Imagine, you work in a startup company which rents couple desks in a coworking space. But since its more expensive than disk storage computer engineers invented memory swapping or paging. If RAM was cheap, then Apple would stuff its laptops with tons of memory, and nobody would care to read this article. For instance, for an additional $200, you can buy either 8GB more RAM or 128GB more SSD when purchasing a new MacBook Pro. Hard drives preserve data even when the computer is off. When a computer shuts down or restarts, the data in RAM gets wiped. Besides the speed, there are two more differences between RAM and HHD:
The processor works directly with RAM because the latter is thousands of times faster than HHD or SSD. Any computer has three main parts: processor, RAM (random access memory) and storage (disk, tape, punched cards, etc.). The architecture of modern computers was designed in the 20th century. The key phrase here is “can’t be paged out.”īefore we proceed further let me explain what paging is. Moreover, other processes can’t borrow it. Wired memory is a memory that can’t be compressed or paged out to your startup drives, so it must stay in RAM. The used memory then consists of App Memory (1.2GB) and Wired Memory (1.13GB). The screenshot above which I made after rebooting the Mac indicates that my Mac has 8GB of Physical Memory and 2.33GB of it is in the Used Memory bucket. When the Mac suddenly becomes too slow, the laptop owners start browsing forums and learn to check the memory tab in Activity Monitor. Now, let’s dive into more technical details. User applications add on average 1MB per instance, and too many running programs can contribute to high wired memory usage. The normal size of the wired memory is around 2GB.
Wired memory on Mac is reserved for the macOS kernel and its data structures, and it cannot be paged out. The purpose of this article to clarify those details as much as possible.įirst, let’s answer the first question from the title of the post. While most responses were generally correct, I felt that all answers lacked some important details and as a result confused people even more.
While reading thru some Apple forums, I found a question people asked a lot. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
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