Hacker News Reader

Comment by skhr0680 | Hacker News Reader

I really wanted a cheaper Mac tower ten years ago but most of the reasons I wanted one aren’t really relevant anymore:

The future finally happened in terms of fast external peripherals (especially storage), and I don’t have a burning need for a Mac with upgradable internal storage anymore.

In 2010 I got a $100 graphics card that let my PC do things that the PS3 and Xbox could only dream of. Now for the cost of a “mid-range” GPU it’s possible to get a Switch with a game or two that look fine and run at fast FPS.

One thing: Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back

View on HN

Low power, high performance, upgradable RAM: pick two.

RAM slots aren't free; all that extra interconnect length increases power requirements and becomes impractical with large buses. You'd need 8 SO-DIMM slots to match the bus width of the M1 Max models, at much higher power consumption and slower performance. LPDDR RAM doesn't even exist in removable form for these reasons.

For those wondering about the math: a SODIMM channel (e.g. DDR5) is 64 bits. An LPDDR channel is 16 bits. M1 has 8 of those (128 bits), M1 Pro has 16 (256 bits), and M1 Max has 32 (512 bits). That means the M1 is equivalent to dual channel RAM, the Pro to quad channel RAM, and the Max to octa channel RAM, in typical desktop/laptop RAM terms.

Modern embedded SoC integration is insane. Yes, the "two" memory chips you see on the M1 are really 8 discrete dies/chips (4 stacked together inside each of the two packages), and the "two" big fat things around the Pro are actually 2x8; double them up for the Max and that's how you get to 32 channels. Good luck putting that through a connector...

All macs should have 32GB without customization. It’s not so expensive without sockets, and Apple customers deserve the best. We shouldn’t even have to choose.

The “but muh upgradable RAM” folks need realize: computers are so fast now that just making RAM human-replaceable requires such long connectors that resulting speeds are unacceptably low (due to speed of light vs clock cycle time).

Maybe we will see a return of the amiga’s ‘fast ram’ expansion style, with high price, high performance modules designed for specific functions and improvement.

>Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back

I don't see that happen any time soon, not with their new focus on building the core as a SoC. Maybe with the MacPros, there will be on-SoC RAM and slower off-SoC, but I doubt it till I see it.

> One thing: Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back

never going go happen as Apples loathes users' freedom. they prefer selling a disposable brick.

More like a vocal minority of users want upgradable RAM. Most people don't even know what RAM is and think it's the thing that stores their files.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com