New Photo Claims to Show 2GB Elpida RAM Chips for iPad Air 2

[TMay]

I'm a supposed to laugh? the article was talking about mobile ram and that apple is using 25% of it. How much of the smartphone market is apple? A good amount based ons sales, that article is saying they might need to move from reg ram to mobile ram to supply more demand for another product that pays well... is basic economics and need for more supply not due to real physical shortcomings in supply; if anything it would drive the price down due to more product.

RAM consumes more, but if you have more memory than you need, the excess is using a lot less energy than memory you are actually utilizing. Then you have disk swapping, and you would know that adding RAM appropriate to the workload likely to reduce overall energy usage.

BTW this is a big item an iPad not an iPhone.

You keep on believing what you want on your "in deep" which is really superficial and simplistic views though

I think that you misunderstand the context. If Apple will be at 25% of the market with current 1GB devices, and you double it to 2 GB per device then the market needs to increase production yet another 25%, 50% of the market, but adding 4 GB means the market needs to add another 50% on top of that. Now your looking at a 75% increase in production, which is probably unlikely in a year on year time frame, and the only adjustment the market can make is a massive increase in cost, squeezing out almost every other manufacturer, and creating a huge cost increase for Apple.

Add in the other DRAM markets and you will end up having a hyper inflationary market, which is not good for anyone, including Apple.

 

[Max(IT)]

2 Gb... TouchID... Welcome to the perfect iPad

----------

I can't help but feel a bit salty that these weren't in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Did you check your iPhone free ram recently? Under an heavy use I still have 100+ mb of free ram available.
This is not Android...

On the iPad the ram is more necessary, especially for web browsing and multitasking

 

[Parasprite]

Multitask your favorite apps (have them opened so they are readily accessible) and then have a small selection of tabs opened in Safari. Do your Safari tabs reload because you don't have enough RAM?

iPad Air? Actually no. I had this in iOS 7 (particularly pre-7.1), but it hasn't happened since 8.0.2. I'm actually astonished at how different Safari acts in iOS 8.

My iPhone 4s on the other hand is only ever able to keep 1 tab open...

 

[Zinthar]

Yeah being in the normal cycle aka 4-5-6 is much better than the S version cycle. I rather have a new design etc than some slight improvements. However Touch ID on the 5S was big and made me buy it rather than waiting 1 year more to get the upgrade from my phone provider.
All my friends complain about not getting a 6 till next year since they are in the S upgrade cycle, and I'm rocking my 6 already

Agreed. I can see the argument for the S cycle, but the "normal" cycle has been really incredible since the 4. The performance improvements have been bigger with the S, but the normal cycle gets performance bumps and the new design. I definitely get a much worse case of upgrade fever when the new design comes, particularly now that larger phones are out.

In two years the 7 will get all of the upgrades of 6S, and perhaps they'll be able to put TouchID into part of the touchscreen itself and drop the physical home button to shorten the phone.

 

[Max(IT)]

"To offer optimal performance on iOS 8."

It's the Air's first software update, it should still be optimal now.

----------



Makes my 6s upgrade next year seem all the better. Hopefully the 6s will show the kind of Geekbench leap over the 5s that was expected with the 6.

The gap from 5 to 5s was almost double on Geekbench, from 5s to 6 it's only a few hundred points at most.

The real question is: who the hell cares about Geekbench?

Feel free to change the word "geekbench" with any synthetic benchmark you wish...

----------

Safari says, thank you.

Yep. The only app today is going to gain something from the team upgrade

 

[AX338]

Look forward to the new iPad.

 

[SockRolid]

... Apple is also said to be working on split-screen multitasking for the iPad Air...

Let me guess.
Split-screen multitasking was an IBM requirement for the Apple-IBM deal.
Right?

 

[crashoverride77]

Agreed. I can see the argument for the S cycle, but the "normal" cycle has been really incredible since the 4. The performance improvements have been bigger with the S, but the normal cycle gets performance bumps and the new design. I definitely get a much worse case of upgrade fever when the new design comes, particularly now that larger phones are out.

In two years the 7 will get all of the upgrades of 6S, and perhaps they'll be able to put TouchID into part of the touchscreen itself and drop the physical home button to shorten the phone.

Yeah, if the 5s didn't have Touch ID I think I would have waited 1 more year, it's not like the 5 is suddenly terrible.
Touch ID on the screen omg, or imagine on the trackpad on macs. Will happen soon in some form.

 

[Cisco_Kid]

I can't help but feel a bit salty that these weren't in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Maybe 6s and 6+s ?

 

[fertilized-egg]

I've thought that before too, but didn't think about the ramifications of having two apps running at the same time needing to keep within a certain constraint. That makes things more interesting for sure. How does a developer test their already extremely RAM limited app when you throw other potential apps into the mix?

An iOS app already is limited in terms of maximum memory it can use. My guess would be the limit won't change. This means the developer just has to make sure the app works fine in a 1GB device and two apps will coexists peacefully side-by-side with 2GB RAM.

The downside of this approach would be that in a single app mode the RAM will mostly be wasted because each app will not have access to extra RAM beyond the current limit. However given Apple's usual MO, I won't be surprised if Apple takes this route. On the other hand they can still give special access to the first party apps such as Safari to the extra RAM space.

 

[vanzantapple]

2G RAM and 64GB storage would make this a monster for $500.

I'm a dreamer.

 

[wizard]

I like rumors and all but guys, photos of RAM chips really mean nothing. Elpida has been making RAM chips for a long time now and actually has a rather large catalog of parts. Show us a logic board with the RAM chips on the board and maybe we will start to acknowledge the rumors.

 

[wizard]

If you truly understood how computers work you wouldn't be asking these questions.

The new iPhone 6 and 6+ have both been tested and rank among the fastest smartphones available. The same is expected to be true of the new iPads.

What do speed tests have to do with the need for RAM? Nothing really.

Besides an issue with page reloading tabs (of which it is in no way certain that it is attributable to a lack of RAM)

It isn't attributable to RAM in every case but it is in enough that it makes a huge difference.

there have been no wide-publicised issues with a lack of RAM for any application on iOS that I'm aware of.

Are you Rip Van Wrinkle or have you otherwise been out of touch for a long time? The lack of RAM problem has been well documented. Further if you get set up as a developer you can see how low RaM warnings impact apps. The lack of RAM isn't a figment of somebodies imagination, the need for RAM is no different on iOS than it is on another OS.

So what are you talking about? In what way would 4 Gb RAM make the iPad any faster or better performing?

You can't be serious. RAM impacts performance the same way it does every other OS out there. Beyond that the current shipping products with 1GB of RAM don't have 1GB or RAM to allocate to the app as there are system resources that have to occupy some of that RAM.

In stead of just repeating the same "we need more RAM" mantra, I would really like to have some insight into what people are missing here.

No what you need insight into is how computers work and what RAM does in a computing system. Then you need to understand what iOS apps have to go through to manage their RAM. You would benefit far more from educating your self than questioning the people expressing a valid need.

 

[wizard]

GeekBar ??

Now that is something i can get in in to

running at different sizes, so are we going for some sort of "picture-in-picture mode" here. but separate.?

Wo knows? We might not even get this capability. frankly half the time y need for multitasking involves a calculator. If that calculator could slide in from a side that would take care of at least half of my multitasking needs.

I guess i can probably understand the split screen, but 2 Gig ? Surely, u can do the same in 1 Gig or Ram can't you ?

I'm really shocked at how little people in the forum understand about IOS. The first thing you have to realize is that you don't have 1GB or RAM in the current hardware dedicated to an App. The app shares that space with system resources. Beyond that can app today is only allowed to keep limited resources in memory when it isn't the primary app, code and data gets frozen and often swapped out entirely to support the foreground app. iOS is actually very aggressive about killing apps or freezing them to free up RAM for the user app.

You still have two apps running separately, so how come suddenly when their side by side, more ram is needed ? unless its a totally sluggish-type of moment, then i would agree 'add more ram'

It is pretty simple you don't have two apps running, at best iOS allows parts an app to multitask in background. Often an app is frozen and removed from RAM when the user app needs more RAM.

but are our devices really THAT slow u can't even use them ? Next, Apple will find a reason to use 3Gig.

What is the obsession with speed, the desire for more RAM has little to do with that even if it does help a few apps. it is more a question of avoiding app crashes when they run out of RAM, avoiding Safari page reloads (and the charges for those bits) when it can be avoided, and in general having enough RAM averrable to realize advance apps that currently can't be done well on iPad.

Unless i didn't get this, but i can quite easily switch between multiple apps now on iOS 7. Maybe more RAM for iOS8 not just the apps..... I can understand that since make made it that way.

I'm about to give up here because you apparently just don't get it. In any event if you don't get it please stop asking why reasonable people are asking for more RAM.

----------

We’ll see. If it does in fact cure the tab reload issue there will be a severe shortage of humble pie around here.

Why would anybody not think it won't help? Seriously. Look I know that there are some websites that demand to be reloaded each time you go back to them and frankly that sucks down a lot of bandwidth. However it is pretty clear that this isn't the case in every instance. Besides do you think people are lying about all the out of memory warnings seen in the logs.

I don' honestly believe that more RAM will be a 100% fix for Safari but that extra 1 GB of Ram is huge. Apps currently don't have 1GB of RAM to work with often actually far less depending upon the IOS device in question. So going to 2GB is not a trivial update.

 

[alexgowers]

All I want to see is ssd based memory rather than flash! Another gig of ram is nice to help ease its heavy use in the ipad but iPhone has no need for it at all. Ssd would mean paging and super fast load times for every thing that currently can be a bit sluggish. My mac is so far due to ssd an upgrade in that arena could be a massive selling point.

 

[wizard]

I see your point.

The only real valid reason (IMHO) would be to make the devices more futureproof.

More RAM might help for that but it is hardly the only valid reason.

The build quality of Apple products is increasing (I know about the bending stuff...) so people tend to carry them around for longer. It would help to make the devices run better on future versions of the OS.

All these other complaints about only x Gb ram or new iPhones or iPads "not being fast enough" are just empy-headed comments with no solid foundation in experience with these new devices being actually slower as a result of that.

i guess people on Mac Rumors are just dense. The need for more Ram is due to apps constantly getting low memory warnings and either crashing or in some cases loosing data. Safari is a prime example here as it constantly reloads data when it really shouldn't. This is always due to a lack of RAM as opposed to Safari reloading because the web site wants it to. Folk it isn't even debatable the relevant data is there for anybody to find.

 

[wizard]

And they are laggy as hell!

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the need for more RAM in iOS devices. I'm really beginning to wonder if Mac Rumors has developed a following of technically illiterate readers. RAM is about apps and the behavior of those apps, speed improvements sometimes happen with more RAM but that isn't what people are hoping to correct with more RAM. Seriously people need to study a bit here before posting such ridiculous statements.

 

[2IS]

2 Gb... TouchID... Welcome to the perfect iPad

----------



Did you check your iPhone free ram recently? Under an heavy use I still have 100+ mb of free ram available.
This is not Android...

On the iPad the ram is more necessary, especially for web browsing and multitasking

No, this is IOS, and 1GB isn't enough. Enough with the nonsense please. Anyone who thinks it's enough for heavy use has no idea what RAM does or how IOS uses it, i'm sure that isn't you so you must have been joking.

 

[wizard]

RAM isn't about benchmarks and how fast a phone can play a game or apply a complex filter on a picture, CPU is. The iPhone CPU is, and we all know that (honest Android users included), very fast and efficient. That's not the point.

This is so true, you could put 256MB of RAM in the iPhone and A8 would still post fantastic speed figures for many benchmarks.

RAM is about multitasking and the iPhone would benefit from having more memory. More RAM = less app/tabs reloads and more efficient multitasking.

Beyond that iOS can't even rung current apps well with the amount of RAM available to those apps. Safari is the app that most people use that has the most obvious issues. however there are others and more importantly the lack of RAM stunts innovation in apps.

In the end, it also helps battery life (less read/writes to flush/reload apps in memory conserves battery).

Anybody with a data plan through a telco should be concerned about RAM. it does impact the amount of data you have to download or re-download.

What I find more perplexing is the people arguing that the iPad doesn't need more RAM when it obviously does and the data is so easy to find.

----------

Every iOS device I own i smooth as silk. The RAM myth I keep between 6-10 pages open at any given time no issues

I suspect that you either don't know what you are talking about or you are opening very simplistic web pages. The reload problem is so frequent and wide spread that you can't dismiss it based on simplistic uses of the device. If there was one or even a small number of people complain about this it would be one thing but anybody aware of what is happening in the real world knows this is a problem, has experienced it and is frustrated by it.

 

[wizard]

In the high end smart phone arena, no matter how you slide it or dice it, Apple is #1.

Obviously, they're not there at all in the mid range and low end were Samsung gets most of its revenues and also has most of its phones.

----------

In this regard you are right. further people must have missed Samsungs earnings warnings.

I'll say it right now,. you are inventing if you're saying IOS lags. That alone should discredit you.

iOS will lag in some situations, it isn't as bad as the alternatives though. However this isn't always a RAM related problem. Especially with iOS 8 there are a number of bugs that may be causing problems here. iOS8.1 actually does feel better in this regard.

The only complaint is specifically about Safari reloading when you leave the page, do something else and then come back when you have several tabs open. Myself, I rarely have more than a few pages open (3-4 max), so this rarely occurs.

The fact that it does occur though is the problem. frankly it occurs more than it should. Further people need to realize that more RAM won't solve the problem in every case because sometimes Safari is doing the right thing with a reload. It is the un required reloads due to out of memory situations that are the real problem, a problem that more RAM will reduce.

If you browse continously in the same page, the most often seen use case for browsing, you don't have this.

Well there you have it, what you see is the most likely use case is in fact the way few people will use a browser. Think about it why do browsers have tabs or the capability to open new windows in the first place. It is extremely easy to have multiple tabs open at any one time.

Saying anything beyond that is a blatant fabrication.

Baloney and I must say demonstrates a bit of arrogance that suggest that you are a democrat. Not everybody on this planet does things the same way you do nor can they afford to be less than fully productive. Safari reloads are extremely frustrating as they waste both time and money especially when your cell connections is being used.

----------

Funny enough, I'm an engineer by trade and can actually create an OS from scratch.. But, I rarely use more than 3 tabs on my Iphone. Not only that, most times I stay on the same page when I browse. So, from my perspective, reloads are very rare. That's the probable use case of 90-95% at least of Iphone users, but obviously not MacRumors users.

Like all engineers i see you are practiced in pulling data out of your behind without thinking about it. Just because you do something, doesn't mean the rest of the world does.

I'm not saying that two gigs wouldn't be usefull to those 5-10%. But why cater to those people if they need to secure 50% of the world's DRAMs to do it (putting their supply chain at risk), reduce battery use, obsolete all older phones and yes even cost a bit more? Proper engineering and business is about balance.

Exactly which is why having only 1GB of Ram in an iPad is so ridiculous. The RAM deficit means that the iPd can not reach its full potential for even the most mainstream of uses for the device. Think about it a bit, what is one of the biggest uses for the iPad, if you said web browsing you would be right. so at the very least the platform should be optimized to excel at the most probable usage the device will be put to.

----------

Well, it will be an overall faster experience due to the 2GB of RAM as applications will have more memory allocated. IMHO, I think the iPad air should have 4GB of RAM (and no I'm not complaining about the alleged 2GB of RAM).

The funny thing is I don't see people complaining about the lack of RAM as a speed issue. Speed isn't the problem for the majority of use, it is the very poor user experience from all of the app reloads and Safari reloads that is the problem.

The funny thing here is that RAM could impact speed. As you note more resources in memory always helps a bit. The other thing that might happened is that the RAM is accused through a wider memory interface in the same way that the A*X processors of the past did. This can also impact speed. However speed isn't the big problem here unless you incorporate the huge reload time delays.

 

[gpspad]

I was going to grab an iPad air, but If 2gig is true, I'll hold off for a deal on an iPad air 2.

 

[wizard]

I've seen this posted a few times now in several threads. What doesn't tend to come with it is the alternate theory about what else can be the cause of tab reloading other than lack of more RAM. We have Safari tabs on our Macs too. Our Macs tend to have much more RAM than our iOS devices. We don't experience the page reloading problem on our Macs. Sure, Safari on Macs could be coded differently than Safari on iDevices as it pertains to this issue, but I'll ask: what ELSE is as reasonable counterpoint (theory) to explain the page reloading issue if it is not insufficient RAM?

Good questions, i hope the contrarians have good answers. Note though that web pages can set a bit to force a browser to reload them when they take focus again. However this is seldom the issue on Safari for IOS.

I suspect that the majority of the people saying it won't help have no idea how computers work or are just being argumentative for the hell of it.

As for the two OS browser, for a long time they actually did have two different code bases for the browser. supposedly that is no longer the case with most code shared between platforms.

If you're on a Mac, go into "utility" folder and open "Activity Monitor". Click the "Memory" Tab. How much memory is "Safari" and "Safari Web Content" taking? Right now, I have only this one Safari window open (no tabs) and this one, relatively simple (not many images) MacRumors web page opened. It shows 117.8MB for "Safari" and 87MB for "Safari Web Content". I'll grant that Safari on iDevices might be a little leaner than 117.8MB, but even if we cut that to- say- 100MB, it plus one tab of this page is conceptually eating up 187MB of RAM (and note there are other Safari entries in the memory allocation list too- for example, "Safari Networking" at 30.7MB on my machine right now).

People also need to realize that the iPad or whatever doesn't have 1GB or RAM to allocate to user processes. Some RAM goes to system resources and video RAM. Plus some apps have code running in background. Also a "forums" type page is actually pretty thin these days when it comes to memory requirements of a web page.

If that would be reasonably representative of RAM demand on an iDevice, Safari + about 4 tabbed (simple) pages like this one would eat up all available RAM in a 512K iDevice. But what if we loaded a more elaborate page like- say- CNN: http://www.cnn.com. Now I've got 2 tabs open: "Safari" continues to show about 115MB, "Safari Web Content" has jumped up to 108MB + 76MB. The CNN page has some streaming media and there are some added RAM-hungry items in the Activity Monitor list reflecting that added demand on RAM. There's basically 2 tabs eating a LOT of RAM. If an iDevice user would open- say- 4 tabs like these: 100MB for a more compact Safari + 108MB times 2 + 76MB times 2 + some related RAM needs for certain media on those pages. Ta-dah. 512K probably exceeded, much of the free RAM in a 1GB pool probably allocated. Now run a few other apps on that iDevice that need their own blocks of RAM.



Because they're coded to what the hardware can handle now. Each App maker knows they have RAM up to the net total available within 1GB. Since they want to maximize their revenues, many (most?) will probably target 512K so they can also sell (or advertise) to the crowd still hanging on to older iDevices that lack 1GB. They are not going to code their apps such that they must have more than 1GB (or probably 512K) such that their apps won't work with current iDevices.

The problem is not any ONE app (though Safari may be considered the exception for some) but in multitasking several apps, each hungry for a chunk of RAM while the total pool is hard-capped.

Visit the right websites and you can get all sorts of Safari reloads even without leaving Safari itself. It is pretty bad really.

If the average app maker targets- say- 256K max RAM usage on some concept of taking up to 50% of the 512K of RAM in older iDevices, if a user gets 3 of those running when they each need 256K, they'll cap out almost all available RAM in 1GB iDevices.

Safari tabs can be like running multiple RAM-hungry apps within one program. Each tab can have a fair amount of RAM needs to hold all the content of each page in memory. 256K is not a LOT of memory for modern, image-heavy web pages. Thus, get a few tabs open in Safari and the RAM is going to be consumed. It has to be flushed for other things (or other tabs) to run.

Exactly. This isn't rocket science folks.

More RAM resolves much of that problem. The RAM flushing will not be as urgent as there would be more RAM in which to persist the content of a web page (and/or run other apps that need chunks of RAM).

well stated.

If iDevices were single-tasking devices (and let's face it, they almost are in many ways), 1GB or maybe even 512K can be plenty. But multitasking begs for the hardware to support the "multi" part of that. We have more than 1 core, 64 bit, etc but the crucial RAM remains tight.

They are single tasking only from the users view point and even that has exceptions.

Some try to spin the idea that more RAM would lead to lazier programming but that's mostly spin. If Apple believed that, they could still cap max RAM for any one App at some arbitrary (tight) level to mitigate the lazy, so that the free RAM would be there for those multitasking needs such as multiple Safari tabs. For example, Apple could set a hard cap on any one App as if the available RAM was still maxed out at 1GB or 512K. Then the surplus RAM of a 2GB iDevice would be available to better serve the multitasking need.

----------

All I want to see is ssd based memory rather than flash!

What do you think SSD's are made out of?

Another gig of ram is nice to help ease its heavy use in the ipad but iPhone has no need for it at all. Ssd would mean paging and super fast load times for every thing that currently can be a bit sluggish.

Apple could accomplish that with faster flash. As it is right now iOS doesn't page like Mac OS so you are out of luck if you thing paging would be improved.

My mac is so far due to ssd an upgrade in that arena could be a massive selling point.

Remember SSD's are flash memory with a controller. Apple builds its controller into the SoC. Yes it could be faster and have other features but there isn't a huge difference here. Apples problem is mostly space as they can't put a vast number of flash chips on their motherboard to spread writes across.

 

[Starfyre]

It makes sense to put 2GB of RAM on the iPad, I hope this rumour will be confirmed next week

Just like how it makes sense to put 2GB of RAM on the iPhone

I think we all know what the next iPhone will have RAM-wise

 

[Max(IT)]

The new iPhone 6 and 6+ have both been tested and rank among the fastest smartphones available. The same is expected to be true of the new iPads.

Besides an issue with page reloading tabs (of which it is in no way certain that it is attributable to a lack of RAM) there have been no wide-publicised issues with a lack of RAM for any application on iOS that I'm aware of.

So what are you talking about? In what way would 4 Gb RAM make the iPad any faster or better performing? In stead of just repeating the same "we need more RAM" mantra, I would really like to have some insight into what people are missing here.

There are people bashing Apple for the sake of it, but mostly they are judging the iDevices using the Android's established standards. Since high end Android based devices are using 3+ Gb of ram, then iPhone and iPads are inferior with only 1 Gb.
Using both platforms I can say the memory footprint is quite different, and even heavy apps are running fine on 1 Gb under iOS. The only exception is multi tabs web browsing, mainly using Safari ( with mercury I've got a definitely better experience), when memory seems to be an issue especially before iOS 7.1

 

[rGiskard]

More RAM, going to 2GB of RAM means noticeably less standby time for the iPhone's unless they move to a even smaller manufacturing node then 20nm, which obviously eventually they are, but if they did put 2 GB of RAM in the 6 and 6 Plus, they wouldn't get their crazy standby times Apple states they do

The original iPhone had 128MB RAM which increased to 256MB in the 3GS, then 512MB in the 4, and finally 1GB in the 5. That's an 8x increase over the original iPhone RAM while battery life has also improved with each generation if normalized to screen size. Even more dramatic increases in RAM are seen on the Android side, again with little impact on battery life.

A 2010 analysis of smartphone power consumption concludes that RAM is among the components with the lowest power consumption:

The RAM, audio and flash subsystems consistently showed the lowest power consumption...Overall, RAM, audio and SD have little effect on the power con- sumption of the device, and therefore offer little potential for energy optimisation.

What uses the most power?

Our results show that the majority of power consumption can be attributed to the GSM module and the display, including the LCD panel and touchscreen, the graphics accelerator/driver, and the backlight.

There goes another excuse for gimping the RAM on iDevices. Any effect a large amount of RAM would have on total power consumption could easily be offset by using a larger batter in a slightly thicker device. I think you'll find that iDevice users complain about the need for Apps and Safari Tabs to reload far more than they complain about iDevices being too thick.