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> You can even get by with the 8GB M1 MBA because the MacOS memory compressor is really good and the SSD is really fast. I thought that general consensus was t

> You can even get by with the 8GB M1 MBA because the MacOS memory compressor is really good and the SSD is really fast. I thought that general consensus was that 8GB Macs were hammering the life of the SSDs? Yeah, they're fast, but people were talking about dozens of GB a day of swapping happening. And these aren't enterprise class SSDs, despite what Apple charges for them.

moondev 3y ago
I'm curious if an 8GB MacBook can run a macOS VM, and if so how much memory can be allocated to it.
- vaxman 3y ago
  Sure, it operates on an over allocation pattern. If you try to use most of the RAM, the system will begin compressing blocks of memory and will eventually begin swapping them to super fast NVMe storage. This may be fine for desktop productivity apps and web browsing, but will make the system feel sluggish when flipping between unrelated contexts.
vaxman 3y ago
Opening Xcode and a small to medium project targeting a physical device with its own RAM will be fine..no SSD killing. If you are not doing INCREMENTAL builds or start flipping between apps, web tabs, streaming video and messaging while also Xcoding, the amazing thing is that it will work, but as you say, it will likely be hammering the SSD. I wouldn’t really recommend a dev buy 8GB if they can afford 16GB, but I wouldn’t really let them use only having 8GB as an excuse not to be able to make small to medium apps either, they just have to be more intelligent about managing the machine. (Xcode is I/O bound anyway.)
vaxman 3y ago
This just in for the 8GB (4GB?) crowd... https://github.com/lyogavin/Anima/tree/main/air_llm https://github.com/lyogavin/Anima/tree/main/air_llm ..seems to be enabled by Apple's new MLX framework (which could become even faster https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/issues/18 https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/issues/18 --ANE support would be particularly important on a lowly M1, which is the main system that would have been configured with only 8GB)

moondev 3y ago

I'm curious if an 8GB MacBook can run a macOS VM, and if so how much memory can be allocated to it.

vaxman 3y ago
Sure, it operates on an over allocation pattern. If you try to use most of the RAM, the system will begin compressing blocks of memory and will eventually begin swapping them to super fast NVMe storage. This may be fine for desktop productivity apps and web browsing, but will make the system feel sluggish when flipping between unrelated contexts.

vaxman 3y ago

Opening Xcode and a small to medium project targeting a physical device with its own RAM will be fine..no SSD killing. If you are not doing INCREMENTAL builds or start flipping between apps, web tabs, streaming video and messaging while also Xcoding, the amazing thing is that it will work, but as you say, it will likely be hammering the SSD. I wouldn’t really recommend a dev buy 8GB if they can afford 16GB, but I wouldn’t really let them use only having 8GB as an excuse not to be able to make small to medium apps either, they just have to be more intelligent about managing the machine. (Xcode is I/O bound anyway.)

vaxman 3y ago

This just in for the 8GB (4GB?) crowd... https://github.com/lyogavin/Anima/tree/main/air_llm https://github.com/lyogavin/Anima/tree/main/air_llm ..seems to be enabled by Apple's new MLX framework (which could become even faster https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/issues/18 https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/issues/18 --ANE support would be particularly important on a lowly M1, which is the main system that would have been configured with only 8GB)