I sure hope so
I honestly wish they were still doing that on the Mini though if they in fact have plans to allow that.
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I am really torn between 8GB vs. 16GB RAM
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I sure hope so
I honestly wish they were still doing that on the Mini though if they in fact have plans to allow that.
I think that they still have to work out how they are going to handle first-tier and second-tier RAM and also put in an external memory controller. Doing the storage and RAM probably simplified things for them so that they could get these out quickly and also means that they didn't need to buy additional parts like chips, sockets and PC board wiring.
I think that they went this route to keep the trace distance between the M1 chip, and the memory chip to be at minimum (as it is on-Package RAM in this case) and thus reduces delay among some other cost savings :/
Don't know how it's gonna play out :/
But, really, if they were going to that, they easily could have put one socket in the Mini. Perhaps there will be some kind of "plus" model range with RAM socket(s), though I think they might require that the DIMM be at least twice as large as the SoC memory.
Maybe the Mac Mini Pro might finally be a thing and all of us who’d wanted a desktop between the Mini and Pro will finally get it?
Maybe they can do the RAM cheaper themselves. I'd guess that RAM prices are a bit on the frothy side right now.
The Intel Mini was fine except for three problems:
1) Thermals
2) User replaceable RAM
3) GPU
They could fix 1 and 3 with an M1X, especially if they supported 3x4k.
I'd be good with that.
This part is really interesting - they have a lot to do still to catch up to current high end dGPU's.
Maybe they'll shock us all on that front also? (hope so!)
The M1 has a Geekbench 5 OpenCL score of about 20K which is very good for a low-end GPU and a weak mid-range. The rumors are that the M1X doubles the cores which would get you to 40K which gets you around the middle of the mid-range. That would be quite good for a lot of people and even many gamers. I'd consider the high-end from 60K to 200K. My current discrete card is comparable to the M1 so I'd be happy with an M1X, as long as it could drive 3x4k.
The M1 GPU satisfies the vast majority of PC users. People with two or three external monitors want more. Games want more. There are applications that want more. But the M1 is the right call for their first release.
The current iMac Pro can be configured up to 256 GB of RAM - it has quad channel RAM so pretty high-performance stuff. My guess is that it could probably tak 512 GB of RAM but 64 GB DIMMs aren't available yet.
Good luck putting 512 GB of RAM on the SoC.
Data hierarchy:
Obviously, motherboard RAM is going to be a lot faster than the SSD, but still somewhat or a lot slower than SoC RAM. And honestly, if there is no motherboard RAM, the SoC can get by with fewer pins, and the board will not have to have a RAM controller chip (including refresh logic). In all likelihood, if a DIMM slot is included, the motherboard RAM would mostly serve as a storage cache (like a middle swap space) rather than being accessed directly as in traditional designs. It would probably improve performance, but maybe not by all that much. We have seen cases where Apple OS upgrades make the system faster and more efficient (though not all have done so). It seems possible that a DIMM slot will not appear on subsequent models – they might just go make the SoC fatter, because they can get good performance out of not-acres-of RAM.
CPU Register Set
L1 Cache
L2 Cache
SoC RAM
Mbd RAM
___ Storage
______ network
Obviously, motherboard RAM is going to be a lot faster than the SSD, but still somewhat or a lot slower than SoC RAM. And honestly, if there is no motherboard RAM, the SoC can get by with fewer pins, and the board will not have to have a RAM controller chip (including refresh logic). In all likelihood, if a DIMM slot is included, the motherboard RAM would mostly serve as a storage cache (like a middle swap space) rather than being accessed directly as in traditional designs. It would probably improve performance, but maybe not by all that much. We have seen cases where Apple OS upgrades make the system faster and more efficient (though not all have done so). It seems possible that a DIMM slot will not appear on subsequent models – they might just go make the SoC fatter, because they can get good performance out of not-acres-of RAM.
If you plan on keeping it for at least 5 years, then the extra money is worth it.
What would be useful for comparison is SoC memory bandwidth compared to memory bandwidth of memory on the motherboard.
I've seen performance benchmarks comparing the Mac Pro to AMD CPUs with more cores where the Mac Pro won out because of the 6-channel memory. So memory bandwidth is an issue but we'd need real numbers to compare. The Mac Pro maxes out at over 1 TB and there are lots of systems that you can put lots more than that. So I'm expecting motherboard DIMMs.
I have been writing a small tool (99% Python + 1% C) to give me a summary of memory usage on the system, as part of my research into Darwin (I mainly work on some stuff for OpenBSD when free but spending more time on macOS as well these days). This is how it looks:
This is after 10 days of uptime and represents a very lightly loaded system. It matches the output from Activity Monitor and top (figuring out the exact formulae and kernel objects was fun). There are two interesting bits:
). It might be interesting to try out on the newer systems.
This is after 10 days of uptime and represents a very lightly loaded system. It matches the output from Activity Monitor and top (figuring out the exact formulae and kernel objects was fun). There are two interesting bits:
- Available memory - macOS has an estimate of the "true" memory usage through a little known (it seems) C API. This is an estimate of all the memory the system can get back if really pushed. Otherwise it will occupy as much as it can.
- Memory pressure - I'm still working on the exact formula. However, when there is no swap activity, by which I mean page in/outs and not static swap usage, I believe this is close to the graph in Activity Monitor. Some more work is needed to capture the dynamics when it's actively swapping.
). It might be interesting to try out on the newer systems.I have been writing a small tool (99% Python + 1% C) to give me a summary of memory usage on the system, as part of my research into Darwin (I mainly work on some stuff for OpenBSD when free but spending more time on macOS as well these days). This is how it looks:
View attachment 1704528
This is after 10 days of uptime and represents a very lightly loaded system. It matches the output from Activity Monitor and top (figuring out the exact formulae and kernel objects was fun). There are two interesting bits:
Anyway if anyone is interested, I can share the code (with no guarantees
- Available memory - macOS has an estimate of the "true" memory usage through a little known (it seems) C API. This is an estimate of all the memory the system can get back if really pushed. Otherwise it will occupy as much as it can.
- Memory pressure - I'm still working on the exact formula. However, when there is no swap activity, by which I mean page in/outs and not static swap usage, I believe this is close to the graph in Activity Monitor. Some more work is needed to capture the dynamics when it's actively swapping.
Pretty awesome, do you have a GitHub with the code?
Ten out of twelve stores have the Air 16/1 in stock tomorrow and my preferred store will have them in stock on Saturday. This means that I can order and pick up this weekend. Very tempting.
It's the only model with 16 GB. The 7/8 and Pro are not available. They tell you one day out and two days out; why not three and four days out? I'd guess that I would have to wait in line at my local store to pick it up as well. I often see lines at the store for people waiting to pick things up. The line is outside of the store.
Availability may be due to the holiday. There are lots of 8 GB models available but my guess is that these will all sell this weekend.
It's the only model with 16 GB. The 7/8 and Pro are not available. They tell you one day out and two days out; why not three and four days out? I'd guess that I would have to wait in line at my local store to pick it up as well. I often see lines at the store for people waiting to pick things up. The line is outside of the store.
Availability may be due to the holiday. There are lots of 8 GB models available but my guess is that these will all sell this weekend.
I guess I don't understand, you don't like the user replaceable ram?
I do, went from 8gb to 64gb for much cheaper and a few minutes.
What I'd like is for it to be easier for the user to install RAM. A friend of mine who is an electrical engineer (he's actually a manager of a few hundred electrical engineers now) did the upgrade but he said that it was a considerable amount of work. What I'd like is if they made it as easy as the iMac 27 inch.
Other then having to make sure I had the right screw driver it was super easy and I'm the guy who hated they went from screw less to screws required drive sleds between the G5 Power Macs and the first gen Mac Pros
Was going back to place and order on the 16/1, and, gone. All of the 8 GB models are gone now too. That's something like two hours. The 8 GB models were in 12 stores. Right now, they are all sold out for the next two days. The 16/1 are sold out in three stores for the next two days. There's only one that I will go to to pick it up at. It appears that a bunch of these things comes in stock and they're gone in a few hours.
I look forward to seeing what kind of Mac sales Apple has. I'm sure that they are selling a ton of the M1 systems but I wonder if people are holding back on buying the Intel systems that have more ports or RAM and waiting for the M1X. I've heard that the M1X will be in the second-half, possibly one year after the M1 - that's a long wait.
I don't mind getting an M1 now. My daughter indicated that she'd like one. That does complicate things a bit - I might need to get two of them.
I look forward to seeing what kind of Mac sales Apple has. I'm sure that they are selling a ton of the M1 systems but I wonder if people are holding back on buying the Intel systems that have more ports or RAM and waiting for the M1X. I've heard that the M1X will be in the second-half, possibly one year after the M1 - that's a long wait.
I don't mind getting an M1 now. My daughter indicated that she'd like one. That does complicate things a bit - I might need to get two of them.