I'm wondering how GPU memory works on the iPhone and iPad. After reading the Apple tech specs on the iPad 3 (http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/) it says the A5X is a system on a chip with a dual core CPU and quad core GPU. Do they share the same system RAM? How does the GPU do fast operations if it has to work in system RAM? I'm sure it's my lack of understanding of the system on a chip architecture that is confusing me, but if someone can chime in with their knowledge that would be helpful.
IOS – How much GPU memory do iPhones and iPads have
gpuiosipadiphone
Related Solutions
They use a format called H.264. YouTube and other video sites deliver content in this format also (so that their videos are viewable on iPad/iPod touch).
One advantage of H.264 is that hardware based encoding/decoding can be used.
See also Steve Jobs's Thoughts on Flash
H.264 is one of the formats for video support in the latest version of HTML, HTML 5. Apple supports this in Safari and Google in Chrome*.
*Google recently announced that it will no longer support H.264 in the future versions of Chrome.
Because of this H.264 is kind of hot of late. See these articles.
You can't reduce the shared system memory. (See this question/answer on the Apple Support Forums)
Per EveryMac.com, the HD Graphics 6000 can allocate upto 1.5GB of system RAM. This is handled at the hardware level - some PC BIOSes allowed you to modify this value, but it's not common anymore and definitely not so with Apple.
So, to "free up" this RAM, you have two choices:
- Reduce your video resolution and color depth
- Add more RAM
Since the first is not desireable and the second is impossible, if you absolutely need more memory, it's time to upgrade your MacBook to one with 16GB or more.
Related Question
- IPhone – Multiple iPhones and iPads with same Apple id
- Single user mode comes up with wrong boot disk
- IOS – I have several iPhones / iPads, and when I say “Hey Siri what’s the weather tomorrow”, only the main phone will respond, how is it designed
- MacOS – GPU memory is overloaded
- How come the Podcast app is hogging so much GPU
Best Answer
iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads all have a Unified Memory Architecture which mean that both the CPU and GPU share system memory. There is no dedicated video memory on these devices.
The advantage is that you don't need to worry about running out of video memory for your textures or vertex data (your app will be terminated by iOS for using too much memory before that happens). The disadvantage is that you share the same memory bandwidth for gameplay and graphics. The more memory bandwidth you dedicate to graphics, the less you will have for gameplay and physics