quad channel memory bandwidth

[Acorn]

I have been looking at alot of benchmarks regarding desktop motherboards that now support quad channel memory bandwidth and the performance difference is huge. What are the chances of us seeing quad channel memory in the next macbook pros?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

That would mean, it would have four RAM slots. If that would happen, it would be a big step, but it is unlikely to happen.

 

[maflynn]

What are the chances of us seeing quad channel memory in the next macbook pros?

Between slim and none (and slim left town).

Heck, even on the Mac Pros, apple does not provide memory in groups of 4 to fully benefit the architecture. They're not doing that for the MPs, I doubt they'll redesign the MBP to allow this

 

[Acorn]

Between slim and none (and slim left town).

Heck, even on the Mac Pros, apple does not provide memory in groups of 4 to fully benefit the architecture. They're not doing that for the MPs, I doubt they'll redesign the MBP to allow this

well what the mac pros will have is unseen here or there. the mac pros havent been updated in ages. They very well could have it when they finally do get an upgrade.

 

[dusk007]

h and the performance difference is huge.

And what benchmarks would that be?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3930k-3820-test-benchmark,3090.html
Aside from SSE and AES synthetic benches there really is next to no indication that the Quad Channel IMC gets the 3820 anything significant advantage over the 2600k. Most of the time there is no difference at all. Sandy Bridge E has four channels to support special stuff(like heavy SSE), a lot of ram and many cores. With 4 cores 2 channels are still easily enough for pretty much any common use case.

What are the chances of us seeing quad channel memory in the next macbook pros?

About zero. You will see DDR4 before there is a notebook with a quad channel memory interface. And DDR4 is not even planned for Haswell thus it will take a while.
The only real reason for more channels or more bandwidth might be an integrated GPUs but it doesn't seem necessary for Quad Core CPUs yet. And even with the high bandwidth that a GPU takes of the memory bus they still seem to work quite well thus there seems there really is no benefit for games and most apps. Only SSD and stuff is really heavy on memory access.
In any case Intel can simulate very well what the memory bus requires and if there was any shortage DDR4 or more channels would show with Haswell if they really plan on a 40 EU IGP.

 

[thundersteele]

With the current DDR3 SO-DIMM technology, we will not see a macbook with more than two memory banks. They just take up too much space and increase power consumptoin, and don't offer much in terms of performance.

At least for compact notebooks (Air, Ultrabooks), the trend seems to go towards soldering the memory right onto the logic board... this might provide other options to increase the bandwidth, but I don't think this is really a bottleneck for laptops.