Apple’s new M1-based systems have been announced, and Apple avoided touting their memory and storage – for good reason.
For a major chip announcement, Apple’s M1 launch gave us very little on the chip architecture – page size, memory addressing, internal bandwidth, or clock speeds. At one level that makes sense, given that there is nothing to compare the M1 to, except Apple’s own A-series chips. But for those who like to geek out over such details – like me! – their lack is distressing. But the biggest concern for power users is likely to be memory. Apple spent a lot of time emphasizing the power of the new M1 chip, but barely mentioned the 16GB memory limitation. What’s more, the touted Unified Memory Architecture just means that 16GB is shared between the CPU and graphics. What is Unified Memory? According to Apple: So the performance is improved over discrete GPUs, but the shared memory may throttle some graphically intense applications. I’ll expect the future 16-inch Mac Pro to have a more powerful chip – M2? – and support 64GB or more memory, with or without a discrete GPU. Since the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Mini have fans, I doubt the 16GB limit is thermal. Marketecture is my guess.
