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Apple Unified RAM

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Lougheed

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Apple Unified RAM

PostMon Mar 14, 2022 8:22 am

The Intel Mac’s need multiple different chips for RAM, CPU, GPU, I/O. etc.

The M1 (and beyond) Apple Silicon chips have everything built onto one piece of silicon, system on a chip (SOC).

Everyone (including Apple) say this means that the newer machines using the unified memory architecture have vastly improved performance.

And in many/most cases, they talk about needing far less RAM, because of this performance boost.

I have an Intel Apple with 64 GB and am starting to encounter organs that won’t fit. I could add RAM (up to 128 GB) but it’s a nine-year-old Mac Pro, so wondering if one of the just announced Mac Studio’s would be a better investment.

I’m confused about the unified RAM, though.

For Hauptwerk, would the amount of RAM required for an organ be the same, regardless of unified RAM, or the pre-unified?

Lawrence
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larason2

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Re: Apple Unified RAM

PostMon Mar 14, 2022 8:28 am

I’m afraid the needing less RAM doesn’t apply to Hauptwerk, since Hauptwerk uses it as storage that can be accessed instantly. Otherwise, there is a significant performance boost for the SOC architecture. The only M1 mac that supports 128 GB of RAM currently is the M1 Ultra Mac Studio, which is quite pricey. If you can afford it though, I think you’ll be happy with it. It’s actually faster than the current Mac Pro.
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mdyde

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Re: Apple Unified RAM

PostMon Mar 14, 2022 8:57 am

Hello Lawrence,

Yes -- to confirm larason2's reply (thanks, larason2) -- sample sets still need to be kept in RAM, so you won't need any less RAM for any given sample set than you would on an Intel Mac.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Romanos

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Re: Apple Unified RAM

PostMon Mar 14, 2022 11:55 am

I had to chuckle a few months ago when I mentioned on another forum that I needed a computer with a MINIMUM of 64gb ram. They gave me the whole "almost no one actually needs that much ram" spiel.

Actually... I do need it, thanks. :roll:
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IainStinson

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Re: Apple Unified RAM

PostMon Mar 14, 2022 12:26 pm

I understand that the unified memory is used by the CPUs and GPUs. This improves performance when data is passed from a cpu execution to a gpu for processing (because the memory is shared by the cpus and gpus). With ‘conventional’ architectures the data from the cpu execution is copied over a bus (pci bus for example) to the GPU card, and so is slower than using direct access to the shared memory.

Conventional GPUs cards have their own memory associated with the GPU, this is additional to and separate from the memory used by the CPUs. On the new Apple machines, part of the unified memory will need to be allocated to the GPUs, so on a unified memory machine less of the total unified memory will be available for the CPUs (and hence for HW) than in a conventional architected system with same amount of memory. (This is similar for conventional machines with integrated graphics, where some memory is reserved for use by the graphics system and not available to the CPUs; a 64GB machine with integrated graphics might only provide 62GB for the CPUs to use.)

It may be that a new Apple machine with unified memory provides less memory for HW to use that a conventional architected machine with the same amount of memory.

Iain
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Lougheed

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Re: Apple Unified RAM

PostTue Mar 15, 2022 6:39 pm

Thank you for the replies. As expected, but still worth confirming.

Lawrence

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