It will not, but not because of the reasons you suggest.am hoping an extra 4GB over my M4 will reduce/stop safari crashes and game lockups etc. An extra $600 is a very tough sell for only 4GB more memory.
I’ve noticed my new 12GB iPPM 17 always runs completely full on memory, just like my 8GB iPPM 16 did, so I don’t know if the extra 4GB bump will actually help, or if that extra 4GB is “off-limits” for regular apps and has been allocated only to OS/AI functions.
Third-party applications can absolutely take advantage of the extra RAM, especially video editing in 3-D rendering applications.
But outside of that, iPadOS (and by extension iOS) have extremely strict ram management.
If 12 GB on your iPhone still leads to Safari tab reloads and such, expect the exact same behavior on the iPad Pro.
Unlike macOS, which does it’s best to utilize all memory available at all times even when it’s not necessarily needed, Apple‘s mobile platforms do the exact opposite for power efficiency.
Not that hard to find comparisons online that prove that the 16 GB iPad pros that have been available for going on five years now do the exact same purging of background tasks as the 8 (and now 12) GB models.