Live data from Hacker News

Apple M1 Ultra

apple.com

241–250 of 855 posts

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#241
post #4

Looks 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.

Throwing more silicon at it, like this, sounds extremely expensive or price-inefficient.

It's at least two separate chips combined together. That makes more sense, mitigates the problem.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link me to the $2K computer that's twice as fast as the M1 Ultra. Take all the time you need.

> Take all the time you need Check your replies in 10 years and I'll be able to list a dozen ;P But sarcasm aside yeah this chip looks insane.

It took less than 6month to have a faster amd / intel CPU than the m1 back then, Apple charts are showing performance / watt which for a desktop PC is kind of irrelevant. In pure speed amd / intel are faster or will be very soon.

For graphic card I don't try to argue because fps on Mac are very inferior in games than a average modern card. It's not even on the same league.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#243

> This enables M1 Ultra to behave and be recognized by software as one chip, so developers don’t need to rewrite code to take advantage of its performance. There’s never been anything like it. Since when did the average developer care about how many sockets a mobo has...? Surely you still have to carefully pin processes and reason about memory access patterns if you want maximum performance.

I thought that to extract peak performance out of NUMA based systems, you had to get down-and-dirty with memory access & locality to ensure you don’t cross sockets for data thats stored in RAM attached to other CPUs.

Or am I out of date on NUMA systems?

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#244
post #230

Is it actually more powerful than a top of the line threadripper[0] or is that not a "personal computer" CPU by this definition? I feel like 64 cores would beat 20 on some workloads even if the 20 were way faster in single core performance. [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3...

My workstation has a 3990x. Our "world" build is slightly faster on my M1 Max. https://twitter.com/kiratpandya/status/1457438725680480257 The 3990x runs a bit faster on the initial compile stage but the linking is single threaded and the M1 Max catches up at that point. I expect the M1 Ultra to crush the 3990x on compile time.

Try mold.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#245

Is it actually more powerful than a top of the line threadripper[0] or is that not a "personal computer" CPU by this definition? I feel like 64 cores would beat 20 on some workloads even if the 20 were way faster in single core performance. [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3...

Seems like for things that are: 1. Perfectly parallel 2. Not accelerated by some of the other stuff that's on the Apple Silicon SoC's ...it will be a toss-up. Threadripper 3990X get about 25k in Geekbench Multicore [1] M1 Max gets about 12.5k in Geekbench Multicore, so pretty much exactly half [2] Obviously different tasks will have _vastly_ different performance profiles. For example it's likely that the M1 Ultra wi…

Something is seriously fishy about those geekbench results.

24-core scores 20k, 32-core scores 22.3k, and 64-core score 25k. Something isn't scaling there.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And massively behind in terms of power consuption

Yes, certainly. I don't think that's relevant in this case, though. Why would anyone care if their workstation CPU draws 60W or 200W? It's easy to cool in either case and the power consumption is trivial. M1 is clearly the best design on the market for mobile devices and is merely very good for desktops. Let's keep the enthusiasm realistic.

You say it's easy to cool but that's actually not the case, for anybody that cares about noise. Any music studio is going to happily take the 60W over 200W because they record and monitor music and need the quietest machine possible in the room.

Unsurprisingly, it's called Mac Studio, as in music studio, or art studio, or what have you studio, where these things matter.

This is a machine aimed at content creators.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#247
post #20

I'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…

I think some of this can be guessed from the SoC codenames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_codenames M1 Max is Jade C-Die => 64GB M1 Ultra is Jade 2C-Die => 128GB There is a still unreleased SoC called Jade 4C-Die =>256GB So I think that's the most we'll see this generation, unless they somehow add (much slower) slotted RAM If they were to double the max RAM on M2 Pro/Max (Rhodes Chop / Rhodes 1C), which…

Agreed, I think they will use the 4C config to debut M2 and make a slash. They said in the keynote that M1 Ultra completes the M1 family. Timing works out well for November launch with the 2 year apple silicon transition timeline they gave themselves. Not sure what they are going to call it and if it will be A15 or A16 based.

A16 would give great performance, and I think it’s safe for them to have a two year iteration time on laptop/desktops vs one year for phone/tablet.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#248
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't have to though. A Threadripper 3990X uses barrels of electricity, generates plenty of heat, comes with no GPU, has worse single-threaded performance, and still costs $4000 by itself without any of the parts needed to make it actually work.

The question is in relation to Apple's claim that it's "the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer".

Depends on what you define "capable" as. Remember, they specify that it is the most powerful and capable chip, not necessarily complete system.

There's no other chip that has the power of an RTX 3090 and more power than an i9-12900K in it - after all, Threadripper doesn't have a lick of graphics power at all. This chip can do 18 8K video streams at once, which Threadripper would get demolished at.

I'm content with giving them the chip crown. Full system? Debatable.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#249

Is it actually more powerful than a top of the line threadripper[0] or is that not a "personal computer" CPU by this definition? I feel like 64 cores would beat 20 on some workloads even if the 20 were way faster in single core performance. [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3...

It doesn't matter. Speaking as an Apple cult member imo Threadripper is better value if you're not using the machine for personal use.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#250

Is it actually more powerful than a top of the line threadripper[0] or is that not a "personal computer" CPU by this definition? I feel like 64 cores would beat 20 on some workloads even if the 20 were way faster in single core performance. [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3...

It doesn’t support your argument when we’re talking about a massive processor like a threadripper vs. a M1 Ultra. The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters.

The M1 Ultra is by a very wide margin the bigger of the two. According to Tom's Hardware [1], top-of-the-line Epycs have 39.54 billion transistors. That is about a third of the 117 billion in the M1 Ultra. Apple builds bigger than anyone else, thanks largely to their access to TSMC's best process.

The M1 Ultra is a workstation part. It goes in machines that start at $4,000. The competition is Xeons, Epycs, and Threadrippers.

Post reply on HN