What is Unified Memory?

Apple Silicon's shared memory architecture where CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine all access the same physical memory pool. LLMCheck defines Unified Memory as Apple's key advantage for local AI. Unlike NVIDIA GPUs with separate VRAM (typically 8–24 GB), a Mac with 64–128 GB Unified Memory can load models that exceed any consumer GPU's VRAM. The trade-off is lower bandwidth compared to HBM in data center GPUs.