Communication between on-chip components is much faster than when data has to travel back and forth between chips across the circuitry of the logic board and graphics card, as was the case for Intel-based Macs. Higher memory bandwidth: By building memory onto the M1 chips themselves, Apple could also speed up the connection between memory and the various processors.By creating a shared pool of memory-hence the “unified memory” name-each processor can operate on the same data in memory rather than sending it back and forth from chip to chip. Shared memory pool: The M1 chips contain CPU cores, GPU cores, and Neural Engine cores, all of which need to use memory.This provides significant performance benefits for two reasons: But that sort of flexibility was available only for the Mac Pro, Mac mini, and now-discontinued 27-inch iMac-with Apple’s laptops, you couldn’t upgrade memory because it was soldered onto the logic board, not socketed.įor M1-based Macs, Apple went even further and built “unified memory” directly onto the M1 chip itself. The main advantage of this approach is that you can install more system memory if you need it-up to 1.5 TB at purchase time or later-and you can opt for one or even two video cards with up to 64 GB of memory. For instance, the base level Mac Pro comes with 32 GB of RAM on user-replaceable memory sticks, while its Radeon Pro graphics card has 8 GB of memory. On Intel-based Macs that have separate CPU and GPU chips, each chip has its own memory. That’s because Apple completely rearchitected how M1-based Macs incorporate memory. But the move from Intel chips to Apple silicon has changed the game when it comes to one decision: how much memory to get. That’s not a bad thing-the M1 chips offer astonishing performance combined with low power consumption. Only the Mac Pro and one Mac mini configuration still rely on Intel CPUs, and they will likely be discontinued before the end of 2022. If you’re thinking about buying a new Mac, you’re almost certainly planning to get one that uses a chip from Apple’s M1 family-the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra.
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