Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
I hope you are right but I expect it would be a huge mess. It will likely be far bigger mess than China's slow take over of Hong Kong with TMSC shut down indefinitely. There would be an immediate scramble to smuggle the experts out of the country. China would want grab experts and equipment itself for its own fabs. The world's tech industry would pretty much shut down as not only would it lose most of its capacity but it would also take time to retool alternate fabs for essential silicon. If you pull half the chips the world uses out of production, almost nothing will work. Thats because you will discover that while you may be able to get the CPU you need, the RAM, controller or SSD will suddenly become unavailable. China taking over Taiwan could be an extinction level event and we have not even discussed how the West will respond when a nation they have sworn to protect and depend upon gets attacked.
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
TMSC is a reliable partner and I believe they are already building factories in the US. Apple could certainly pay them to own capacity at that site and others around the world. Remember Apple already own the chip design. All they need now is a spread of partners across the world to make their chips.
Agreed.
Apple has no expertise in setting up chip fabs and probably doesn't even have the volume to justify their own fab - sure at iPhone intro time they could probably use up most of the capacity of a node, but then there's the rest of the year when demand slopes down.
Additionally, you don't just build a fab - you have to constantly be researching, designing, and building fabs to remain competitive. TSMC can afford all that R&D because they won't just be using the technology on a single fab but in a bunch of fabs, reducing the overhead costs by spreading out the technology on all their production nodes.
Much better to buy capacity ahead of time from TSMC or whatever fab they can make a deal with - though TSMC always seems to be ahead in reducing mask size - possibly due to Apple's prepaying for capacity.
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
I hope you are right but I expect it would be a huge mess. It will likely be far bigger mess than China's slow take over of Hong Kong with TMSC shut down indefinitely. There would be an immediate scramble to smuggle the experts out of the country. China would want grab experts and equipment itself for its own fabs. The world's tech industry would pretty much shut down as not only would it lose most of its capacity but it would also take time to retool alternate fabs for essential silicon. If you pull half the chips the world uses out of production, almost nothing will work. Thats because you will discover that while you may be able to get the CPU you need, the RAM, controller or SSD will suddenly become unavailable. China taking over Taiwan could be an extinction level event and we have not even discussed how the West will respond when a nation they have sworn to protect and depend upon gets attacked.
You don't know the high tech industry. Why would China shutdown TSM? What China did not Hong Kong has nothing to do with business. It is purely political. Hong Kong people life is the same as before. Further, TSM build chips for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, etc. China build fabs to meet these demands? The global chip business is far bigger and complicated that can be changed easily. Biden is trying to change it. It will not work well.
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
You mean if China invade and try and take Taiwan by force. TSMC want to keep things in Taiwan exactly because that gives the best odds that the US won't at stand for it and would defend Taiwan.
Everything would not 'return to normal', there would be a decade where America retools to have cutting edge fabs available locally.
What I've read is that the M-series RAM and storage work so fast together that 8GB is the new 16GB and 16GB is the new 32GB. I don't remember seeing anyone say Apple would be releasing a 64GB laptop. As for Cities:Skylines, is this a native ARM app or is it using Rosetta? Even though Apple does the conversion it's still not the same as a native ARM app making use of all the ARM-specific GPU apis. Just checked this app and it uses Steam and I've never used Steam before so not sure if it's using the Mac or an app to run the app on a Steam server.
Anyone claiming ARM is magically reducing the amount of RAM required is sadly mistaken. RAM is RAM and nothing beats having physical RAM if your application truly demands it. The SSD may be fast enough with virtual memory swapping to where you might not notice, but swapping to SSD will dramatically lower its lifespan and since the SSD drives are soldered to the motherboards in the M1 Macs doing anything to increase wear/reduce the drive lifespan is an even dumber idea. If you have applications that need RAM, get the RAM!
C:S is not ARM native but there is a Mac native version that ran great. Indeed you wouldn't know it wasn't ARM native from the way it performed - performance was amazing - as long as I didn't load all my asset and mod subscriptions from the Steam workshop, were the lack of RAM really killed performance. Windows games running either via Crossover or the Windows ARM preview in Parallels also performed way better than I expected and Crossover has gotten a major update to WINE since I had my MacBook Air. I only ran into graphics issues with a couple of games - shader issues - that I'm sure will get worked out at some point.
Of course there are no details from Apple on the next round of hardware - what a shock. But if they are going to replace all of their Intel models they are going to need Apple Silicon Macs that are at least equal to what they have shipping on Intel, and that means at least 64GB of RAM on the highest end laptops. Once again there is no substitute for actual RAM if you have applications that truly demand it and I would be shocked if the highest end Apple Silicon MacBook Pro's couldn't go to at least 64GB.
Fair points. But which is more important - the amount of RAM or the speed of the RAM? Is the on-board RAM on the M1 chip faster than the off-board RAM on other computers? I presume that Unified Memory Architecture gives you faster RAM. And if RAM is faster, it may reduce the demand on the amount of RAM needed, since apps will finish faster.
Heh, sometimes what matters the most is both having the most amount of high bandwidth low latency RAM. Usually I’d say the amount matter more than speed and latency (compared to other modern RAM), as RAM is quite fast at least compared to any mass storage options I know of (SWAP is bad).. But it all depends (tm) on a given workload.
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
You mean if China invade and try and take Taiwan by force. TSMC want to keep things in Taiwan exactly because that gives the best odds that the US won't at stand for it and would defend Taiwan.
Everything would not 'return to normal', there would be a decade where America retools to have cutting edge fabs available locally.
There will be no invasion. Everything will return to normal swiftly. Apple will continue order chips from TSMC. The only people that will be dismayed are China haters.
rob53 said: I suggest you start watching youtube videos from Max Tech and Rene Richie, among others before making up your mind. They benchmark all sorts of apps on new vs old Macs so after watching you can make up your mind.
I don't need to watch others opinions - I owned an M1 MacBook Air. I lived what I am speaking of. I VERY reluctantly took it back on the last day of the return window, so to say I am anxious for these new MacBook Pro's is not an exaggeration!
I don't know why so many people seem to want to defend that 16GB of RAM is good enough for everyone. If you have the need for more RAM, nothing is going to satisfy that need than getting more RAM!
It's should not be a difficult concept. Speed is not what is at issue here; if you have applications that demand more memory then the only way to ensure top performance is to get them more memory.
It's why I returned (again, with great reluctance) the M1 MacBook Air and am very impatiently awaiting whatever comes next. Agreed that the MBA is an entry level machine - it's why I returned it!
Having said that, had I not tried loading games on it I'd probably still be using it for everything else since it was by far and away the best Mac I have ever owned/used. Based on what I saw with the M1 MBA I'm pretty confident when Apple releases the MacBook Pro's, and if they can provide enough memory, I will no longer need to maintain my Windows gaming machine. I'm looking forward to that even more!
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
I hope you are right but I expect it would be a huge mess. It will likely be far bigger mess than China's slow take over of Hong Kong with TMSC shut down indefinitely. There would be an immediate scramble to smuggle the experts out of the country. China would want grab experts and equipment itself for its own fabs. The world's tech industry would pretty much shut down as not only would it lose most of its capacity but it would also take time to retool alternate fabs for essential silicon. If you pull half the chips the world uses out of production, almost nothing will work. Thats because you will discover that while you may be able to get the CPU you need, the RAM, controller or SSD will suddenly become unavailable. China taking over Taiwan could be an extinction level event and we have not even discussed how the West will respond when a nation they have sworn to protect and depend upon gets attacked.
You don't know the high tech industry. Why would China shutdown TSM? What China did not Hong Kong has nothing to do with business. It is purely political. Hong Kong people life is the same as before. Further, TSM build chips for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, etc. China build fabs to meet these demands? The global chip business is far bigger and complicated that can be changed easily. Biden is trying to change it. It will not work well.
There is no source of cutting edge lithography machines or wafers in China and neither Applied Materials or ASML will sell to China. This would get worse not better in the event of an invasion of Taiwan.
Biden isn't trying to change anything he hardly knows what lithography is. What is happening is that a variety of US companies are taking federal money to improve the availability of cutting edge foundry services on American soil.
I think a lot of the talk about double the RAM effectiveness just has to do with the amazingly good implementation of virtual memory under macOS.
And the speed of the SSD. Still stupid to rely on swap driving excessive writes for a soldered in SSD when you could (and should) just get more RAM if you really need it
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
I hope you are right but I expect it would be a huge mess. It will likely be far bigger mess than China's slow take over of Hong Kong with TMSC shut down indefinitely. There would be an immediate scramble to smuggle the experts out of the country. China would want grab experts and equipment itself for its own fabs. The world's tech industry would pretty much shut down as not only would it lose most of its capacity but it would also take time to retool alternate fabs for essential silicon. If you pull half the chips the world uses out of production, almost nothing will work. Thats because you will discover that while you may be able to get the CPU you need, the RAM, controller or SSD will suddenly become unavailable. China taking over Taiwan could be an extinction level event and we have not even discussed how the West will respond when a nation they have sworn to protect and depend upon gets attacked.
You don't know the high tech industry. Why would China shutdown TSM? What China did not Hong Kong has nothing to do with business. It is purely political. Hong Kong people life is the same as before. Further, TSM build chips for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, etc. China build fabs to meet these demands? The global chip business is far bigger and complicated that can be changed easily. Biden is trying to change it. It will not work well.
There is no source of cutting edge lithography machines or wafers in China and neither Applied Materials or ASML will sell to China. This would get worse not better in the event of an invasion of Taiwan.
Biden isn't trying to change anything he hardly knows what lithography is. What is happening is that a variety of US companies are taking federal money to improve the availability of cutting edge foundry services on American soil.
High tech industry is extremely competitive and innovative. Biden and his predecessor is trying to use politics to change the high tech industry. This is not how silicon valley become world leading. It is completely free. If federal money can help, why Intel the world largest semiconductor company is failing? It can get any money it wants. Money does not help it.
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
You mean if China invade and try and take Taiwan by force. TSMC want to keep things in Taiwan exactly because that gives the best odds that the US won't at stand for it and would defend Taiwan.
Everything would not 'return to normal', there would be a decade where America retools to have cutting edge fabs available locally.
There will be no invasion. Everything will return to normal swiftly. Apple will continue order chips from TSMC. The only people that will be dismayed are China haters.
Wow, someone's been drinking the "renegade province" Kool-Aid.
If I were the Taiwanese government, I'd make sure those fabs are destroyed before the CCP got their hands on them in a "military reunification". At least the Afghanistan debacle didn't give anyone in China the idea that the US is a fickle partner, eh Comrade?
Apple really needs to start building chip fabs all around the world. The situation brewing between Taiwan and China poses an existential threat to Apple and the entire tech industry. It would cost Apple a hundred billion dollars or more but the investment would pay off for decades to come.
Not true. If Chian reunite Taiwan, it will be swift. Everything will return to normal shortly. And Apple wasted billions of dollars on other nations that are incapable.
You mean if China invade and try and take Taiwan by force. TSMC want to keep things in Taiwan exactly because that gives the best odds that the US won't at stand for it and would defend Taiwan.
Everything would not 'return to normal', there would be a decade where America retools to have cutting edge fabs available locally.
There will be no invasion. Everything will return to normal swiftly. Apple will continue order chips from TSMC. The only people that will be dismayed are China haters.
Wow, someone's been drinking the "renegade province" Kool-Aid.
If I were the Taiwanese government, I'd make sure those fabs are destroyed before the CCP got their hands on them in a "military reunification". At least the Afghanistan debacle didn't give anyone in China the idea that the US is a fickle partner, eh Comrade?
Total nonsense! China worked with the world for the last forty years. And you China haters are trying every way you can to make China an enemy of the world.
waveparticle said: Total nonsense! China worked with the world for the last forty years. And you China haters are trying every way you can to make China an enemy of the world.
Trapping developing countries in huge debt with their Belt and Road initiative projects is one hell of a way to "work with the world"
waveparticle said: Total nonsense! China worked with the world for the last forty years. And you China haters are trying every way you can to make China an enemy of the world.
Trapping developing countries in huge debt with their Belt and Road initiative projects is one hell of a way to "work with the world"
It is a business deal. Neither military force nor bribe is used on leaders of the nations. This is the correct way of working with the world.
My 2015 MBA is in dire need of an upgrade. I tried the M1 MBA - and it was fantastic! Then I made the mistake of loading some games on it - and they played fantastic too! Well, except for Cities:Skylines - where my mod/asset addiction overpowered 16GB - it's just not enough.
So now I eagerly await the next round. I'm hoping for being able to get at least 64GB of RAM - and curious as to how Apple will handle RAM in the next chips. Will it still be closely coupled for blistering speed? I hope so - soldered on or not. May splurge on a large SSD this time too. Hopefully give it some extra life - not crazy the drives are soldered on - and maybe in the larger ones they won't be?
Should be interesting to see. My Apple Card is ready!
What I've read is that the M-series RAM and storage work so fast together that 8GB is the new 16GB and 16GB is the new 32GB. I don't remember seeing anyone say Apple would be releasing a 64GB laptop. As for Cities:Skylines, is this a native ARM app or is it using Rosetta? Even though Apple does the conversion it's still not the same as a native ARM app making use of all the ARM-specific GPU apis. Just checked this app and it uses Steam and I've never used Steam before so not sure if it's using the Mac or an app to run the app on a Steam server.
Dunno about that ... certainly Apple Silicon has a more economical graphics workflow, but as for the rest processing it's pretty much the same - most apps are just recompiled for universal from the Intel source code. So no, there's no magic which doubles your RAM.
If you're video editing from what I understand there are some optimizations that developers can do to speed up processing to keep things out in the GPU and render intermediate results to tile memory, but outside of the use of unified memory for both CPU and GPU everything is pretty much as it was before.
I think a lot of the talk about double the RAM effectiveness just has to do with the amazingly good implementation of virtual memory under macOS.
You guys don't understand what I'm saying or what the real differences between the ARM and Intel architectures are. I didn't say "Apple Silicon doubles your RAM", I said the lower amount when used by Apple Silicon run apps just as well as the higher (doubled) amount. Have any of you actually watched the youtube videos demonstrating this? Do any of you know how ARM is different than Intel? Do a websearch of "arm intel architecture differences" to get much more technical information. It all has to do with the huge differences between CISC (x86) and RISC (ARM). All you have to do is look at Apple's iOS devices to understand how much Apple can do with lower amounts of RAM.
I can't wait for the day when Apple doesn't include any Mac with a HDD, everything will be solid state and most, if not all will be integrated onto the SoC or the motherboard; no replaceable RAM or storage (sorry iFixit). This is the only way to get the most speed and power out of a Mac right now. External storage will be Thunderbolt-connected, NVMe storage, single and in RAID configurations, which will blow away any HDD or Fusion Mac configuration ever made--no matter how much RAM you put into it.
When a developer compiles their app, universal or native, there's a lot of differences between how the app actually runs. It doesn't run the same way because Apple has to encode CISC- and RISC-specific api's so it actually runs on the different hardware platforms. Apple does this within Xcode so developers don't have to make as many changes to their software as a total re-write without Apple's help. (Developers, please add to this so these people understand what's going on. Thanks) As for things simply being the same on Apple Silicon as on Intel, no it isn't!
My 2015 MBA is in dire need of an upgrade. I tried the M1 MBA - and it was fantastic! Then I made the mistake of loading some games on it - and they played fantastic too! Well, except for Cities:Skylines - where my mod/asset addiction overpowered 16GB - it's just not enough.
So now I eagerly await the next round. I'm hoping for being able to get at least 64GB of RAM - and curious as to how Apple will handle RAM in the next chips. Will it still be closely coupled for blistering speed? I hope so - soldered on or not. May splurge on a large SSD this time too. Hopefully give it some extra life - not crazy the drives are soldered on - and maybe in the larger ones they won't be?
Should be interesting to see. My Apple Card is ready!
What I've read is that the M-series RAM and storage work so fast together that 8GB is the new 16GB and 16GB is the new 32GB. I don't remember seeing anyone say Apple would be releasing a 64GB laptop. As for Cities:Skylines, is this a native ARM app or is it using Rosetta? Even though Apple does the conversion it's still not the same as a native ARM app making use of all the ARM-specific GPU apis. Just checked this app and it uses Steam and I've never used Steam before so not sure if it's using the Mac or an app to run the app on a Steam server.
Dunno about that ... certainly Apple Silicon has a more economical graphics workflow, but as for the rest processing it's pretty much the same - most apps are just recompiled for universal from the Intel source code. So no, there's no magic which doubles your RAM.
If you're video editing from what I understand there are some optimizations that developers can do to speed up processing to keep things out in the GPU and render intermediate results to tile memory, but outside of the use of unified memory for both CPU and GPU everything is pretty much as it was before.
I think a lot of the talk about double the RAM effectiveness just has to do with the amazingly good implementation of virtual memory under macOS.
You guys don't understand what I'm saying or what the real differences between the ARM and Intel architectures are. I didn't say "Apple Silicon doubles your RAM", I said the lower amount when used by Apple Silicon run apps just as well as the higher (doubled) amount. Have any of you actually watched the youtube videos demonstrating this? Do any of you know how ARM is different than Intel? Do a websearch of "arm intel architecture differences" to get much more technical information. It all has to do with the huge differences between CISC (x86) and RISC (ARM). All you have to do is look at Apple's iOS devices to understand how much Apple can do with lower amounts of RAM.
I can't wait for the day when Apple doesn't include any Mac with a HDD, everything will be solid state and most, if not all will be integrated onto the SoC or the motherboard; no replaceable RAM or storage (sorry iFixit). This is the only way to get the most speed and power out of a Mac right now. External storage will be Thunderbolt-connected, NVMe storage, single and in RAID configurations, which will blow away any HDD or Fusion Mac configuration ever made--no matter how much RAM you put into it.
When a developer compiles their app, universal or native, there's a lot of differences between how the app actually runs. It doesn't run the same way because Apple has to encode CISC- and RISC-specific api's so it actually runs on the different hardware platforms. Apple does this within Xcode so developers don't have to make as many changes to their software as a total re-write without Apple's help. (Developers, please add to this so these people understand what's going on. Thanks) As for things simply being the same on Apple Silicon as on Intel, no it isn't!
I do understand what you're saying ... the problem is those YouTuber's are wrong too. They're fallible just like the rest of us - they can just be wrong in front of more people.
There are huge differences between RISC and CISC designs, and that results in deeper execution queue inspection and wider CPUs ... not less memory usage.
Oh ... and I think that when Apple introduced the 24" iMacs, they did retire the last computer using HDDs. You might have the ability to BTO a 20" iMac with a HDD or fusion drive, but I doubt it.
You are exactly correct. This is a trend that has been going the past decade. Apple's mobile CPUs have been gaining performance at around 50% a year while Intel and AMD have been gaining about 5% a year. At some point the two curves would cross and cause massive disruption in the industry if the trend continued. That point happened last year with the introduction of the M1. The year before that, Apple's A series mobile CPUs started to beat common x86 laptop CPUs. This year the M1X could beat top end desktop CPUs and next year the M2 could be knocking on the door of the larger server CPUs. Currently all the hardware review sites are kind of ignoring the M1 when they review the performance of the latest Intel consumer CPUs.
rob53 said: You guys don't understand what I'm saying or what the real differences between the ARM and Intel architectures are. I didn't say "Apple Silicon doubles your RAM", I said the lower amount when used by Apple Silicon run apps just as well as the higher (doubled) amount. Have any of you actually watched the youtube videos demonstrating this?
Dude I freaking OWNED the machine and lived this. Yes, there is some efficiency there but if you really need more RAM there is NO SUBSTITUTE for more RAM. The whole AOC needs less RAM thing has and continues to be WAY overblown IMNSHO. And I didn't form that opinion from watching a bunch of videos (which I have, BTW) but from by actually owning and using the hardware.
If you are on the edge and only need just a little extra RAM, then the extra efficiency from ARM could be a worthy difference.
For *my* use case, it was no help. I still need more RAM than 16GB and ARM/Intel isn't going to change that. Yes, overall RAM requirements are reduced - but it's no magic bullet for simply having the appropriate amount of RAM for your workload in the first place.
And I will once again reiterate relying on swapping is NOT a substitute for RAM, especially for an SSD that is soldered to the motherboard and likely very difficult if not impossible to change should it fail from all that needless, excessive writing. People pushing that you don't need as much RAM and swapping is OK are beyond irresponsible in my opinion.
Just like using SMR (shingled magnetic recording) hard drives in a network video recorders that constantly write to disk because they are - duh - recording video. Not a smart idea since SMR drives are great for archiving (occasional writes) but not normal use, let alone use in something like an NVR that continuously writes. SMR drives are a very bad idea for write heavy loads due to the overlapping nature of the tracks on the hard drives (hence the term shingled). It may work for a while, but it's the wrong technology for the wrong application. And sure enough, a year or so later all the people who went with SMR drives anyway started having drive failures. That SMR drives suck for NVRs wasn't purely a hypothetical opinion, turns out it was rooted in facts. Funnily enough, technology works in certain ways, has pro's and con's and if you misuse it, it will break eventually in easily predictable ways. I and many others that warned against using SMR drives in NVRs were proven right because it was easy to see that while they worked initially, it wasn't going to end well.
Same thing with all the Youtube BS with ARM and RAM. If you get an ARM Mac and undersize RAM and rely on swapping you ARE going to eventually have a bad day. If you swap out machines every two years then maybe you will never see it. Keep your machines for longer time frames? You're playing with fire. Stupid fire that is easy to avoid.
ARM is not a magic talisman nor a "get out of jail free" card and I really wish people would STOP overstating this whole RAM thing because it really is quite minimal in the real world.
waveparticle said: It is a business deal. Neither military force nor bribe is used on leaders of the nations.
HA! Freudian slip in bringing up bribes? I guess you have missed the flurry of recent stories where many of these belt and road initiatives are failing and corruption is one of the chief contributors, saddling the countries with debt. Debt to China. With many speculating this was China's intention to bind these countries to them.
>This is the correct way of working with the world.
Yes, through corruption, trickery and forcing indebtedness. How correct of you.
Comments
Apple has no expertise in setting up chip fabs and probably doesn't even have the volume to justify their own fab - sure at iPhone intro time they could probably use up most of the capacity of a node, but then there's the rest of the year when demand slopes down.
Additionally, you don't just build a fab - you have to constantly be researching, designing, and building fabs to remain competitive. TSMC can afford all that R&D because they won't just be using the technology on a single fab but in a bunch of fabs, reducing the overhead costs by spreading out the technology on all their production nodes.
Much better to buy capacity ahead of time from TSMC or whatever fab they can make a deal with - though TSMC always seems to be ahead in reducing mask size - possibly due to Apple's prepaying for capacity.
Everything would not 'return to normal', there would be a decade where America retools to have cutting edge fabs available locally.
I don't know why so many people seem to want to defend that 16GB of RAM is good enough for everyone. If you have the need for more RAM, nothing is going to satisfy that need than getting more RAM!
It's should not be a difficult concept. Speed is not what is at issue here; if you have applications that demand more memory then the only way to ensure top performance is to get them more memory.
It's why I returned (again, with great reluctance) the M1 MacBook Air and am very impatiently awaiting whatever comes next. Agreed that the MBA is an entry level machine - it's why I returned it!
Having said that, had I not tried loading games on it I'd probably still be using it for everything else since it was by far and away the best Mac I have ever owned/used. Based on what I saw with the M1 MBA I'm pretty confident when Apple releases the MacBook Pro's, and if they can provide enough memory, I will no longer need to maintain my Windows gaming machine. I'm looking forward to that even more!
Biden isn't trying to change anything he hardly knows what lithography is. What is happening is that a variety of US companies are taking federal money to improve the availability of cutting edge foundry services on American soil.
If I were the Taiwanese government, I'd make sure those fabs are destroyed before the CCP got their hands on them in a "military reunification". At least the Afghanistan debacle didn't give anyone in China the idea that the US is a fickle partner, eh Comrade?
I can't wait for the day when Apple doesn't include any Mac with a HDD, everything will be solid state and most, if not all will be integrated onto the SoC or the motherboard; no replaceable RAM or storage (sorry iFixit). This is the only way to get the most speed and power out of a Mac right now. External storage will be Thunderbolt-connected, NVMe storage, single and in RAID configurations, which will blow away any HDD or Fusion Mac configuration ever made--no matter how much RAM you put into it.
When a developer compiles their app, universal or native, there's a lot of differences between how the app actually runs. It doesn't run the same way because Apple has to encode CISC- and RISC-specific api's so it actually runs on the different hardware platforms. Apple does this within Xcode so developers don't have to make as many changes to their software as a total re-write without Apple's help. (Developers, please add to this so these people understand what's going on. Thanks) As for things simply being the same on Apple Silicon as on Intel, no it isn't!
There are huge differences between RISC and CISC designs, and that results in deeper execution queue inspection and wider CPUs ... not less memory usage.
Oh ... and I think that when Apple introduced the 24" iMacs, they did retire the last computer using HDDs. You might have the ability to BTO a 20" iMac with a HDD or fusion drive, but I doubt it.
Still a terrific rate of improvement though.
If you are on the edge and only need just a little extra RAM, then the extra efficiency from ARM could be a worthy difference.
For *my* use case, it was no help. I still need more RAM than 16GB and ARM/Intel isn't going to change that. Yes, overall RAM requirements are reduced - but it's no magic bullet for simply having the appropriate amount of RAM for your workload in the first place.
And I will once again reiterate relying on swapping is NOT a substitute for RAM, especially for an SSD that is soldered to the motherboard and likely very difficult if not impossible to change should it fail from all that needless, excessive writing. People pushing that you don't need as much RAM and swapping is OK are beyond irresponsible in my opinion.
Just like using SMR (shingled magnetic recording) hard drives in a network video recorders that constantly write to disk because they are - duh - recording video. Not a smart idea since SMR drives are great for archiving (occasional writes) but not normal use, let alone use in something like an NVR that continuously writes. SMR drives are a very bad idea for write heavy loads due to the overlapping nature of the tracks on the hard drives (hence the term shingled). It may work for a while, but it's the wrong technology for the wrong application. And sure enough, a year or so later all the people who went with SMR drives anyway started having drive failures. That SMR drives suck for NVRs wasn't purely a hypothetical opinion, turns out it was rooted in facts. Funnily enough, technology works in certain ways, has pro's and con's and if you misuse it, it will break eventually in easily predictable ways. I and many others that warned against using SMR drives in NVRs were proven right because it was easy to see that while they worked initially, it wasn't going to end well.
Same thing with all the Youtube BS with ARM and RAM. If you get an ARM Mac and undersize RAM and rely on swapping you ARE going to eventually have a bad day. If you swap out machines every two years then maybe you will never see it. Keep your machines for longer time frames? You're playing with fire. Stupid fire that is easy to avoid.
ARM is not a magic talisman nor a "get out of jail free" card and I really wish people would STOP overstating this whole RAM thing because it really is quite minimal in the real world.
>This is the correct way of working with the world.
Yes, through corruption, trickery and forcing indebtedness. How correct of you.