[FlyingAvatar]

I agree with your sentiment and wanted to point out that for the RAM it's even worse than the storage. The RAM is not soldered on the board, its included in the package with the CPU, which makes upgrading the RAM effectively impossible for these machines.

[theodric]

Back in 2021 some guys in China claimed to have been able to upgrade the PoP RAM on a base M1 to 16GB: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgr...

I remember when this came out, but more recently I recall finding something indicating that this was either untrue or pointless-- for example, while the ICs can be changed out, either the SoC or board knows what SKU it is due to an e-fuse or config locked into a cryptographically-signed firmware package, and refuses to address a different amount of RAM. I can't find that reference, however.

[simondotau]

No, the storage is worse, because there’s no reason why they couldn’t include a standard 2230 M.2 slot on all their motherboards, for anyone who wanted to upgrade.

The fixed RAM is annoying, but is done to make the product better — the packaging allows the RAM to be significantly faster than otherwise. It’s a major reason why the M-series CPU and GPU performs so well.

It’s the same reason why you don’t see slotted RAM on GPUs. The performance penalty would be great enough that nobody would buy them.

[FlyingAvatar]

Agree that it does make the product better, though if they put their RAM chips soldered on the board instead of in package, it would allow repair or upgrade without sacrificing the whole CPU unit.

GPUs do not put their RAM in the same package as the processor itself, and it does not sacrifice a significant amount of performance.

The M-series processors' primary benefit by a huge margin is its architecture that allows a higher memory bandwidth than say SODIMMs and that benefit is independent of the choice to put the RAM in the package.

[simondotau]

> GPUs do not put their RAM in the same package as the processor itself

What I said: It’s the same reason why you don’t see slotted RAM on GPUs.

What matters in GPUs is predictable distances with direct soldered connections, hence why RAM chips always surround the main chip.

[pathartl]

I think when they moved to the M series they had trouble providing enough PCIe lanes. Not that I ever really trust Apple to ever offer non-proprietary storage again, but moving the storage controller to the SoC probably avoids any PCIe support they'd have to think about.

[simondotau]

Moving the storage controller to the SoC makes sense for Apple because they already did the work for iPhone/iPad, and it reduces part count. Having no upgradeable parts inside probably also reduces failure rates. It's not the trade people here would make, of course.

[my123]

Communication from the in-SoC NAND controllers to the NAND chips themselves is done through PCIe AFAIK