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Unless it uses Intel CPUs that support 16 GB SODIMMs, I don't think it will even be a possibility, even then, my guess would be not until a couple of generations after skylake. I mean, they could already do it if they were willing to solder more RAM on the motherboard and accommodate the extra space that would take in the chassis, but they have shown that they aren't heading in that direction, so I don't see why that is going to change anytime soon. RAM chips with larger capacity would fix that "issue", but no Intel CPUs will properly support those for now.
I have a Nehalem (2007-2008) Core i7 desktop which supports up to 24 GB of RAM - I'd guess that the Intel CPU could support a lot more memory right now - but the Chipset may be the limiting factor. My old MacBook Pro supported up to 4 GB but it turned out that you could actually put in 6. So it might be possible but the average person probably wouldn't want to desolder chips.
Hi, thank you. I guess my question is more to the point, will Apple MBP offer 4 DIMM slots rather than just two in the future refresh, in order to accomodate 32GB?
I have a couple of laptops (laptop workstations) now that support 32GB ram. They have 4 DIMM slots and are early gen i7 core mobile processors. But I would like to see MBP also have 4 DIMM slots.
MacBook Pros don't have DIMM slots because the RAM is soldered to the logic board. As tijo alluded, if Apple were to do this, it would likely require extensive re-engineering to accommodate the extra chips. As such, the odds of this happening any time soon are slim to none.
If you want a Mac that can do 32 GB of RAM, you'll need a 27-inch iMac or a Mac Pro.
I concur with the rest of the posters, I just can not see it happening nor can I see DIMM slots coming back either.
sadly I NEEDED a mac with 32GB of RAM for some of my work and had to go the hackintosh route with an old Elitebook 8740W.
as for why I can not see 32GB for at least a couple of generations as Saturn has said:
1: Apple has more or left the professional market and at this time your average consumer barely uses 6 and 16 is a novelty
2: no DIMM Slots to easily add and will not return as that will force a thicker and also hotter machine ( RAM generates heat )
3: would require a noticeable amount of board space to mount sockets or SMD memory chips.
4: 16GB Sodimms/chips - from every post I have read no current intel chips support that memory density except desktop CPU's and the Xeon series. none of the mobile series support 32 gb unless it is in a 4X8 configuration. a number of us have tried and it drives us nuts that the desktop xeons and the AMD APU's support it but not any of the mobile packages.
Thank you again. I believe you are all correct. It doesn't seem like something that Apple would do anytime soon, 4x8GB (soldered or not). And I don't see Intel accomodating 2x16GB anytime soon for their mobile processors.
But it would be nice. I think it would keep them (apple) competitive in the mobile workstation area. Perhaps someday a less svelte, less slim (and less proprietary with less soldering) MBP will be available that offers something like I'm requiring. Technology changes so fast, I wouldn't be surprised. But I shouldn't expect it so soon as the next refresh.
We're talking about acceptable performance and that would be user and application dependent.
I used to work on a system with 28 KB of RAM. 20 KB was for the operating system and the other 8KB was user space. The system supported 8 users. 7 users were swapped to disk while the other was running. We were using ASR-33s so you didn't notice the swapping.
Completely different ballgame. I know many VM's can run fairly laggy on less than 3GB/VM and some of the server VM's can need upwards of 16 each. I am certainly no expert as I only use OSX 10.7 on a VM for a specific legacy project ( and even it seems to need 4GB alone ) but my husband runs a number of them and grumbles that he wishes he could have 64GB in a laptop for emulating and testing purposes for an entire primary network system. as where I still grumble about not being able to have 32GB just for certain A/V projects and such without a VM.
That may or may not be what the OP needs or wants. If I needed more memory to run VMs, I'd just run them remotely on a server or well-configured desktop. We have systems with a TB of RAM in my office and lots of server farms in remote areas and we just connect into them to do development.
It is nice to know of such an option as virtual RAM using SSD. But it is not something I would use. It is good to know such an option exists. As storage media becomes less restrictive in terms of bandwidth and throughput, that becomes more and more a realistic option. But not at the moment for me.
Apple may not have anything remotely close to what I require in a mobile solution, but I don't give up hope. I won't say "never". But I'll go non-apple for my next mobile workstation.
More likely they get rid of the dedicated GPU option than Apple offering 32GB of ram. Why? Apple's making more money via their current buyers who could care less about their macbooks being powerful workstations. It just has to look nice and pretty
My MBP's got way more compute and graphics horsepower than I need but the speed, display and battery life are great and this should serve me as long as my previous MBP, at least six years.
I have no problems with AAPL making money as I'm a big shareholder.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
