Apple
MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB with 64 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 belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
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 a direct match for coding. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
RAG
CThis model is a direct match for rag. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom.
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.
Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B InstructQwen3-VL 30B A3B InstructQwen 2.5 Coder 32B
Qwen3.5 35B A3BQwen3.5 27Bgemma 3 27b it
Devstral Small 2 24B InstructDevstral Small 1.1Codestral 2 25.08Qwen3.5 4BQwen2.5 3B Instruct
gemma 2bQwen2.5 1.5B InstructQwen3.5 9BDeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B
DeepSeek R1 671BDevstral 2 123B Instruct
GLM-5
Kimi K2.5Mistral Large 3Mistral Small 4 119BQwen3-Coder 480B A35B InstructQwen3-Coder-NextQwen3.5 122B A10BDeepSeek V3 671BMixtral 8x22BQwen 2.5 72BQwen 3 235B A22BQwen3.5 397B A17B
Llama 3.3 70BLlama 4 Maverick 17B 128E
Command A 111BQwen 2.5 VL 72BJust out of reach
High-quality models that need a bit more memory
Upgrade paths
See what you unlock with more powerful hardware
Upgrade options
NVIDIA A40 48GBNext step up
~$2,499 MSRP
~$8,000 MSRP
