2023-07-12 11:00:00
If you’ve already come across the datasheet of a Mac equipped with Apple Silicon (like the M1 or M2), you’ve probably noticed that Apple doesn’t use RAM in the nameRandom access memoryor random access memory.”>1and yes unified memory.
But, after all, is there any difference between traditional RAM and unified memory? To put it bluntly, the answer is sim. But let’s break this down in more detail.
In an introduction document for the M1 chip (the first Apple Silicon to power Macs), Apple defined unified memory in Macs as follows:
O chip M1 […] features a unified memory architecture with high bandwidth and low latency memory in a single unit within a unique array. As a result, all technologies in the SoC have access to the same data without having to copy multiple memory pools, ensuring even better performance and efficiency.
In practice, this means that the Mac’s unified memory is connected directly to the processor (as well as in iPhones, for example), which allows for even better performance than in computers with processors such as Intel’s — even in those cases where it is considered “small”, like 8GB.
With that, the speed also ends up being much higher — in the M2, for example, there are 100GB/s of memory bandwidth, while in the M2 Ultra this number reaches 800GB/s!
Traditional RAM, on the other hand, is separate from the CPU.Central processing unitor central processing unit.”>2 e da GPUGraphics processing unitor graphics processing unit.”>3 of the processor, causing more interruptions in this process of exchanging information and making everything a little slower.
Chip M2, da Apple
Are there disadvantages to unified memory?
Despite all these benefits, the memory integrated together with the SoCSystem on a chipor system on a chip.”>4 also has some disadvantages.
The main one (which has been known by Apple users for several years, it is worth noting) is that can’t do upgrades in the amount of memory, that is: you need to decide how much you will need when buying the Mac, it being impossible to later buy more memory sticks and transform an 8GB MacBook Air into a 16GB one, for example.
Therefore, this needs to be done at the time of purchase of the product. And this unified memory upgrade doesn’t usually come cheap: on Apple’s Brazilian website — and using the 13″ MacBook Air with M2 chip as an example —, the upgrade from 8GB to 16GB costs R$2 mil; for 24GB, are nothing less than R$4 mil.
14″ and 16″ MacBook Pro
MacBook Air
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