Unified memory is making a buzz after the Launch of Apple M1 processor. We will discuss about this new unified memory and the future how we understand it.
What is Soc?
System on a chip.
What is unified Memory?
The RAM is part of the same unit as the processor, the graphics chip and several other key components. This is called a system on a chip (SoC), which is more commonly found in smartphones and tablets.
AS you can see from the picture above the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and the DRAM is part of the same processor.
So when you buy the Apple machine with M1 processor we cannot change the RAM as its integrated in the same chip. The max RAM coming is 16GB
Will it make any difference with more RAM or are you stuck with that RAM?
From Forbes
As Apple describes it, all of those components can “access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory”, making the overall system more efficient. There is no separate allocation of memory for graphics and the CPU — they all share that one piece of “high-performance unified memory”.
With everything sharing the one pool of memory, you might think that Apple would want to include more RAM, not less than before, but the reams of benchmarks Apple shared last night suggest the company is confident that even a limited allocation of RAM will outperform most equivalent PCs.
See the Webkit compile done by Tech crunch
and the battery performance
The future will tell us how the new Apple new M1 architecture will perform with its 16GB RAM thats built in SoC. It already looks promising with Apple claim of 8-core CPU the highest‑performance CPU we’ve ever built.
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