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Apple M1 Ultra

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Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#361

Post by brigade »

paulmd wrote: post #327
crest wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On an M1 Max MacBook Pro the CPU (8P+2E) cores peak at a combined ~240GB/s the rest of the advertised 400GB/s memory bandwidth is only useable by the other bus masters e.g. GPU, NPU, video encoding/decoding etc.

So now the follow-on question I really wanted to ask: if the CPU can't access all the memory channels does that mean it can only address a fraction of the total memory as CPU memory? Or is it a situation where all the channels go into a controller/bus, but the CPU link out of the controller is only wide enough to handle a fraction of the bandwidth?

It's more akin to how on Intel, each core's L2 has some maximum bandwidth to LLC, and can't individually saturate the total bandwidth available on the ring bus. But Intel doesn't have the LLC RAM bandwidth for that to be generally noticeable.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#362

Post by Roboprog »

sdenton4 wrote: post #50
iSnow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder if they'll just do 4x M1 Max for that. They'll be running out of names for that thing. M1 Ultra II would be lame, so M1 Extreme? M1 Steve?

Just need to increment the 1 instead... Eventually moving into using letters instead of numbers, until we end up with the MK-ULTRA chip.

I suspect they will have a different naming convention after they get to M4.

There might be some hesitance installing an M5. You should stay out of the way if the machine learning core needs more power.

I guess by the time they get to M5, anyone old enough to get the reference will have retired.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#363

Post by unicornfinder »

airstrike wrote: post #347
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cursory look gives you a ~$3500 price tag for a gaming PC with a 3090 That 3500 is for a DIY build. So, sure, you can always save on labor and hassle, but prebuilt 3090 rigs commonly cost over 4k. And if you don't want to buy from Amazon because of their notorious history of mixing components from different suppliers and reselling used returns, oof, good luck even getting one.

You mean I get to save AND have fun building my own PC?

Not to mention if you build your own PC you can upgrade the parts as and when, unlike with the new Mac where you'll eventually just be replacing the whole thing.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#364

Post by jjtheblunt »

olliej wrote: post #346
xedrac wrote: post #302

While I'm not on the Apple train, I love how they are pushing AMD, Intel and NVidia out of complacency. No more of these little tiny incremental improvements to milk the industry. Bring your BEST to the table or get left behind!

I’m find the slow drip of M1 extensions to be kind of ehn - like the tick part of the old intel cycle, only in this case it’s literally just gluing more of the same cores together (obviously work is involved, but not at the level of an architecture rev) (edit: calm down people, I recognize it's impressive, but it's just not as fun an announcement as an architecture rev, which I was hoping for after a year :D )

what? the unified memory growth IS an architecture rev

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#365

Post by FridgeSeal »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #301
polyrand wrote: post #258

I think the GPU claims are interesting. According to the graph's footer, the M1 Ultra was compared to an RTX 3090. If the performance/wattage claims are correct, I'm wondering if the Mac Studio could become an "affordable" personal machine learning workstation (which also won't make the electricity bill skyrocket). If Pytorch becomes stable and easy to use on Apple Silicon [0][1], it could be an appealing choice. [0]…

Cursory look gives you a ~$3500 price tag for a gaming PC with a 3090 [1], vs. at least $4k for a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra. Roughly the same ballpark, but I wouldn't call the M1 Ultra more affordable given those numbers. 1. https://techguided.com/best-rtx-3090-gaming-pc/#:~:text=With... .

Hahaha good luck getting your hands on a 30xx series card though.

Here in Australia, 3090’s go for close to 3k on their own.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#366

Post by jonplackett »

xedrac wrote: post #302

While I'm not on the Apple train, I love how they are pushing AMD, Intel and NVidia out of complacency. No more of these little tiny incremental improvements to milk the industry. Bring your BEST to the table or get left behind!

Makes you wonder how many they can glue together. Looking at you Mac Pro

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#367

Post by outworlder »

Geee wrote: post #307

This is insane. They claim that its GPU performance tops the RTX 3090, while using 200W less power. I happen to have this GPU on my PC and not only it costs over $3000, but its also very power-hungry and loud. Currently, you need this kind of GPU performance for high resolution VR gaming at 90 fps, but its just barely enough. This means that the GPU will run very loudly and heat up the room, and running games like HL…

Too bad that historically Apple has not given any attention to Mac gaming.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#368

Post by paulmd »

jbellis wrote: post #209
willcipriano wrote: post #87

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...

Next-gen Threadripper Pro was also announced today: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-details-ryzen-threadri...

Bit of a wet fart though, even Charlie D thinks it's too little too late. OEM-only (and only on WRX80 socket), no V-cache, worse product support.

https://semiaccurate.com/2022/03/08/amd-finally-launches-thr...

The niche for high clocks was arguable with the 2nd-gen products but now you are foregoing v-cache which also improves per-thread performance, so Epyc is relatively speaking even more attractive. And if you take Threadripper you have artificial memory limits, half the memory channels, half the PCIe lanes, etc, plus in some cases it's more expensive than the Epyc chips. It is a lot to pay (not just in cash) just for higher clocks that your 64C workloads probably don't even care about.

AMD moved into rent-seeking mode even before Zen3 came out. Zen2 threadripper clearly beats anything Intel can muster in the segment (unless they wanted to do W-3175X seriously and not as a limited-release thing with $2000 motherboards) and thus AMD had no reason to actually update this segment when they could just coast. Even with this release, they are not refreshing the "mainstream" TRX40 platform but only a limited release for the OEM-only WRX80 platform.

It was obvious when they forced a socket change, and then cranked all the Threadripper 3000 prices (some even to higher-levels than single-socket Epyc "P" skus) what direction things were headed. They have to stay competitive in server, so those prices are aggressive, but Intel doesn't have anything to compete with Threadripper so AMD will coast and raise prices.

And while Milan-X isn't cheap - I doubt these WRX80 chips are going to be cheap either, it would be unsurprising if they're back in the position of Threadripper being more expensive for a chip that's locked-down and cut-down. And being OEM-only you can't shop around or build it yourself, it's take it or leave it.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#369

Post by teilo »

adfgadfgaery wrote: post #64
teilo wrote: post #10

And overnight, Intel's Ice Lake is again way behind.

Ice Lake shipped in 2019. The current generation is Alder Lake, which is slightly ahead of the M1 in single-threaded performance according to most benchmarks.

My bad. I meant Alder Lake.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#370

Post by amelius »

xedrac wrote: post #302

While I'm not on the Apple train, I love how they are pushing AMD, Intel and NVidia out of complacency. No more of these little tiny incremental improvements to milk the industry. Bring your BEST to the table or get left behind!

Let's hope they don't also push their lock-in business models onto others.
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