Apple
MacBook Air M1 16GB with 16 GB unified memory. Apple's first custom silicon for Mac, delivering excellent power efficiency and unified memory architecture for local AI inference.
Architecture
Apple M1 is the first Apple Silicon chip for Mac, featuring a unified memory architecture where CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine share the same high-bandwidth memory pool. Available in base, Pro, Max, and Ultra variants with 16-128 GB unified memory.
AI Relevance
Unified memory architecture is a game-changer for LLM inference — the entire memory pool is accessible to both CPU and GPU, eliminating the discrete VRAM bottleneck. An M1 Max with 64 GB can run 30B+ models that would be impossible on a 24 GB discrete GPU.
First-generation Apple Silicon with 8-core GPU. The unified memory architecture is particularly beneficial for LLM inference as it eliminates the PCIe bottleneck that discrete GPUs face when offloading.
Agentic Coding
CThis model is still usable for agentic-coding, but it is not the most specialized pick. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama.
Chat
CThis model is a direct match for chat. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
Coding
CThis model is still usable for coding, but it is not the most specialized pick. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama.
RAG
CThis model is a direct match for rag. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It should run, but memory headroom will be limited.
Reasoning
CThis model is a direct match for reasoning. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8BQwen3.5 4B
gemma 2b
Qwen2.5 1.5B InstructQwen2.5 3B InstructQwen3.5 9B
DeepSeek R1 671B
Devstral 2 123B Instruct
GLM-5Qwen3.5 27BQwen3.5 35B A3B
Kimi K2.5Mistral Large 3Mistral Small 4 119BQwen3-Coder 30B A3B InstructQwen3-Coder 480B A35B InstructQwen3-Coder-NextQwen3.5 122B A10BDeepSeek V3 671BMixtral 8x22BQwen 2.5 72BQwen 3 235B A22BQwen3-VL 30B A3B InstructQwen3.5 397B A17BDevstral Small 2 24B Instruct
Llama 3.3 70BLlama 4 Maverick 17B 128E
Command A 111BQwen 2.5 Coder 32BQwen 2.5 VL 72Bgemma 3 27b itCodestral 2 25.08Devstral Small 1.1Just out of reach
High-quality models that need a bit more memory
Upgrade paths
See what you unlock with more powerful hardware
Upgrade options
RTX A2000 12GBNext step up
~$329 MSRP
~$1,199 MSRP
~$8,000 MSRP
