Does it mine bitcoin well?
I'm sure an ASIC would best the M1.
Apple M1 Ultra
71–80 of 855 posts
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#72Looks like all the people saying "just start fusing those M1 CPU's into bigger ones" were right, that's basically what they did here (fused two M1 Max'es together). And since the presenter mentioned the Mac Pro would come on another day, I wonder if they'll just do 4x M1 Max for that.
> I wonder if they'll just do 4x M1 Max for that.
Unlikely, M1 Ultra is the last chip in the M1 family according to Apple [1].
"M1 Ultra completes the M1 family as the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer.”"
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/03/apple-unveils-m1-ultr...
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#73Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#74Looks like all the people saying "just start fusing those M1 CPU's into bigger ones" were right, that's basically what they did here (fused two M1 Max'es together). And since the presenter mentioned the Mac Pro would come on another day, I wonder if they'll just do 4x M1 Max for that.
> I wonder if they'll just do 4x M1 Max for that. Unlikely, M1 Ultra is the last chip in the M1 family according to Apple [1]. "M1 Ultra completes the M1 family as the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer.”" [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/03/apple-unveils-m1-ultr...
In a previous Apple press release[1] they said:
> The Mac is now one year into its two-year transition to Apple silicon, and M1 Pro and M1 Max represent another huge step forward. These are the most powerful and capable chips Apple has ever created, and together with M1, they form a family of chips that lead the industry in performance, custom technologies, and power efficiency.
I think it is just as likely that they mean "completes the family [as it stands today]" as they do "completes the family [permanently]."
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/introducing-m1-pro-an...
edit: This comment around SoC code names is worth a look too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30605713
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#75It sounds like the chip is fast but I wonder, if like other M1 products, the computers built with it will be fairly restricted, like a console, in terms of the hardware they're able to use (not being able to boot off external HDDs, problems with thunderbolt 3 compatibility in peripherals, having to use abstraction layers to run most of the software world indirectly or have specific porting projects dedicated to M1, e…
> having to use abstraction layers to run most of the software world indirectly Nearly everything I use daily is built for M1 now. https://isapplesiliconready.com/ And honestly, if it's not, its a good indication that it's time to move away from that product as they don't care about a huge segment of their users.
Dropbox and Signal are the only two I ever use, and yeah, the lack of interest in porting to M1 from both of those companies is increasing my lack of interest in their apps.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#76At what point Apple will put those chips in their servers or sell server chips? It only makes sense for them to take this architecture to the cloud deployments
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#77Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#78Are the neural engines actually used for anything, to anyone's knowledge? Edit: Apparently in iPhones, they are used for FaceID.
Adobe uses them Lightroom / Photoshop for some functions.
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/apple-m1-chip-makes-...
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#79I used to be one of the biggest Apple fanboys/apologists but I’ve since put Linux on my MacBook Pro from 2013 and built a Linux workstation and rarely use my 2020 MacBook Pro anymore, I say this because I yawned at the over-the-top Apple marketing. The products are interesting, sure, but I wasn’t blown away. It’s mostly the prices. The hardware is just far above what I can afford these days — even though my MacBook Pro from 2013 is so well made it still works now, and buying a 2 or 3 thousand dollar MacBook now I am sure it’d last just as long but it’s just too much. Though I am saving for one for multimedia work, probably a used M1 MacBook Air.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#80I'm cross posting a question I had from the Mac Studio thread (currently unanswered). ---- Mac Pro scale up? How is this going to scale up to a Mac Pro, especially related to RAM? The Ultra caps at 128 GB of RAM (which isn't much for video editing, especially given that the GPU uses the system RAM). Today's Mac Pro goes up to 1.5TB (and has dedicated video RAM above this). If the Mac Pro is say, 4 Ultra's stacked tog…
A few points to make... - the shared CPU+GPU RAM doesn't necessarily mean the GPU has to eat up system RAM when in use, because it can share addressing. So whereas the current Mac pro would require two copies of data (CPU+GPU) the new Mac studio can have one. Theoretically. - they do have very significant video decoder blocks. That means that you may use less RAM than without since you can keep frames compressed in f…
Also, the memory model is quite different - with the ultra-fast SSD and ultra-fast on-die RAM. You can get away with significantly less RAM for the same tasks, not just because of de-duplication but because data comes in so quickly from the SSD that paging isn't nearly the hit it is on say an Intel based Mac.
I'd expect it to work more like a game console, streaming in content from the SSD to working memory on the fly, processing it with the CPU and video decode blocks, and insta-sharing it with the GPU via common address space.
All that is to say, where you needed 1.5TB of RAM on a Xeon, the architectural changes on Apple Silicon likely mean you can get away with far less and still wind up performing better.
The "GHz myth" is dead, long live the "GB myth."