358
Apple has a memory problem and we're all paying for it
(www.macworld.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
358 points (94.5% liked)
Technology
59287 readers
4184 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Apple's "memory upgrade" is making the claim that you can do with half for the same amount of work on x86. It is 100% untrue.
You tried to delve into speed. But speed won't outpace a 1TB video file you're trying to edit. If you're working with smaller chunks of smaller files that have fast operations ONLY, then make claim as such. This is a ploy for upgrade cash, plain and simple. Nothing about these chips moves the needle on memory usage BY HALF. What a dumbass thing to assert as a company.
Apple's claim isnt 100% untrue tbh. It depends on the operations actually. Arm processors have at least 12 registers to contain data or references to memory. A program does need more ram space on a x86 processor, as it only has like 4 registers afaik ( correct me if im wrong! ) so it needs to push data more often to the stack.
This means that the m* processors has to generally save less info in memory. However, data is still data and you still need memory to contain the data youre processing so you still need the ram. So like, when doing video work that apple claim is utter bullshit. Raw calculations however might not be so much bullshit
For many memory intensive operation, this is incorrect since by that logic, Apple's chip should use far more memory due to having quarter as many registers for those purpose. (32x64 vs. 32x256)
Most processors have cache memories for reasons you stated.
Correct, cache exists for that reason. But youre still loosing time and space by saving it to memory ( cache is just faster acccess for the cpu. Its still in ram or in the pipeline to be pushed to ram on next flush ).
Also true, per thread you would need more memory to save the cpu's state when switching threads. Now i kinda want to do some calculations and tests to see at what point it gets better.
I always figured that per thread more memory is needed, but that the thread itself needed less memory ( or time to access it ) because it can contain more temp values in the cpu's registers.
Again though, there claim is bullshit or not totally depends on the kind of work youre doing and for video work i consider it bullshit as well :')
A semi isn't a Ford F150. That's the end of that argument.