2024-01-18 22:31:15
For several years, Apple has had a strange hobby: offering only 8 GB of RAM as standard on its MacBook Air and other Mac minis. This is a topic we talked about in a podcast and covered extensively in many articles, for good reason. And Microsoft seems to be of the same opinion as us: “AI” PCs (well suited to CoPilot offers) will have to first be equipped with at least 16 GB of RAM.
There is RAM sold at a high price… and then these G.Skill memory sticks
Macs don’t have enough RAM or enough “AI” power
We could list all the arguments that explain why 16 GB of RAM should be the minimum in 2024, but we will abstain, simply remembering that 8 GB of RAM was a passable amount in 2012 and that a Power Mac G5 from 2003 could already accommodate this amount of memory. More seriously, like Trendforce explains itMicrosoft probably considers that the various tasks related to artificial intelligence require at least 16 GB of RAM.
Qualcomm announces 45 TOPS for its future Snapdragon X Elite.
In all AI-related calculations, the performance of the NPU (the unit dedicated to these calculations) also comes into account. And Microsoft therefore counts first impose a power of at least 40 TOPS to obtain the “PC IA” key. It is also interesting here to note that Intel’s latest chips (the Core Ultra Meteor Lake) are not powerful enough at this level (with 34 TOPS at best)… just like Apple’s M3 chips. If AMD – with its Ryzen 8000 – and Qualcomm (with the future Snapdragon X Elite) announce around 45 TOPS, Apple is around 35 TOPS on M3 chips. One thing should be noted about this value: Apple has long communicated on a power of 18 TOPS, but on calculations with 16-bit precision. From the A17, first equipped with the same NPU, the power “magically” increased to 35 TOPS, the value with 8-bit precision, as with competitors.
In any case, PCs sold as optimized for artificial intelligence should therefore be rather powerful, and probably quite expensive.
No Apple, 8 GB in a Mac does not correspond to 16 GB in a PC
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