# How Much Unified Memory Do You Need for Local AI?

Canonical: https://cloudzat.com/how-much-unified-memory-for-local-ai/
Full Markdown: https://cloudzat.com/how-much-unified-memory-for-local-ai/index.md
Cluster context: https://cloudzat.com/ai/apple-local-ai-intelligence/context.json

Purpose: Estimate Apple Silicon unified-memory requirements from model parameters, quantization, context, users and background applications.
Direct answer: Model parameter count by itself does not determine memory use. Quantization changes the model weight, while context length, cache, runtime overhead and other applications consume additional memory. This calculator produces a minimum estimate and a more comfortable purchasing target.

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