Apple Silicon event forthcoming

[HCMarkus]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/ap ... -deep-dive

[bayswater]

Integrated RAM is supposed to be far more efficient. If we take Apple's word for that, 16GB is more than enough for DP (it is anyway per MOTU).

Is integrated RAM more than RAM on the main board? (as in the 2018 Mini) maybe with more efficient connections to the processor?

I went for 32G on mine because the price was not much more than 16 at the time. But I remember being quite impressed with the 8G RAM demo in the Apple Store with very large Logic projects. Before I upgraded my Mini from 8 to 32, I did run some very large test DP projects, and it worked fine. The same projects made the 16G iMac sweat profusely. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but perhaps this has something to do with architecture rather than processor strength and RAM.

[mikehalloran]

Is integrated RAM more than RAM on the main board? (as in the 2018 Mini) maybe with more efficient connections to the processor?

It's integrated into the M1 chip. This goes beyond soldered in. You have a choice og 8GB or 16GB when you purchase and there's only a $200 difference. 16GB is the obvious choice.

I have 128GB onboard—frankly, more than I need now but till I purged a number of old apps and plugins and retired from my day gig, I sometimes maxed out the free RAM on my 14 Core. Word 2008, Chrome and some DP plugs that I must have upgraded had major memory leaks which didn't help. Upgrading to Mojave, then Catalina took care of a lot of it as old junk became incompatible. No longer having 150+ tabs open on 3 monitors helped with the rest. I could squeak by on 32–48, I suppose but am comfortable with 64. The Refurb iMP I bought came with 128 like my 14 Core so I didn't hesitate.

[dix]

I'm not clear on the deal with integrated RAM. 16gb is not nearly enough RAM for professional music creation with Intel Macs. Is there a new metric to be used with the new chips? Will 16gb be enough, for some reason, for users that heretofore have needed much more RAM?

[Michael Canavan]

I'm not clear on the deal with integrated RAM. 16gb is not nearly enough RAM for professional music creation with Intel Macs. Is there a new metric to be used with the new chips? Will 16gb be enough, for some reason, for users that heretofore have needed much more RAM?

That of course is to be determined by end users. There are claims that the AS chips handle RAM so much differently that there's no direct comparison to be made. For us this will be obvious when Kontakt, Play and UVI sample libraries are running native on AS.

[mgraham]

It also obviously depends on whether you use a lot of samples or not. If you want to load 32GB of samples, then I seriously doubt you are going to be able to fit them into 16GB, no matter how efficient the architecture is.

[mothra]

Yeah it all depends on the user. I for one, dont have any need for more than the 16GB in my Mini, but my use case with Logic is completely different than someone who writes and composes strictly with it. All my stuff is written with an MPC. I tweak songs until its done, play with the mixer for a week or so, then track that and call it a day. If I were loading even the Kontakt factory libs Id probably want more, but for me personally, 16 is fine. But, my Mini also has the convenient option to add more if I want to take the whole thing apart and void the warranty to get to it. Got that at least.

We really won't know until we see them out and about. For all we know the integrated CPU/GPU/RAM could be 2040 today. Apple might stretch numbers a bit, but they're not going to make all the claims they do about the hardware if it cant actually do it. This is just the beginning of it, its only going to get better from here.

[dix]

I'm not clear on the deal with integrated RAM. 16gb is not nearly enough RAM for professional music creation with Intel Macs. Is there a new metric to be used with the new chips? Will 16gb be enough, for some reason, for users that heretofore have needed much more RAM?

That of course is to be determined by end users. There are claims that the AS chips handle RAM so much differently that there's no direct comparison to be made. For us this will be obvious when Kontakt, Play and UVI sample libraries are running native on AS.

Interesting. If this is right, there is a new metric for determining how much RAM a user will need, and we can set aside that, seemingly, semi-pro 16gb limit spec on the AS Mac's until we know more. With the functions of RAM and storage becoming increasingly blurred, I can easily see how the need for RAM, as we've known it, might go away entirely.

[bayswater]

It also obviously depends on whether you use a lot of samples or not. If you want to load 32GB of samples, then I seriously doubt you are going to be able to fit them into 16GB, no matter how efficient the architecture is.

Perhaps not so much whether you can, as whether you need to.

[mikehalloran]

It also obviously depends on whether you use a lot of samples or not. If you want to load 32GB of samples, then I seriously doubt you are going to be able to fit them into 16GB, no matter how efficient the architecture is.

Perhaps not so much whether you can, as whether you need to.

Larger buffers and faster SSDs lessen the burden placed on RAM. NI has support docs that explain this in great detail and what you can do about it in Kontakt.