> I understand why the AI people want it to help with the latency between the CPU and GPU.

The reason AI users like it is because it provides a large amount of higher-bandwidth memory at a price much lower than an equivalent GPU.

If you had 16GB of DDR5 in a normal 2-channel consumer board it would not be this fast.

This gives 16GB of high speed memory for a very low price compared to a full GPU.

The larger unified memory systems like Strix Halo or Apple Silicon provide access to high bandwidth memory at scales you can’t get with any consumer GPU.

> But having people in some cases use it as for marketing is kinda like getting watered down beer and getting told its a good thing because alcohol is bad for you

I don’t think you understand the benefits of having high speed memory attached at a low price point.

Yes we would all prefer to have the same amount of even faster memory attached to a dedicated GPU, but that’s not happening at this price point.

Better analogy would be that this is an entry-level sports car for the price of a Honda Civic but you’re complaining that it’s not a Lamborghini.

> The reason AI users like it is because it provides a large amount of higher-bandwidth memory at a price much lower than an equivalent GPU.

But unified memory isn't providing high bandwidth. Apple's specific implementation on pro or higher chips does. There's a zillion desktops and laptops running unified memory at low to medium-low speeds, and the baseline M series is part of that with its 128 bit bus.

Most unified memory devices are handicapped because of the unification, not boosted. Yet people keep praising unified memory.