Microsoft has been heavily investing in AI for the past few years, both on the cloud and in Windows PCs. Just recently, it explained how customers can leverage theupgraded Task Manager to monitor NPU utilization. Now, it looks like the company is going a step further in this direction by allowing Windows 11 users to actually control how much unified memory is used by demanding software on their PCs.
For those unaware, unified memory is a pool of high-bandwidth memory that is shared by both the CPU and GPU simultaneously. This is a paradigm change since, traditionally, CPU and GPUs have access to different memory pools, which can cause performance hits during transfer of data between different components. Apple is typically credited with popularizing unified memory in mainstream PCs,as it heavily uses it in Mac hardware.
Hidden insideWindows 11 Insider build 29648is the ability to control unified memory through a slider. This capability is not available to even Insiders yet and has to be force-enabled through third-party solutions like ViveTool. As can be seen in the screenshot by@XenoPanther on Xbelow (via Windows Central), Windows Settings will soon host a dedicated section for unified memory. It will allow users to reserve some portion of the unified memory for "graphics and AI intensive games and applications". Any memory that the customer reserves will not be made available for other applications:
Here is how the Unified Memory settings will appear (Under System > Advanced)https://t.co/eN8Gs0BYKspic.twitter.com/2OpiBrWspZ
It's worth noting that this feature is currently in testing, so it's not recommended to force-enable it on your PC, especially since Microsoft has hidden it for now. It's unclear how Windows 11 will determine exactly which games and AI workloads will have access to this reserved unified memory, and what limits will users be able to set on it.
We will likely find out more in the coming weeks, provided that Microsoft's internal testing goes well. That said, do note that sometimes features that are in active development still end up getting canceled due to multiple reasons, so keep your expectations in check.