It's the implication that you know the answer, because you qualified it with 'especially ram that is slower'. I read the former statement with the implication of the latter. Apologies for that if it's not what you meant. Although you did ask to have a picture painted for you. And I attempted to do that.
I asked the question because the user didn't express their usage case. I noted the RAM being slower because while additional RAM for a non-portable device is never a negative (except on cost) being slow is a negative. I even stated that I think slightly slower RAM is worth doubling the amount if your needs call for it. I also talked about testing the RAM to see if it truly will be a benefit to one's production. Finally, I used the words curious and implore to further attract an in-depth answer as to why 64GiB isn't enough.
I don't know what else I could have done make my queries sound more sincere.
PS: A little over a year ago I received my 2012 iMac and *premium* RAM with a lower CAS Latancy that I had purchased from Newegg. I ran artificial tests to see if made a difference. It didn't, so I returned it.
I asked the question because the user didn't express their usage case. I noted the RAM being slower because while additional RAM for a non-portable device is never a negative (except on cost) being slow is a negative. I even stated that I think slightly slower RAM is worth doubling the amount if your needs call for it. I also talked about testing the RAM to see if it truly will be a benefit to one's production. Finally, I used the words curious and implore to further attract an in-depth answer as to why 64GiB isn't enough.
I don't know what else I could have done make my queries sound more sincere.
PS: A little over a year ago I received my 2012 iMac and *premium* RAM with a lower CAS Latancy that I had purchased from Newegg. I ran artificial tests to see if made a difference. It didn't, so I returned it.
Don't forget, you also said..... "Cool it!"
So obviously you had a problem or something. Also, for everyone else jumping on the first commenter - my apologies for this forum, some people don't realize comments don't come across well through text sometimes... It'll all be okay.
Cool it! He's not attacking you but noting that even those that need 64GiB are very few and far between. If you need 128GiB then so be it and it's certainly possible, but I'm curious as to what you need that much RAM; especially RAM that is slower. I implore you paint for us a picture of your usage needs.
I'm not going to waste keystrokes explaining anything to fools like you all.
Remember the days when people would ask 'why do you need 8GB of RAM?!' This is the same thing. Musicians, graphic designers, photographers, 3D artists, all these guys would be happy with as much RAM as they can handle. Photoshop files that use 10GB of RAM each, software instruments that need to load up 10's of gigabytes of samples. No-one NEEDS that much ram, but it sure saves a shit load of time when you're on a deadline. No need to close After Effects to reopen Photoshop. Keep Logic Pro open with a bunch of sample-heavy AU instruments while you work in Final Cut with 4K uncompressed video. Comments like that are so closed minded. It's unbelievable you could still be 'curious' about why 128GB+ RAM is useful.
Do professional OS X apps even allow for 128GB minus OS resources to be allocated by a single app?
Just what is a gaberator, anyway? Oh, I get it, someone with plenty of time on his hands with nothing better to do than post 14K+ times. Doesn't sound like something you get paid for. No wonder you're mystified why anyone could need 128 GB of RAM.
So obviously you had a problem or something. Also, for everyone else jumping on the first commenter - my apologies for this forum, some people don't realize comments don't come across well through text sometimes... It'll all be okay.
That's fine, I'm not worried. Just voicing my opinions about the prospects of having that much RAM, especially recalling those very early days in 1984 on a 128K Macintosh. Very sweet times, these. Can't wait to buy my Mac Pro and fit it out with that much RAM!
Does [@]DanielSW[/@] come across as a reasonable person to you? Based on his comments here I certainly don't think so. To me, he comes across as both as caustic and foolish which is why I wanted to know more about his decision making. So far he has shown nothing that would lead me (or likely anyone else of sound mind) to believe that he has been thorough in his decision making.
Does [@]DanielSW[/@] come across as a reasonable person to you? Based on his comments here I certainly don't think so. To me, he comes across as both as caustic and foolish which is why I wanted to know more about his decision making. So far he has shown nothing that would lead me (or likely anyone else of sound mind) to believe that he has been thorough in his decision making.
I think I'm just the guy in the middle. Like I said I just interpreted your original post as a kind of closed-minded comment. But it wasn't really. It was just an honest question. I like to do my homework, and it seemed like you'd already jumped to a conclusion. But you didn't.
It's a shame you wouldn't consider hiring me though, because I'm a pretty cool guy.
I'm also not a kiss-ass. But it sounds like I'm being that. I just can't be bothered retyping this. Because I'm on an iPhone and it's really hard to select text on an iPhone and press delete. I really wish I had bought the S4. 4GB of RAM. Much better.
*gets naked*
Thought I would just lighten the mood. Have fun guys!
I was addressing the question 'why you need that much RAM.' The question was asked without any consideration for why people might need it.
You lost me... are you saying the question was asked without any attempt to answer the question himself...? That doesn't make any sense.
"Consideration of why people might need it" is exactly why he asked why people might need it, yes?
I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question. Before parting with that kind of coin I'd wanna be REALLY sure that there's enough benefit in productivity to justify the big ol' block of billable hours that stack of RAM represents. Hence, I would ask "What is the benefit of having that much RAM? Will it really benefit our actual work or is it just a theoretical advantage? Is there any tangible improvement going from 64 to 128? How will that improvement offset the cost?" In other words, "Why do you need that much RAM?"
They started using raytracing for more accurate lighting. They mentioned that each frame used 20GB of memory and each machine would do 4 frames at a time. I don't know what target resolution they had but it could just be 2K. The Great Gatsby (2013) was shot at 5K so I'd guess it was mastered to 4K and it used photorealistic backdrops rendered with Pixar's software:
"For Gatsby the team used Animal’s own pipeline with a path tracer within PRman (RenderMan).
A common solution, especially for exteriors, started with a combination of an environment light and a key light. Estela explains that the environment light provides realism, soft shadows and overall tonality but it is also the most expensive light to use. “It is is a bit like a dome light in Mental Ray,” he adds.
The use of this approach produced great results but it did not come without some effort. The two key problems ere render times to get renders with satisfactory low noise, and memory use. “Our old system could render using 8 gig, our new system used 64 gigs of RAM, and we could easily put ‘em into swap.” Still the team managed very successfully to migrate to the new approach of physical shaders and lighting and used IBL for both technical and artistic success."
The same renderfarm was used for The Matrix, 300, Walking With Dinosaurs, Happy Feet, Moulin Rouge, The Lego Movie. Those machines are also servers and not running other processes like a desktop would. It would be unlikely that an individual desktop machine would run a single process that would be used for photoreal 4K imagery like in a feature film but if it was an image for print work or short commercial, the quality can be pushed up. There are a couple of profiles here, these smaller companies would use raytracing much more frequently than movie studios as the resolution is lower but that lowers the memory requirement:
The 2nd one mentions a custom desktop rig with 48GB RAM. To max out 64GB, you'd need more than 6 apps all using 10GB at the same time, which is unlikely. Of course you can force it to do that by just pasting as many things around and some apps will fill it with their cache. After Effects likes to fill up memory with uncompressed frames as it goes so it can easily fill up over 10GB and then double it to export (it's not smart enough to flush the cache when it runs out).
As for price, 128GB for the current Mac Pro is about $1600 so I'd guess that's probably what this will be at a minimum.
being slower than the DDR4 RAM that that Mac Pro ships with
The Mac Pro ships with DDR3. Next year it will be DDR4, which will offer 128GB too. I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need. Once this amount of RAM becomes inexpensive (say $500 for 128GB), Apple can solder the RAM in.
Remember 128K Ram in a Mac ? Probably not, but it was large for the day.
When the first Maintosh came out I had as much RAM in my Apple //e.
Some time after the 128K Mac came out a friend started to change them into Fat Macs even before the 512k came out - the owners were willing to take the risk as they were so in need of more RAM.
So no, it was not.
But it was very expensive to have more and for several years RAM was one of the most expensive upgrades you could do.
And you can use even more RAM than that for scientific computing (biology, astronomy, ...). RAM is in general useful when working on lots of data, because the OS uses it to cache the disk files. So if you have a lot of small files that you need to access frequently, it will speedup things a lot.
They started using raytracing for more accurate lighting. They mentioned that each frame used 20GB of memory and each machine would do 4 frames at a time. I don't know what target resolution they had but it could just be 2K. The Great Gatsby (2013) was shot at 5K so I'd guess it was mastered to 4K and it used photorealistic backdrops rendered with Pixar's software:
"For Gatsby the team used Animal’s own pipeline with a path tracer within PRman (RenderMan).
A common solution, especially for exteriors, started with a combination of an environment light and a key light. Estela explains that the environment light provides realism, soft shadows and overall tonality but it is also the most expensive light to use. “It is is a bit like a dome light in Mental Ray,” he adds.
The use of this approach produced great results but it did not come without some effort. The two key problems ere render times to get renders with satisfactory low noise, and memory use. “Our old system could render using 8 gig, our new system used 64 gigs of RAM, and we could easily put ‘em into swap.” Still the team managed very successfully to migrate to the new approach of physical shaders and lighting and used IBL for both technical and artistic success."
The same renderfarm was used for The Matrix, 300, Walking With Dinosaurs, Happy Feet, Moulin Rouge, The Lego Movie. Those machines are also servers and not running other processes like a desktop would. It would be unlikely that an individual desktop machine would run a single process that would be used for photoreal 4K imagery like in a feature film but if it was an image for print work or short commercial, the quality can be pushed up. There are a couple of profiles here, these smaller companies would use raytracing much more frequently than movie studios as the resolution is lower but that lowers the memory requirement:
The 2nd one mentions a custom desktop rig with 48GB RAM. To max out 64GB, you'd need more than 6 apps all using 10GB at the same time, which is unlikely. Of course you can force it to do that by just pasting as many things around and some apps will fill it with their cache. After Effects likes to fill up memory with uncompressed frames as it goes so it can easily fill up over 10GB and then double it to export (it's not smart enough to flush the cache when it runs out).
As for price, 128GB for the current Mac Pro is about $1600 so I'd guess that's probably what this will be at a minimum.
The Mac Pro ships with DDR3. Next year it will be DDR4, which will offer 128GB too. I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need. Once this amount of RAM becomes inexpensive (say $500 for 128GB), Apple can solder the RAM in.
Loved your post , however I am certain OS X will allow and improve upon applications' abilities to max out far more RAM very soon making it a must in these industries. but .... " I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need." ... you serous? When most Macs had 512K at most, and I loaded up my IIfx with 8 MBs I was told I was crazy and no one would ever need that much RAM. I am sure we will be looking at the same discussion over TBs one day. However, I assume you mean " ...I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need in the nMP for the next few years."
I bet we will see 512 GIGs and 1 TB within the next few years in Mac Pros.
Meanwhile I wish Apple and ATI would work on the dual GPU access at the core level (Central Dispatch, Grand Central ... how about KIng's Cross Station as a name?) even if a re written application like FCPro is the better route. At least let all the other 64 applications that would benefit get an increase ASAP. It is sad to see an i7 iMac besting a 4 Core nMP in Geekbench tests that have no idea what to do with the new architecture (or so it seems to me ... not my area of expertise, if this is not the case I am all ears).
EDIT: Reason ... I first typed 8 GIGs in my IIfx ... hahahahaah ... oh how quickly we forget!
" I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need." ... you serous? When most Macs had 512K at most, and I loaded up my IIfx with 8 MBs I was told I was crazy and no one would ever need that much RAM. I am sure we will be looking at the same discussion over TBs one day. However, I assume you mean " ...I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need in the nMP for the next few years."
I bet we will see 512 GIGs and 1 TB within the next few years in Mac Pros.
Technology doesn't all keep increasing like that. Think about display resolution, it wouldn't have been right to say 640x480 was enough all those years ago but 'Retina' quality is enough (300ppi at arm's length). That means 4K or 8K is the limit for monitors and media.
The only place that I see RAM getting bigger is if it becomes non-volatile and replaces storage but it won't be down to RAM running out:
Storage is another thing that doesn't need to keep getting all that much bigger. There was a link from there saying Microsoft found 16TB is as much as SSD will manage:
but 16TB is a pretty decent size for personal storage. The issue is cost, you can buy as many 2.5" drives as you want.
The goal with software is not to use more memory but less. If the target resolution for media sticks at 4K/8K then the memory demands aren't going to go higher. I'm going to stand by the statement that 128GB would be enough for any task that is needed by a personal computer. I don't think that even in 50 years people will be running processes that max out 128GB. It ultimately comes down to content. What is the content being generated or stored that uses up the space? If you can generate photoreal 4K CGI on machines with 96GB of RAM then where do you go next?
Other things that have limits are display colors and audio quality. Human senses have limits and that's where the demand comes from. If there's no perceptible improvement in a technology change then the demand goes away. We should have moved to higher quality colors (16-bpp or 12-bpp minimum) but the demand just isn't there, people are content with 8-bpp.
Even if we get to a point where photoreal imagery is generated on the fly in virtual reality, we have a limited viewpoint. Our field of vision is limited as well as visual acuity so content can dynamically load in and out of memory and again, there's a limit in the human effort to build content that rich to experience.
Technology doesn't all keep increasing like that. Think about display resolution, it wouldn't have been right to say 640x480 was enough all those years ago but 'Retina' quality is enough (300ppi at arm's length). That means 4K or 8K is the limit for monitors and media.
The only place that I see RAM getting bigger is if it becomes non-volatile and replaces storage but it won't be down to RAM running out:
Storage is another thing that doesn't need to keep getting all that much bigger. There was a link from there saying Microsoft found 16TB is as much as SSD will manage:
but 16TB is a pretty decent size for personal storage. The issue is cost, you can buy as many 2.5" drives as you want.
The goal with software is not to use more memory but less. If the target resolution for media sticks at 4K/8K then the memory demands aren't going to go higher. I'm going to stand by the statement that 128GB would be enough for any task that is needed by a personal computer. I don't think that even in 50 years people will be running processes that max out 128GB. It ultimately comes down to content. What is the content being generated or stored that uses up the space? If you can generate photoreal 4K CGI on machines with 96GB of RAM then where do you go next?
Other things that have limits are display colors and audio quality. Human senses have limits and that's where the demand comes from. If there's no perceptible improvement in a technology change then the demand goes away. We should have moved to higher quality colors (16-bpp or 12-bpp minimum) but the demand just isn't there, people are content with 8-bpp.
Even if we get to a point where photoreal imagery is generated on the fly in virtual reality, we have a limited viewpoint. Our field of vision is limited as well as visual acuity so content can dynamically load in and out of memory and again, there's a limit in the human effort to build content that rich to experience.
Sure, there are upper limits in technology but it's unlikely we'll know what they are. If we're already seeing 128GB RAM for a machine a consumer could afford and that is supported today in a consumer OS why wouldn't one expect the prices to come down, the need to go up in 10, 20, or even 50 years?
As for display resolutions, that is clearly a much slower area than RAM but it has been growing. 4K displays are coming and I see no reason why 8K displays won't be next. I think eventually TVs will get so big that 8K won't begin to cut it but by then they won't be TVs in the way we see them now. What if a TV in 50 years is similar to how it's represented in Fahrenheit 451? IOW, you have one or more walls of TV with exception resolution. So we're talking, say, 500 PPI so even up close you can't see pixels. How much RAM would be needed for this, including the room sensors that can respond to your actions in real time. Wouldn't more than 128GiB be needed for 500 billion pixels?
Technology doesn't all keep increasing like that. Think about display resolution, it wouldn't have been right to say 640x480 was enough all those years ago but 'Retina' quality is enough (300ppi at arm's length). That means 4K or 8K is the limit for monitors and media.
The only place that I see RAM getting bigger is if it becomes non-volatile and replaces storage but it won't be down to RAM running out:
Storage is another thing that doesn't need to keep getting all that much bigger. There was a link from there saying Microsoft found 16TB is as much as SSD will manage:
but 16TB is a pretty decent size for personal storage. The issue is cost, you can buy as many 2.5" drives as you want.
The goal with software is not to use more memory but less. If the target resolution for media sticks at 4K/8K then the memory demands aren't going to go higher. I'm going to stand by the statement that 128GB would be enough for any task that is needed by a personal computer. I don't think that even in 50 years people will be running processes that max out 128GB. It ultimately comes down to content. What is the content being generated or stored that uses up the space? If you can generate photoreal 4K CGI on machines with 96GB of RAM then where do you go next?
Other things that have limits are display colors and audio quality. Human senses have limits and that's where the demand comes from. If there's no perceptible improvement in a technology change then the demand goes away. We should have moved to higher quality colors (16-bpp or 12-bpp minimum) but the demand just isn't there, people are content with 8-bpp.
Even if we get to a point where photoreal imagery is generated on the fly in virtual reality, we have a limited viewpoint. Our field of vision is limited as well as visual acuity so content can dynamically load in and out of memory and again, there's a limit in the human effort to build content that rich to experience.
All good points but I still would bet we see a continues increase in RAM usage not to mention .... I'm still banking on the Holodeck becoming a reality one day and boy will a load of RAM help that
ON a slightly more serious note ..cough .. . when we start being able to 'jack in' and 'download' a mind, we will see the RAM needs escalate ... (see Richard K Morgan ... trilogy). Brilliant novels. Takeshi Kovacs is coming!
Sure, there are upper limits in technology but it's unlikely we'll know what they are.
We base it on our own limits. The limit of audio quality is what the human ear can distinguish. The limit in color accuracy and resolution is what the eye can distinguish. The amount of memory needed is based on the limited content that needs to be processed.
If we're already seeing 128GB RAM for a machine a consumer could afford and that is supported today in a consumer OS why wouldn't one expect the prices to come down, the need to go up in 10, 20, or even 50 years?
Need doesn't go up if price comes down, people just buy what they need for less but RAM will become inexpensive to the point that 16GB can go into entry-level machines. DDR4 will probably allow all of Apple's machines to have an 8GB entry point. Retailers will only offer amounts that people will buy. The reason that high amounts exist now is for servers because they virtualize operating systems so individual machines can be split to run 50VMs with 2GB of dedicated memory each.
Then there's the bandwidth to transfer and processing to compress that much data in real-time from the sensor to storage. Memory bandwidth is only 25GB/s so per frame (at 30fps), that's 830MB divided by 3 bytes per pixel = 277 million pixels per frame. If they put faster memory in there (future GPU memory will go up to 1TB/s) and compressed at a ratio of 10:1, you'd still be talking about 500 billion x 3 bytes x 30 / 10 = 4.5 terabytes per second or 36 terabits/s (1800x faster than Thunderbolt 2).
I don't think you'd need 500 billion pixels for a wall though. 3840 x 2160 is fine on 50" so maybe 24 of those = 200 million pixels for a wall but like I say, you'd need the camera tech to capture at that quality and then once you have your 24k x 13.5k resolution video, you'd need to find a way to transmit 480Mbit/s of compressed data to the consumer. Maybe that's what they intend these for:
when we start being able to 'jack in' and 'download' a mind, we will see the RAM needs escalate
That could be done on an SSD (10TB or so). Brains are slow at processing so it's really storage you'd be looking at. You'd lose all 10TB of data once you rebooted if it was in RAM.
We base it on our own limits. The limit of audio quality is what the human ear can distinguish. The limit in color accuracy and resolution is what the eye can distinguish. The amount of memory needed is based on the limited content that needs to be processed.
RAM has nothing to do without our own limits. If 32GiB sticks will be available in 2014 I can't imagine going the rest of my life — hopefully past 2100 CE — and never seeing that exceeded, especially when I consider how much it's increased in just the past 25 years.
Need doesn't go up if price comes down, people just buy what they need for less but RAM will become inexpensive to the point that 16GB can go into entry-level machines. DDR4 will probably allow all of Apple's machines to have an 8GB entry point. Retailers will only offer amounts that people will buy. The reason that high amounts exist now is for servers because they virtualize operating systems so individual machines can be split to run 50VMs with 2GB of dedicated memory each.
Actually it does. As a resource becomes more or less available in a culture we typically find a way to become more or less dependent on it. If large amount of cheap, low-power RAM becomes so abundant that developers can not worry about making application more RAM efficient then they won't and as a result we'll need to have use more RAM.
It's not practical.
There is a history of technological changes where people in the previous generation said something wouldn't ever exist because it's not practical. We'll see 4K video being streamed as the standard to our home even thought not too long ago it didn't exist at all.
Comments
I asked the question because the user didn't express their usage case. I noted the RAM being slower because while additional RAM for a non-portable device is never a negative (except on cost) being slow is a negative. I even stated that I think slightly slower RAM is worth doubling the amount if your needs call for it. I also talked about testing the RAM to see if it truly will be a benefit to one's production. Finally, I used the words curious and implore to further attract an in-depth answer as to why 64GiB isn't enough.
I don't know what else I could have done make my queries sound more sincere.
PS: A little over a year ago I received my 2012 iMac and *premium* RAM with a lower CAS Latancy that I had purchased from Newegg. I ran artificial tests to see if made a difference. It didn't, so I returned it.
In the UK we call people with this kind of boastful and off putting attitude a 'knob-head'. Which means the same as 'dick-head'.
I bet your big RAM makes you millions, you complete idiot.
You're the idiot, you lazy wanker.
Don't forget, you also said..... "Cool it!"
So obviously you had a problem or something. Also, for everyone else jumping on the first commenter - my apologies for this forum, some people don't realize comments don't come across well through text sometimes... It'll all be okay.
Cool it! He's not attacking you but noting that even those that need 64GiB are very few and far between. If you need 128GiB then so be it and it's certainly possible, but I'm curious as to what you need that much RAM; especially RAM that is slower. I implore you paint for us a picture of your usage needs.
I'm not going to waste keystrokes explaining anything to fools like you all.
Remember the days when people would ask 'why do you need 8GB of RAM?!' This is the same thing. Musicians, graphic designers, photographers, 3D artists, all these guys would be happy with as much RAM as they can handle. Photoshop files that use 10GB of RAM each, software instruments that need to load up 10's of gigabytes of samples. No-one NEEDS that much ram, but it sure saves a shit load of time when you're on a deadline. No need to close After Effects to reopen Photoshop. Keep Logic Pro open with a bunch of sample-heavy AU instruments while you work in Final Cut with 4K uncompressed video. Comments like that are so closed minded. It's unbelievable you could still be 'curious' about why 128GB+ RAM is useful.
Hey, someone with some sense.
He wrote, "I'm not a dilettante spectator like you."
Do professional OS X apps even allow for 128GB minus OS resources to be allocated by a single app?
Just what is a gaberator, anyway? Oh, I get it, someone with plenty of time on his hands with nothing better to do than post 14K+ times. Doesn't sound like something you get paid for. No wonder you're mystified why anyone could need 128 GB of RAM.
Don't forget, you also said..... "Cool it!"
So obviously you had a problem or something. Also, for everyone else jumping on the first commenter - my apologies for this forum, some people don't realize comments don't come across well through text sometimes... It'll all be okay.
That's fine, I'm not worried. Just voicing my opinions about the prospects of having that much RAM, especially recalling those very early days in 1984 on a 128K Macintosh. Very sweet times, these. Can't wait to buy my Mac Pro and fit it out with that much RAM!
Does [@]DanielSW[/@] come across as a reasonable person to you? Based on his comments here I certainly don't think so. To me, he comes across as both as caustic and foolish which is why I wanted to know more about his decision making. So far he has shown nothing that would lead me (or likely anyone else of sound mind) to believe that he has been thorough in his decision making.
It's a shame you wouldn't consider hiring me though, because I'm a pretty cool guy.
I'm also not a kiss-ass. But it sounds like I'm being that. I just can't be bothered retyping this. Because I'm on an iPhone and it's really hard to select text on an iPhone and press delete. I really wish I had bought the S4. 4GB of RAM. Much better.
*gets naked*
Thought I would just lighten the mood. Have fun guys!
You lost me... are you saying the question was asked without any attempt to answer the question himself...? That doesn't make any sense.
"Consideration of why people might need it" is exactly why he asked why people might need it, yes?
I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question. Before parting with that kind of coin I'd wanna be REALLY sure that there's enough benefit in productivity to justify the big ol' block of billable hours that stack of RAM represents. Hence, I would ask "What is the benefit of having that much RAM? Will it really benefit our actual work or is it just a theoretical advantage? Is there any tangible improvement going from 64 to 128? How will that improvement offset the cost?" In other words, "Why do you need that much RAM?"
Pixar's and Weta's render farms use 96GB RAM per machine:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4446606/how-pixar-changed-the-way-light-works-for-monsters-university
They started using raytracing for more accurate lighting. They mentioned that each frame used 20GB of memory and each machine would do 4 frames at a time. I don't know what target resolution they had but it could just be 2K. The Great Gatsby (2013) was shot at 5K so I'd guess it was mastered to 4K and it used photorealistic backdrops rendered with Pixar's software:
[VIDEO]
https://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-state-of-rendering/
"For Gatsby the team used Animal’s own pipeline with a path tracer within PRman (RenderMan).
A common solution, especially for exteriors, started with a combination of an environment light and a key light. Estela explains that the environment light provides realism, soft shadows and overall tonality but it is also the most expensive light to use. “It is is a bit like a dome light in Mental Ray,” he adds.
The use of this approach produced great results but it did not come without some effort. The two key problems ere render times to get renders with satisfactory low noise, and memory use. “Our old system could render using 8 gig, our new system used 64 gigs of RAM, and we could easily put ‘em into swap.” Still the team managed very successfully to migrate to the new approach of physical shaders and lighting and used IBL for both technical and artistic success."
The same renderfarm was used for The Matrix, 300, Walking With Dinosaurs, Happy Feet, Moulin Rouge, The Lego Movie. Those machines are also servers and not running other processes like a desktop would. It would be unlikely that an individual desktop machine would run a single process that would be used for photoreal 4K imagery like in a feature film but if it was an image for print work or short commercial, the quality can be pushed up. There are a couple of profiles here, these smaller companies would use raytracing much more frequently than movie studios as the resolution is lower but that lowers the memory requirement:
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/studio-profile-lumiere-studio/
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/interview-anselm-von-seherr-thoss/3/
The 2nd one mentions a custom desktop rig with 48GB RAM. To max out 64GB, you'd need more than 6 apps all using 10GB at the same time, which is unlikely. Of course you can force it to do that by just pasting as many things around and some apps will fill it with their cache. After Effects likes to fill up memory with uncompressed frames as it goes so it can easily fill up over 10GB and then double it to export (it's not smart enough to flush the cache when it runs out).
As for price, 128GB for the current Mac Pro is about $1600 so I'd guess that's probably what this will be at a minimum.
The Mac Pro ships with DDR3. Next year it will be DDR4, which will offer 128GB too. I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need. Once this amount of RAM becomes inexpensive (say $500 for 128GB), Apple can solder the RAM in.
Remember 128K Ram in a Mac ? Probably not, but it was large for the day.
When the first Maintosh came out I had as much RAM in my Apple //e.
Some time after the 128K Mac came out a friend started to change them into Fat Macs even before the 512k came out - the owners were willing to take the risk as they were so in need of more RAM.
So no, it was not.
But it was very expensive to have more and for several years RAM was one of the most expensive upgrades you could do.
Loved your post , however I am certain OS X will allow and improve upon applications' abilities to max out far more RAM very soon making it a must in these industries. but .... " I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need." ... you serous? When most Macs had 512K at most, and I loaded up my IIfx with 8 MBs I was told I was crazy and no one would ever need that much RAM. I am sure we will be looking at the same discussion over TBs one day. However, I assume you mean " ...I'd say 128GB is more RAM than anyone will ever need in the nMP for the next few years."
I bet we will see 512 GIGs and 1 TB within the next few years in Mac Pros.
Meanwhile I wish Apple and ATI would work on the dual GPU access at the core level (Central Dispatch, Grand Central ... how about KIng's Cross Station as a name?) even if a re written application like FCPro is the better route. At least let all the other 64 applications that would benefit get an increase ASAP. It is sad to see an i7 iMac besting a 4 Core nMP in Geekbench tests that have no idea what to do with the new architecture (or so it seems to me ... not my area of expertise, if this is not the case I am all ears).
EDIT: Reason ... I first typed 8 GIGs in my IIfx ... hahahahaah ... oh how quickly we forget!
Technology doesn't all keep increasing like that. Think about display resolution, it wouldn't have been right to say 640x480 was enough all those years ago but 'Retina' quality is enough (300ppi at arm's length). That means 4K or 8K is the limit for monitors and media.
The only place that I see RAM getting bigger is if it becomes non-volatile and replaces storage but it won't be down to RAM running out:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/163058-reram-the-new-memory-tech-that-will-eventually-replace-nand-flash-finally-comes-to-market
Storage is another thing that doesn't need to keep getting all that much bigger. There was a link from there saying Microsoft found 16TB is as much as SSD will manage:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/118909-current-solid-state-drive-technology-is-doomed-researchers-say
but 16TB is a pretty decent size for personal storage. The issue is cost, you can buy as many 2.5" drives as you want.
The goal with software is not to use more memory but less. If the target resolution for media sticks at 4K/8K then the memory demands aren't going to go higher. I'm going to stand by the statement that 128GB would be enough for any task that is needed by a personal computer. I don't think that even in 50 years people will be running processes that max out 128GB. It ultimately comes down to content. What is the content being generated or stored that uses up the space? If you can generate photoreal 4K CGI on machines with 96GB of RAM then where do you go next?
Other things that have limits are display colors and audio quality. Human senses have limits and that's where the demand comes from. If there's no perceptible improvement in a technology change then the demand goes away. We should have moved to higher quality colors (16-bpp or 12-bpp minimum) but the demand just isn't there, people are content with 8-bpp.
Even if we get to a point where photoreal imagery is generated on the fly in virtual reality, we have a limited viewpoint. Our field of vision is limited as well as visual acuity so content can dynamically load in and out of memory and again, there's a limit in the human effort to build content that rich to experience.
I'm still waiting for an answer as to why 64GiB RAM simply isn't enough for your needs.
Sure, there are upper limits in technology but it's unlikely we'll know what they are. If we're already seeing 128GB RAM for a machine a consumer could afford and that is supported today in a consumer OS why wouldn't one expect the prices to come down, the need to go up in 10, 20, or even 50 years?
As for display resolutions, that is clearly a much slower area than RAM but it has been growing. 4K displays are coming and I see no reason why 8K displays won't be next. I think eventually TVs will get so big that 8K won't begin to cut it but by then they won't be TVs in the way we see them now. What if a TV in 50 years is similar to how it's represented in Fahrenheit 451? IOW, you have one or more walls of TV with exception resolution. So we're talking, say, 500 PPI so even up close you can't see pixels. How much RAM would be needed for this, including the room sensors that can respond to your actions in real time. Wouldn't more than 128GiB be needed for 500 billion pixels?
All good points but I still would bet we see a continues increase in RAM usage not to mention .... I'm still banking on the Holodeck becoming a reality one day and boy will a load of RAM help that
ON a slightly more serious note ..cough .. . when we start being able to 'jack in' and 'download' a mind, we will see the RAM needs escalate ... (see Richard K Morgan ... trilogy). Brilliant novels. Takeshi Kovacs is coming!
We base it on our own limits. The limit of audio quality is what the human ear can distinguish. The limit in color accuracy and resolution is what the eye can distinguish. The amount of memory needed is based on the limited content that needs to be processed.
Need doesn't go up if price comes down, people just buy what they need for less but RAM will become inexpensive to the point that 16GB can go into entry-level machines. DDR4 will probably allow all of Apple's machines to have an 8GB entry point. Retailers will only offer amounts that people will buy. The reason that high amounts exist now is for servers because they virtualize operating systems so individual machines can be split to run 50VMs with 2GB of dedicated memory each.
It's not practical. You need to film content at this resolution first of all and the clarity of the imagery is limited by the lenses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_resolution#Lens_resolution
http://petapixel.com/2012/12/17/perceptual-megapixel-mtf-charts-boiled-down-to-a-single-number/
Then there's the bandwidth to transfer and processing to compress that much data in real-time from the sensor to storage. Memory bandwidth is only 25GB/s so per frame (at 30fps), that's 830MB divided by 3 bytes per pixel = 277 million pixels per frame. If they put faster memory in there (future GPU memory will go up to 1TB/s) and compressed at a ratio of 10:1, you'd still be talking about 500 billion x 3 bytes x 30 / 10 = 4.5 terabytes per second or 36 terabits/s (1800x faster than Thunderbolt 2).
I don't think you'd need 500 billion pixels for a wall though. 3840 x 2160 is fine on 50" so maybe 24 of those = 200 million pixels for a wall but like I say, you'd need the camera tech to capture at that quality and then once you have your 24k x 13.5k resolution video, you'd need to find a way to transmit 480Mbit/s of compressed data to the consumer. Maybe that's what they intend these for:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2106260/sony-panasonic-develop-300gb-optical-discs-for-enterprise-storage.html
That could be done on an SSD (10TB or so). Brains are slow at processing so it's really storage you'd be looking at. You'd lose all 10TB of data once you rebooted if it was in RAM.
RAM has nothing to do without our own limits. If 32GiB sticks will be available in 2014 I can't imagine going the rest of my life — hopefully past 2100 CE — and never seeing that exceeded, especially when I consider how much it's increased in just the past 25 years.
Actually it does. As a resource becomes more or less available in a culture we typically find a way to become more or less dependent on it. If large amount of cheap, low-power RAM becomes so abundant that developers can not worry about making application more RAM efficient then they won't and as a result we'll need to have use more RAM.
There is a history of technological changes where people in the previous generation said something wouldn't ever exist because it's not practical. We'll see 4K video being streamed as the standard to our home even thought not too long ago it didn't exist at all.