Having unified memory is a real advantage though, it's not a reality distortion.

davrosthedalek 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The price is that you essentially glue CPU and GPU together, which limits total compute, from a size and thermal perspective.

This is really not a limit because of unified memory -- in principle, PCIe GPUs could read/write main memory without the CPU. But it's a limit for /fast/ unified memory, because fast means close.

So unified memory is great as long as the integrated GPU is strong enough. Then it has two advantages: a) probably faster transfer CPU<->GPU (but that's an implementation choice for the non-unified case b) If you either need a lot of memory for the CPU or the GPU, but not for both at the same time, you pay for memory only once.

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nvme0n1p1 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed. That's why it's a good thing all computers made in the past 15 years have unified memory, not just macs.

https://x.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/1820947147312820497

	▲	stymaar 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is that Marcan's vtuber persona (Asahi Lina) that changed name since Marcan doesn't work on Asahi Linux anymore?

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fooker 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is a real advantage.

The reality distortion is that people seem to believe it's HBM, or somehow it gives you extraordinary amounts of vram. Neither are really true.