APPENDIX B // HARDWARE REFERENCE
Hardware
Reference.
What you need under the hood. AIIP™ v1.0 is optimized for Apple Silicon. Local-inference performance scales with unified memory.
REFERENCE MATRIX
| Tier | Model | RAM | Storage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended | Mac Studio M4 Max | 64 GB | 1 TB SSD min | Reference platform. Local Llama-70B-class viable. Headroom for sustained agent workloads + concurrent video work. |
| Recommended (laptop) | MacBook Pro M4 Pro / Max | 36–48 GB | 1 TB SSD | Mobile reference. Local 13B–34B class smooth. Slight tradeoff vs Studio on sustained loads under thermal envelope. |
| Minimum supported | MacBook Air M4 / Pro M3 | 24 GB | 512 GB SSD | Local 7B–13B class only. Lane 2 (Ollama) is constrained — Lanes 1/3/4 carry the bulk. |
| Constrained | M-series · 16 GB RAM | 16 GB | 256 GB+ | Functional but small models only. Lane 2 effectively reserved for tiny utility models. Treat Lanes 1/3 as primary. |
| Not supported (v1.0) | Intel Macs · Linux x86 · Windows | — | — | Out of scope for v1.0. Linux/x86 path documented for v2.0. Apple Silicon is the optimized reference platform. |
WHY APPLE SILICON
○
unified-memory— GPU + CPU share RAM. 36 GB Mac runs what would need a $4k tower elsewhere.
○
metal-accel— Ollama, llama.cpp, MLX, modern runtimes are first-class. No CUDA.
○
power-profile— Workstation that runs agents overnight on battery, doesn't heat-throttle.
○
os-native-resilience— Time Machine + iCloud Drive ship with the OS. Operational resilience by default.
STORAGE FOOTPRINT · ~120 GB
Local LLM weights
40–80 GB
Llama 3 8B + 70B-quant + DeepSeek + Qwen + Hermes
Dev toolchain
8–15 GB
Xcode CLT, Node, Python, Rust, Homebrew packages
Vector memory + databases
5–20 GB
LanceDB + DAG compaction history + Notion local cache
Agent runtimes + plugins
2–5 GB
Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex CLI, OpenClaw, Aider, Hermes Agent
Working knowledge vaults
5–15 GB
Obsidian PaperVault + iCloud-synced operational data
Headroom / scratch
20+ GB
Build artifacts, container images, temporary downloads