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iPad Pro Virtual Memory Swap for 16GB iPad Pro’s?
- Thread starter MBX
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Yes, since single apps will be able to use the whole 16GB RAM, it means background processes and apps can be swapped to the SSD
Someone correct me if I am wrong but if it works akin to MacOS supported devices would bassicaly no longer hit the walls where apps have to refresh intermittently because beyond either your 8gb or 16gb ram the OS will intelligently manage overflow in the swap, and yes even 16gb will use swap. I mean the new “wall“ should become like on a Mac where you literally have so much crap open in an entirely unrealistic fashion that triggers the “out of memory“ warning. Overall should be a great improvement of just the usability of M1 iPads and running our applications/jumping in and out of different ones.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions:
Does iOS itself have swap memory or does Stage Manager have swap memory.
How much RAM does Stage Manager use on the internal screen and on two screens?
Do apps launched in Stage manager stay active outside of Stage Manager and do they keep the swap memory feature when launched from Stage Manager but use outside of Stage Manager?
Does the 60% of physical RAM rule still apply?
If an 8GB iPad only gives ~5GB to Stage Manager and its open apps then 16GB iPads are going to be smoother with much less swapping.
Does iOS itself have swap memory or does Stage Manager have swap memory.
How much RAM does Stage Manager use on the internal screen and on two screens?
Do apps launched in Stage manager stay active outside of Stage Manager and do they keep the swap memory feature when launched from Stage Manager but use outside of Stage Manager?
Does the 60% of physical RAM rule still apply?
If an 8GB iPad only gives ~5GB to Stage Manager and its open apps then 16GB iPads are going to be smoother with much less swapping.
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Well, we can already say it's iOS. That's a fundamental of how an OS works.
I would agree I read it as iPadOS now supporting swap memory on supported devices just as an OS level addition. That’s awesome though, and I am wondering now if this whole time it has been why Macs can relatively keep everything just open and in active running states even if not in the main window but iPad even with M1 has still sorta been limited, like if I have a video playing in safari and I go to the home screen, the video pauses and resumes only once you bring back the app in some capacity. Either they want swap to allow main memory to stay focused on the active application while allowing more of those less intensive background things to be put into swap, or its a power safe thing and we would not see a change of the behavior, purely because it could encroach into the ability of an iPad to give you that 10 hour “all day“ run time.
Wish someone, YouTubers could do a memory intensive test on an Air or Pro beta vs 15 and see if the behavior changes at all, I believe it was MaxTech who did a 8gb vs 16gb M1 Mac memory stress test video, that could be fairly simply replicated on iPads.
I would normally agree but Ive only read swap memory in the context of Stage Manager and M1s.
Upcoming iPadOS 16 but only for M1 iPads with 128GB+ storage.
That's a matter of optimization. Other than that, without more technical informations it's all speculation at this point.
All 2021 iPad Pros get swap (128GB-2TB storage options).
For the Air 5, only the 256GB gets swap (64GB & 256GB storage options only, no 128GB option).
iOS doesnt have swap memory. iPadOS on the other hand might have it
how did you manage to put the iPhone OS on the iPad? is it a hack?
From the iPadOS 16 Preview page, swap sounds separate from Stage Manager. Stage Manager may take advantage of it but swap itself seems to be an underlying OS change.
As for actual implementation? We don’t know yet.