Upgradable memory in future Apple Silicon chips

[wilberforce]

I would not be surprised if some of the binned 8/14 core M1 Pro chips actually have nothing wrong with them, and are just being binned by TSMC to fulfill 8/14 core orders from Apple.
So it would not be impossible to imagine that this binning (disabling of cores) is done by software, rather than by hardware disabling.
It also possible to imagine that, rather than producing a single package that spans all possible variations of RAM,CPU and GPU, that it is segmented, and that several packages each cover a limited range of variations.

Anyway, I doubt this will come to pass, mainly because how Apple sources their chips. They do not make themselves: they buy them from a fab (TSMC). Their purchasing agreement likely involves TSMC supplying binned M1 Pros for $100, unbinned M1 Pros for $150, and M1 Maxs for $200, and so on (say).
It is unlikely that Apple will take a $200 chip just purchased from TSMC, and deliberately cripple it by software to make it equivalent to a $100 chip. Makes no sense.

 

[deconstruct60]

The notion, as expressed by OP in Post #7, is that in future Apple could make a single SoC, with all the maximum RAM, CPUs and GPUs already physically present, and unlock RAM, GPU, and CPU depending on how much license fee you paid. Sort of like reverse binning.
This is not a new idea, Intel has suggested it.
I personally don't think Apple will do this, but it is interesting.

Reverse biinning isn't going to lower manufacturing costs in the slightest. Al lthe "binned to useful' product now has to be be thrown out so the average users can not take advantage of it. You have to put the max capaable product in each SoC. The most RAM diess possible. That will drive manufacturing costs up ; not down.

Apple is extremely unlikely going to "eat' that cost increase. They already charge a higher than average mark-up. This will just send if higher as the Mac buyers likely would b e asked to pay upfront for abilities they don't have access to. They just would be gouged even deeper to turn features on.

Even with the current SoC, some people have looked at the layouts and surmised there appear to be some portions/packages that are currently unused, or are duplicates.

same portions doesn't mean the same die. There is a notion going around that TSMC/Apple just 'cut' the Max after the fact down to the Pro size. That is more than deeply flawed notion. Those are made with two different dies onto completely different sets of wafers. It would cost Apple more money and more wastedd wafers to only use one "die" to make both of those (even if could cut off the additional portion without damaging the nearby circuitry. )

There are costs to implement that dies and overall processors R&D is shared across products but they are really two different products to manufacture.


At the "Mainframe" price point the mark ups can be even higher than Apple so can make end users pay for stuff they can't access and then ask for even more later. If the system provides enough value add the customers just grumble and pay. Windows is a far more substitutable good to macOS than what exists in those spaces.


There are also some low end controller SoCs where it is a hassle to limbo do to as low of RAM requirements that smallest configurations need. So if only need 250MB and smallest RAM die can get is 1GB then slicing that isn't really going to change overall bill of material costs much. Turning on 1-2 cores on an aleady small die isn't going to change much either.

Where the manufacturing costs are substantially higher and the bill of materials are different (more RAM dies or whatever) are needed to be weaved into the "on demand" solution then the costs for system vendor and user typically go up. There are corner cases where this can work. In the close to commodity PC market though.... this model has major problems.

 

[profcutter]

Apple has already developed economies of scale by moving from two completely separate processor lines to one: all based on the Ax line of processors that started as phone processors. I’m not sure that they’ll achieve more efficiency by further simplifying, already you have the same chip in an iOS device as a MacBook Pro.

 

[Dovahkiing]

What is the rational argument agains this practice, provided the prices stay the same? For example, if you could buy the base 14" MBP and then unlock all CPU cores for the same $200 as Apple charges now? Sounds to me like it would give the users more options with our really removing anything.



It's also possible to put a house on tracks and move it down the street. It doesn't mean that this should or can be a standard thing.

Maybe it's not rational. But people are not rational. I get a very deep visceral feeling of "F**K YOU!" if I am to purchase a machine that is capable of X, but is artificially restricted to Y. I expect to pay a price based on cost of goods. This flies in the face of that.

 

[Zdigital2015]

I expect the first Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to max out at 256GB of Unified Memory, which will disappoint some. I expect if Apple makes good on updating the Intel Mac Pro to Ice Lake Xeon-W, which will require a complete new motherboard, that the Intel model will soldier on for a few years after the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is released.

None of what @dogslobber is proposing or speculating on is going to come true. Apple is going to keep everything as horizontally integrated as they possibly can which seems to be working out just fine for them and doesn’t seem to be affecting sales at all. It’s only a small percentage of users who are asking for this sort of upgradability, it’s just not a big ask by the vast majority of average consumers. The constant speculation doesn’t change the reality of the situation.

 

[Dovahkiing]

Maybe it's not rational. But people are not rational. I get a very deep visceral feeling of "F**K YOU!" if I am to purchase a machine that is capable of X, but is artificially restricted to Y. I expect to pay a price based on cost of goods. This flies in the face of that.

Plus, you guys know the logical extension of shipping software locked hardware is monthly subscription fees to use the hardware that you physically own, right? How on earth are any of you OK with this???!

 

[cmaier]

Maybe it's not rational. But people are not rational. I get a very deep visceral feeling of "F**K YOU!" if I am to purchase a machine that is capable of X, but is artificially restricted to Y. I expect to pay a price based on cost of goods. This flies in the face of that.

Very little of what you buy has a price based on cost of goods.

 

[Dovahkiing]

Very little of what you buy has a price based on cost of goods.

You get my point. I can't speak for everyone, but the day Apple expects me to pay money to unlock hardware features on a physical device is the day I switch to daily driving a linux machine and a Pixel.

 

[wilberforce]

Maybe it's not rational. But people are not rational. I get a very deep visceral feeling of "F**K YOU!" if I am to purchase a machine that is capable of X, but is artificially restricted to Y. I expect to pay a price based on cost of goods. This flies in the face of that.

Well, I paid BMW $800 to install a "performance" tune on my car, which was simply changing the software in the ECU to enable higher HP and torque. Not much different from paying to unlock performance on a processor. Zero additional goods cost for BMW, there was no physical modification of the engine.
(btw, it wasn't worth it).

 

[lcubed]

Well, I paid BMW $800 to install a "performance" tune on my car, which was simply changing the software in the ECU to enable higher HP and torque. Not much different from paying to unlock performance on a processor. Zero additional goods cost for BMW, there was no physical modification of the engine.
(btw, it wasn't worth it).

that's tweaking existing hardware via software vs activating the other turbo and intercooler which was just being dragged along for the ride.

 

[cmaier]

You get my point. I can't speak for everyone, but the day Apple expects me to pay money to unlock hardware features on a physical device is the day I switch to daily driving a linux machine and a Pixel.

They did that once with wifi functionality.

 

[profcutter]

that's tweaking existing hardware via software vs activating the other turbo and intercooler which was just being dragged along for the ride.

Yeah, most folks are pretty unhappy with BMWs insistence on using the subscription model, so much so that they walked back the CarPlay subscription model for at least a few model years. I know VW is headed in that direction too, but it sucks. Still, to be fair, lots of folks on here seem to be getting the M1 Max because they have the money and they think it will make word and Firefox run faster. If they’re already doing that, I suspect they’d be the target market for the subscription model, since they already have the 2nd turbo and the methanol injection just hanging off the motor, idle.

 

[Analog Kid]

This hardware industry is moving to a licensing model where HW vendors ship one single entity which has hardware licenses to enable additional hardware features.

I will not pay monthly for the use of my RAM.

I realize you aren‘t suggesting that it would work that way, but that’s my breaking point. I don’t care what they include and enable/disable inside the system if i can pay once for the functionality. I’m not entirely sure your economic argument holds at Apple volumes (the incremental cost of supporting an additional configuration is amortized over a very large number of units), and I suspect this will put an upper limit on the amount of RAM available (would Apple really pay the cost of 128GB but allow the user to pay the price of 8GB?) but either way I don’t much care whether they include and disable RAM in my system. I’m just tired of every purchase I make being morphed into ”a relationship”.

 

[macfacts]

Plus, you guys know the logical extension of shipping software locked hardware is monthly subscription fees to use the hardware that you physically own, right? How on earth are any of you OK with this???!

What about the ability to get free hardware upgrades with a software mod/hack/crack. I'm ok with that.

 

[Fomalhaut]

@dogslobber What's the point of quoting responses to your posts without any further comment or answer? ?

 

[Fomalhaut]

The problem is not the chip itself but the RAM. Experiments show that the chip will recognize and use whatever amount of RAM is there. But resoldering the RAM is basically out of the question, as is using socketed RAM. So the only option is pre-installing larger amount of RAM on the device and letting the user unlock it for a fee, which is not economically viable due to the scarcity of RAM itself.

Exactly. @dogslobber seems to think the cost of the SoC is a small part of the total cost of the machine, but I would expect an M1 Max to cost much more to make than a basic M1. The memory modules alone must be a large proportion of the cost. Even if unit costs for the silicon fabrication were the same, I expect the yield on a die that is four times the size will be less, and that there will quite a lot of wastage when making the larger SoCs.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Many posters in here apparently completely misunderstand the OP's thread - unfortunately because the OP did not properly explain in post #1, but did later explain in post #7.
The thread is NOT about physically upgrading memory (or other features), it is about unlocking additional RAM (or other features) that already physically exist on the SoC, by paid license upgrades.
And this is not just a made-up idea.
I think it is an interesting discussion topic, different from the hundreds of threads about physically upgrading RAM.

Re-reading the OP, I can see that it what he meant by "upgrade the unified memory", but he could have explained it better from the outset.

However, I see it as unlikely. RAM is expensive and I doubt Apple would make any profit by including, 32GB or 64GB in every SoC package and allowing users to license less amounts. The majority of people would choose less, and Apple would still have to pay for the maximum amount possible.

If there were negligle cost differences between 16 and 64GB or RAM, then maybe, yes. I very much doubt this is the case though.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Maybe it's not rational. But people are not rational. I get a very deep visceral feeling of "F**K YOU!" if I am to purchase a machine that is capable of X, but is artificially restricted to Y. I expect to pay a price based on cost of goods. This flies in the face of that.

Yes, it does reveal the ugly face of capitalism, doesn't it

I remember reading that the mail service in the UK didn't actually treat "first class" mail with any kind of special fast delivery method; they merely deliberately slowed down the delivery of "second class" mail by letting it sit somewhere for a couple of days. This assumes they had physcial capacity to deliver all the mail to "first class" delivery standards of course...

 

[perplx]

Software locking performance besides making no sense technically is a consumer hostile ******** tactic you would only expect from a $300 Walmart laptop or specialty enterprise hardware. Not a premium consumer brand like Apple.

 

[ikramerica]

No one will ever circumvent the protection either. Like DVD, Blu-ray, Cable, SataliteTV, Credit Bureaus, Websites…. wait what the latest uncrackable thing?

On JVC remotes you just needed the remote from a higher end model to use some of the higher end features on a lower cost model.

 

[throAU]

I'm expecting that Apple will allow user to upgrade the unified memory in future ARM Macs. This will also likely make it cheaper to manufacture as it will reduce the parts needed to make Macs. This means if you buy a bottom of the line Mac then there will be headroom to grow the unified memory footprint easily. Feels like Apple will be onto a winner with it.

Why?

We're at the point now where "enough" memory is available for end user applications that will conceivably run on the current CPUs.

You simply aren't going to upgrade a modern machine and it will magically gain new life. Those days have been gone for a long time. 8 GB for most end users has been sufficient for the past decade. If you buy a machine with X GB today, it will last the life of the machine, unless you made the wrong choice for your workload. And in that case the CPU/GPU is likely going to be required as well.

 

[ikramerica]

Yes, it does reveal the ugly face of capitalism, doesn't it

I remember reading that the mail service in the UK didn't actually treat "first class" mail with any kind of special fast delivery method; they merely deliberately slowed down the delivery of "second class" mail by letting it sit somewhere for a couple of days. This assumes they had physcial capacity to deliver all the mail to "first class" delivery standards of course...

Fedex does this. UPS doesn’t as much.

 

[ikramerica]

that's tweaking existing hardware via software vs activating the other turbo and intercooler which was just being dragged along for the ride.

You are paying for an increase in warranty costs there. Those tweaks increase likelihood of the engine needing repair.

 

[palmerc]

I'm expecting that Apple will allow user to upgrade the unified memory in future ARM Macs. This will also likely make it cheaper to manufacture as it will reduce the parts needed to make Macs. This means if you buy a bottom of the line Mac then there will be headroom to grow the unified memory footprint easily. Feels like Apple will be onto a winner with it.

Nope. That is a fact-free position.

Apple Silicon is a unified memory architecture shared by the GPU and CPU, this says to me, the likelihood is that memory is going to be decided at design time not by some arbitrary user decision. Memory upgradeability is an artefact of the PC era when the power of software greatly outperformed every component on the system. Today, memory just isn't _that_ important. Once you have enough, more isn't going to boost performance the way it would 10+ years ago. Recent demos have shown that 16GB on an M1, for example, handles the same tasks as 32GB with nearly identical performance with a tradeoff in swap size. While not necessarily the only consideration, it does suggest that hardware isn't a limiting factor as much as survivability of the components and battery life. Non-upgradeable has many advantages over upgradeable memory and upgradeable components while sold as a panacea to all that ails the world, are often not nearly as upgradeable as you would hope.

 

[senttoschool]

Nope. That is a fact-free position.

Apple Silicon is a unified memory architecture shared by the GPU and CPU, this says to me, the likelihood is that memory is going to be decided at design time not by some arbitrary user decision. Memory upgradeability is an artefact of the PC era when the power of software greatly outperformed every component on the system. Today, memory just isn't _that_ important. Once you have enough, more isn't going to boost performance the way it would 10+ years ago. Recent demos have shown that 16GB on an M1, for example, handles the same tasks as 32GB with nearly identical performance with a tradeoff in swap size. While not necessarily the only consideration, it does suggest that hardware isn't a limiting factor as much as survivability of the components and battery life. Non-upgradeable has many advantages over upgradeable memory and upgradeable components while sold as a panacea to all that ails the world, are often not nearly as upgradeable as you would hope.

For laptops, zero chance we will see upgradeable memory. However, there is a decent chance that Apple will allow upgradeable memory for Mac Pro.

Intel Mac Pros can go up to 1.5TB. There is no way Apple is going to solder on 1.5TB. And Apple needs to match the Intel memory capacity so Apple Silicon doesn't look inferior.

Apple has a patent on a multi-level RAM system:

Apple Patents Multi-Level Hybrid Memory Subsystem

Apple has today patented a new approach to how it uses memory in the System-on-Chip (SoC) subsystem. With the announcement of the M1 processor, Apple has switched away from the traditional Intel-supplied chips and transitioned into a fully custom SoC design called Apple Silicon. The new designs...

www.techpowerup.com

I can see a scenario where the Mac Pro will come with up to 256GB of unified RAM that can be shared between the CPU, GPU, NPU. Then you can install up to an additional 1.256tb of RAM on your own. This 1.256tb can only be accessed by the CPU when the original 256GB is exhausted.