John Siracusa20h ago
To better days…
Show threadAaron

@siracusa the biggest disappointment about this is that Apple never did bother to solve their RAM ceiling problem in Apple Silicon Macs. I was hoping to see some clever solution that added slotted memory that had a direct connection to the rest of the SOC to be super fast and low latency.

Hell, I would have settled for a version that was architected like the Intel Mac Pro with slotted RAM and higher capacity at the cost of latency.

Instead Apple just didn't bother to try to solve it.

Mar 26 at 10:09pmIvory for Mac
Show threadAaron19h ago
@siracusa (or the expansion issue in general; it would have been super cool to see a new type of MPX module that was tightly integrated enough that it performed like adding new GPU cores to the SOC or something)
Show threadTorb19h ago
@harpaa01 512Gb RAM is a too low ceiliing?
Show threadAaron19h ago

@torb it is!

You could configure a Mac Pro with 1.5 TB of RAM in 2019.

And now it's easy to conceive of an AI-focused workload where you might want to run a large model that could easily blow past even 1.5 TB.

Apple's unified memory approach has a lot of advantages for most of its lineup, but the super high end is poorly served by this because of those limits (and now we can really overcome those limits by doubling up on SOCs which forces you to add CPU/GPU cores you might not need)

Show threadRegis Freyd19h ago
@torb @harpaa01 keep in mind that for sound designers in heavy production, for instance, they need 1tb of RAM at least to have a snappy setup.
Show threadzed19h ago
@regis @torb @harpaa01 you’re going to need to provide a source for this because this is not believable.
Show threadAaron18h ago
@zed I forget whether it was part of the 2019 WWDC keynote or in some supplemental materials released that same week but there were interviews with audio professionals who were delighted to finally be able to have Logic sessions where they could actually edit a full recording with dozens of different instruments on their own tracks, and this was something they were finally able to do because of the RAM levels. MKBHD discussed this when he reviewed the 2019 Mac Pro as well.
Show threadzed9h ago

@harpaa01 I appreciate you trying, but some people desiring high amounts of ram doesn’t back up the claim that “sound designers in heavy production” need 1TB of ram.

The 1TB of ram being the baseline for “need” is the real sticking point.