21/10/2024 5:31 pm
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So, Apple advertises unified memory of their newer MacBooks like it's a new feature. Hasn't memory sharing between the CPU and GPU already been in use for years in laptops with integrated graphics, like the Iris Xe? It uses the system RAM together with the CPU.
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03/02/2025 10:23 am
In shortest possible way to describe: the traditional shared memory means a portion of RAM is reserved for the GPU, while in Apple's unified memory both GPU and OS can access the entire RAM. That speeds up things by avoiding unnecessary data copying to the specific graphics-reserved part of RAM so the GPU can access it, as far as I understood, based on this useful thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27182715
The question remains whether current apps and games for Macs can actually utilize this advantage.