Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Kirby64 45 days ago
> The problem there is that Apple's marketing speak of "unified memory" creates different and confusing connotations.

Unified memory has nothing to do with them being on the same chip… it just has to do with them being the same pool of memory shared between cpu and gpu. Apple marketing is pretty clear on that too. The only reason it’s unique is that doing unified memory on laptops is kinda unheard of until then. It’s been the standard on tablets and phones for years.

1 comments

Every Intel laptop with integrated graphics has been unified memory, all the way back to ye olde 915 in 2004 at least.
Yes and no. There is sharing of RAM with IGPs from AMD and Intel, but my understanding is the way Microsoft handles the RAM sharing isn't quite as 'unified' as with MacOS. It's not a difference in hardware really, but a software implementation. Also, when we're talking about older Intel/AMD IGP solutions, the graphics cards paired really couldn't take advantage of larger amounts of RAM.

Something like the new Strix Halo stuff from AMD is actually useful with larger amounts of RAM, and basically is the same as the Apple architecture.