Should handle that well, though. Maybe one of the players is still not up to speed with the M1s.
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I am really torn between 8GB vs. 16GB RAM
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Not to mention the SSD technology has advanced a lot. I really don't think this is going to be an issue
Not happening sadly. The RAM is soldiered onto the board. It's not replacable nor upgradable.
This week I've kept two user accounts open on the 8 GB Air, one for work, one for personal. No closing down of apps after I've finished or at night, and no logging out, or restarts.
Using Brave with multiple windows and about 30 odd tabs (not optimised for M1), Safari about ten or so tabs, Outlook, Teams, Skype, Zoom, Word, Pages, Multiple Excel workbooks with multiple sheets, loads of PDFs, bibliographic database, Netflix, ESPN Player, Dropbox, Calendar, Notes. Plus building genomic variant effects on ENSEMBL. External Monitor attached, not in clamshell, using both screens.
Even with everything I've got to throw at it via two user accounts, not bothering to close any apps, it hasn't missed a beat, and memory pressure been green all the time, and the Air is cool to touch (wasn't for the first few days, but now it's calmed down).
My new approach to buying now is just to buy the base model every years on university discount, and sell my current one, meaning my in use machine will be the latest and fast at a reasonable price. Eventually Apple will upgrade the RAM on base and may even go to something funky like 10 / 12 like they have random RAM amounts on the iPad.
Using Brave with multiple windows and about 30 odd tabs (not optimised for M1), Safari about ten or so tabs, Outlook, Teams, Skype, Zoom, Word, Pages, Multiple Excel workbooks with multiple sheets, loads of PDFs, bibliographic database, Netflix, ESPN Player, Dropbox, Calendar, Notes. Plus building genomic variant effects on ENSEMBL. External Monitor attached, not in clamshell, using both screens.
Even with everything I've got to throw at it via two user accounts, not bothering to close any apps, it hasn't missed a beat, and memory pressure been green all the time, and the Air is cool to touch (wasn't for the first few days, but now it's calmed down).
My new approach to buying now is just to buy the base model every years on university discount, and sell my current one, meaning my in use machine will be the latest and fast at a reasonable price. Eventually Apple will upgrade the RAM on base and may even go to something funky like 10 / 12 like they have random RAM amounts on the iPad.
I am well versed in the differences between Intel and ARM architectures as well as the difference between swap and paging. If you're unwilling to provide the requested information then I will conclude your statements on this subject are baseless.
As I understand it RAM is not soldered onto the board, it's a part of the M1 processor die itself. A distinction with the same end result (i.e. non-upgradable memory) but it's one of the design characteristics of the M1 processor which helps it perform better.
SSDs are not a substitute for RAM. While they have been helpful in decreasing the performance impact of paging SSDs still aren't as fast as RAM. My M1 Mini achieves 2.1GB/sec read, 2.5GB/sec write bandwidth (BlackMagic) and I believe the M1 processor has a memory bandwidth of approximately 60GB/sec.
In short: Don't use paging to a fast SSD as a replacement for RAM. If your workload requires 16GB of RAM get a system with at least 16GB of RAM.
I went looking for RAMDisks and couldn't find any. The best I found was SSDs with a lot of cache.
In this era, you shouldn’t need to resort to 1990’s tech, if you need more ram you should be able to add it. There shouldn’t even have been an option, just release all M1 macs with 16gb.
It's actually in between. The ram is on the "package". On most CPU model, the package only has the pins or contacts that connect the CPU to the rest of the computer. On the M1 it also has the RAM chips soldered to the package next to the CPU die. And on the underside the pins or pads to connect to the rest of the computer.
So there must be an interconnect on the package that connects the RAM chips to the CPU die.
If the RAM was on the CPU die, they would have to make a different CPU for each ram configuration.
Also, apparently RAM transistor and CPU transistor are very different, so it would not make sense to have the RAM part of the CPU.
I agree, from the pictures it looks like the ram is solder reflowed onto the die which makes sense, the other thing is that there are only 2 chips, 2x4(8) or 2x8(16), I know that Samsung just started producing 16gb chips, so there is a possibility that a 32gb Pro model will be made available in the future.
Uh you missed what I was saying. Upgrade Mac mini as in get rid of it and get the rumored Mac Pro mini or at least the Mac Pro Apple Silicon version. I prefer headless systems.
I don't like buying something I won't get use of either but for RAM and storage too much is better than not enough.
I have a Late 2009 iMac that I just restored and it has 4 GB of RAM. I'm going to order 8 GB of RAM so that I can run email, browse using full performance mode, and run several other things. It can run on 4 GB of RAM but it has a HDD and paging and swapping on a HDD is likely unpleasant. I am not up to replacing the HDD with an SSD on this model as it's pretty complicated to do.
The glass panel is held on by magnets on that model.
It’s quite easy, just follow the guide on ifixit
The glass panel is held on by magnets on that model.
It’s quite easy, just follow the guide on ifixit
It's always a possibility. But I'm going to add 8 GB to get to 12 GB. If I have 12 GB, then I'll never have to page/swap.
I wanted to test out Target Display Mode and it works great. I'm typing this from my 2015 MacBook Pro to the iMac using Target Display Mode. This is a very cool feature - too bad they removed it after 2014.
Ive currently got the MBP 8gb and I'm returning it as soon as the 16GB model ships. After the initial reviews I thought 8gb would be enough but when I'm constantly running in memory swap I thought I would order the 16gb and return the 8gb when the 16gb arrives. Ive got until January 8th to return the 8gb so hopefully the 16gb delivers by then!
Safe advice that everyone can agree on, including those who get 8.
Because everyone has an extra $200.
And the right amount is better than either.
Is there some performance issue? Memory swap isn't in itself a problem.
This.
As been said in all aspects of life: When you look for problems, you will find them.
I’m dealing with a huge amount of lightroom classic exports of large files. I can be running in 4-5 gb of memory swap. My understanding is that RAM is quicker than SSD so the 16gb will be quicker in some of those tasks.
The M1 die is attached (flip chip, i.e. upside down) to a small circuit board. The two stacks of memory dies are also attached to this circuit board. Each stack of RAM is likely four dies for 8GB machines, and eight dies for 16GB machines.
The small M1 SOC circuit board is then soldered to the main logic board.
These days it is not uncommon to have multiple dies on a CPU's little circuit board. For example, mobile Intel CPU's have the PCH on there. Meanwhile desktop CPU's might have EDRAM cache on there.
This is in contrast to certain GPU's where there is a small circuit board, upon which is a low tech silicon die that simply provides interconnects, upon which is the GPU die and several stacks of HBM. There need to be so many connections between the GPU and HBM that they have to be really tiny - too tiny to etch on a circuit board.
BTW, stacking RAM dies is not new: Most (all?) of Apple's LPDDR3 machines used memory packages with stacked dies inside.