is also in the music production scene - 32GB tended to be the "sweet spot" in my personal case for the longest time, but I'm finding myself hitting the limits more and more as I continue to add more orchestral tracks which span well over 100 tracks total in my workflows. I'm finding I need to commit and print a lot of these. Logic's little checker in the upper right showing RAM, Disk IO, CPU, etc also show that it is getting close to memory limits on certain instruments with many layers. So as someone who would be willing to dump $4k into a laptop where its main workload is only audio production, I would feel much safer going with 64GB knowing there's no real upgrade if I were to go with the 32GB model outside of buying a totally new machine. Edit: And yes, there is does show the typical "fear of committing" issue that plagues all of us people making music. It's more of a "nice to have" than a necessity, but I would still consider it a wise investment. At least in my eyes. Everyone's workflow varies and others have different opinions on the matter.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kmeisthax 5y ago
I know the main reason why the Mac Pro has options for LRDIMMs for terabytes of RAM is specifically for audio production, where people are basically using their system memory as cache for their entire instrument library. I have to wonder how Apple plans to replace the Mac Pro - the whole benefit of M1 is that gluing the memory to the chip (in a user-hostile way) provides significant performance benefits; but I don't see Apple actually engineering a 1TB+ RAM SKU or an Apple Silicon machine with socketed DRAM channels anytime soon.
- sharikous 5y ago
  I wonder about that too. My bet is that they will get rid of the Mac Pro entirely. Too low ROI for them at this point. My hope is to see an ARM workstation where all components are standard and serviceable. I cannot believe we are in the era of glued batteries and soldered SSDs that are guaranteed to fail and take the whole machine with them.
- 5y ago

FpUser 5y ago

I ran 512GB on my home server, 256GB on my desktop and 128GB on small factor desktop that I take with me to summer cottage. Some of my projects work with big in memory databases. Add regular tasks and video processing on top and there you go.

ellisv 5y ago

> how many workloads actually require 64gb of ram? Don't worry, Chrome will eat that up in no time! More seriously, I look forward to more RAM for some of the datasets I work with. At least so I don't have to close everything else while running those workloads.

mnw21cam 5y ago

Working with video will use up an extraordinary amount of memory. Some of the genetics stuff I work on requires absolute gobs of RAM. I have a single process that requires around 400GB of RAM that I need to run quite regularly.

halhen 5y ago

As a data scientist, I sometimes find myself going over 64 GB. Of course it all depends on how large data I'm working on. 128 GB RAM helps even with data of "just" 10-15 GB, since I can write quick exploratory transformation pipelines without having to think about keeping the number of copies down. I could of course chop up the workload earlier, or use samples more often. Still, while not strictly necessary, I regularly find I get stuff done quicker and with less effort thanks to it.