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Have any examples from the past decade? Especially in the context of how exaggerated the claims are from PC and Android brands they are competing with?
by brokencode 2y ago
Have any examples from the past decade? Especially in the context of how exaggerated the claims are from PC and Android brands they are competing with?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lynndotpy 2y agoApple recently claimed that RAM in their Macbooks is equivalent to 2x the RAM in any other machine, in defense of the 8GB starting point. In my experience, I can confirm that this is just not true. The secret is heavy reliance on swap. It's still the case that 1GB = 1GB.
- dmitrygr 2y ago> The secret is heavy reliance on swap You are entirely (100%) wrong, but, sadly, NDA...
- ethanwillis 2y agoHow convenient :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- monsieurbanana 2y agoRegardless of what you can't tell, he's absolutely right regarding Apple's claims: saying that a 8gb mac is as good as a 16gb non-mac is laughable.
- sudosysgen 2y agoMemory compression isn't magic and isn't exclusive to macOS.
- dmitrygr 2y agoI suggest you go and look HOW it is done in apple silicon macs, and then think long and hard why this might make a huge difference. Maybe Asahi Linux guys can explain it to you ;)
- sudosysgen 2y agoI understand that it can make a difference to performance (which is already baked into the benchmarks we look at), I don't see how it can make a difference to compression ratios, if anything in similar implementations (ex: console APUs) it tends to lead to worse compression ratios. If there's any publicly available data to the contrary I'd love to read it. Anecdotally I haven't seen a significant difference between zswap on Linux and macOS memory compression in terms of compression ratios, and on the workloads I've tested zswap tends to be faster than no memory compression on x86 for many core machines.
- lynndotpy 2y agoI do admit the "reliance on swap" thing is speculation on my part :) My experience is that I can still tell when the OS is unhappy when I demand more RAM than it can give. MacOS is still relatively responsive around this range, which I just attributed to super fast swapping. (I'd assume memory compression too, but I usually run into this trouble when working with large amounts of poorly-compressible data.) In either case, I know it's frustrating when someone is confidently wrong but you can't properly correct them, so you have my apologies
- brokencode 2y agoSure, and they were widely criticized for this. Again, the assertion I was responding to is that Apple does this ”laughably” more than competitors. Is an occasional statement that they get pushback on really worse than what other brands do? As an example from a competitor, take a look at the recent firestorm over Intel’s outlandish anti-AMD marketing: https://wccftech.com/intel-calls-out-amd-using-old-cores-in-new-ryzen-cpus-core-truths-marketing/amp/ https://wccftech.com/intel-calls-out-amd-using-old-cores-in-...
- ajross 2y ago> Sure, and they were widely criticized for this. Again, the assertion I was responding to is that Apple does this ”laughably” more than competitors. FWIW: the language upthread was that it was laughable to say Apple was the most honest. And I stand by that.
- brokencode 2y agoFair point. Based on their first sentence, I mischaracterized how “laughable” was used. Though the author also made clear in their second sentence that they think Apple is one of the worst when it comes to marketing claims, so I don’t think your characterization is totally accurate either.
- rahkiin 2y agoThere is also memory compression and their insane swap speed due to SoC memory and ssd
- anaisbetts 2y agoEvery modern operating system now does memory compression
- astrange 2y agoSome of them do it better than others though.
- Rinzler89 2y agoApple uses Magic Compression.
- adamomada 2y agoNot sure what windows does but the popular method on e.g. fedora is to split memory into main and swap and then compress swap. It could be more efficient the way Apple does it by not having to partition main memory.
- throwaway744678 2y agoThis is a revolution
- anaisbetts 2y agoCitation needed?
- astrange 2y agoDon't know if I'm allowed to. It's not that special though.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- seec 2y agoYe that was hilarious, my basic workload borders on the 8GB limit not even pushing it. They have fast swap but nothing beats real ram in the end, and considering their storage pricing is as stupid as their RAM pricing it really makes no difference. If you go for the base model, you are in for a bad time, 256GB with heavy swap and no dedicated GPU memory (making the 8GB even worse) is just plain stupid. This what the Apple fanboys don't seem to get, their base model at somewhat affordable price are deeply incompetent and if you start to load it up the pricing just do not make a lot of sense...
- n9 2y agoYou know that RAM in these machines is more different than the same as "RAM" in a standard PC? Apple's SoC RAM is more or less part of the CPU/GPU and is super fast. And for obvious reasons cannot be added to. Anyway, I manage a few M1 and M3 machines with 256/8 configs and they all run just as fast as 16 and 32 machines EXCEPT for workloads that need more than 8GB for a process (virtualization) or workloads that need lots of video memory (Lightroom can KILL an 8GB machine that isn't doing anything else...) The 8GB is stupid discussion isn't "wrong" in the general case, but it is wrong for maybe 80% of users.
- ajross 2y ago> EXCEPT for workloads that need more than 8GB for a process Isn't that exactly the upthread contention: Apple's magic compressed swap management is still swap management that replaces O(1) fast(-ish) DRAM access with thousands+ cycle page decompression operations. It may be faster than storage, but it's still extremely slow relative to a DRAM fetch. And once your working set gets beyond your available RAM you start thrashing just like VAXen did on 4BSD.
- seec 2y agoExactly! Load a 4GB file and welcome the beach ball spinner any time you need to context switch to another app. I don't know how they don't realize that because it's not really hard to get there. But when I was enamored with Apple stuff in my formative years, I would gladly ignore that or brush it off so I can see where they come from, I guess.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cwillu 2y agoIf someone is claiming “‹foo› has always ‹barred›”, then I don't think it's fair to demand a 10 year cutoff on counter-evidence.
- bee_rider 2y agoClearly it isn’t the case that Apple has always been more honest than their competition, because there were some years before Apple was founded.
- brokencode 2y agoFor “always” to be true, the behavior needs to extend to the present date. Otherwise, it’s only true to say “used to”.