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Apple M1 Ultra

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Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#621

Post by [deleted] »

skunkworker wrote: post #225
samatman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This went by so fast I'm not sure I heard it right, but I believe the announcer for the Ultra said it the last in the M1 lineup. They just can't ship a Mac Pro without expansion in the normal sense, my guess is that the M2 will combine the unified memory architecture with expansion busses. Which sounds gnarly, and I don't blame them for punting on that for the first generation of M class processors.

This is what I've been thinking as well, a M2 in a Mac Pro with 128/256gb soldered and up to 2TB 8 channel DDR5-6400 expandable, and do a tiered memory cache

[deleted]

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#622

Post by altairprime »

madars wrote: post #581
altairprime wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between an Apple TV and a Mac Mini is essentially how powerful of Apple silicon it has, whether it runs tvOS or macOS, and whether it has HDMI out or not. The Studio is a more compact form factor than any modern 4K gaming console. If they chose to ship something in that form factor with tvOS, HDMI, and an M1 Max/Ultra, it would be a very competitive console on the market — if game developers could be p…

Won't there be a Pluton-based anti-cheating solution? Seems like a natural opportunity for Microsoft. Edit: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/pluto... says > Microsoft already used Pluton to secure Xbox Ones and Azure Sphere microcontrollers against attacks that involve people with physical access opening device cases and performing hardware hacks that bypass security protections. Such hacks are…

Yep. On the plus side, anything with Apple silicon or a T2 chip has this available today already in macOS, so that's every shipping Mac starting in what looks like 2018: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862

They won't have the Ultra GPU, but Apple's been shipping for years and Microsoft is just now bringing Pluton to market. I do wish them luck, but that's a lot of PC gamer hardware to depreciate.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#623

Post by dingle_thunk »

brigade wrote: post #385
kllrnohj wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPU claims on the M1 Pro & Max were, let's say, cherry picked to put it nicely. The M1 Ultra claims already look suspicious since the GPU graph tops out at ~120W & the CPU graph tops out at ~60W yet the M1 Studio is rated for 370W continuous power draw. Since you mention ML specifically, looking at some benchmarks out there (like https://tlkh.dev/benchmarking-the-apple-m1-max#heading-gpu & https://wandb.ai/tcapel…

100W of that is probably for the USB ports; afaik TB4 ports are required to support 15W, and I don’t think there’s been a Mac didn’t support full power simultaneously across all ports. (if that’s even allowed?)

I suppose given that this is two M1 Max glued together, assuming cooling is a solved problem, the max SOC power consumption just twice as high as usual, plus interconnect overhead. Right? Based on the thermal and power consumption characteristics of previous chips I would not be surprised if say ~120W is the max power draw of this thing.

edit: Of course the M1 max only shipped in laptops, so... who knows.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#624

Post by altairprime »

derac wrote: post #528
altairprime wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between an Apple TV and a Mac Mini is essentially how powerful of Apple silicon it has, whether it runs tvOS or macOS, and whether it has HDMI out or not. The Studio is a more compact form factor than any modern 4K gaming console. If they chose to ship something in that form factor with tvOS, HDMI, and an M1 Max/Ultra, it would be a very competitive console on the market — if game developers could be p…

Seems unlikely that the general population would spend 2-4k on a console.

Well, only the macOS users would be spending a thousand dollars or more for their console-capable Macs, which are general purpose computers with absurd amounts of memory. TV users could spend a lot less for an Apple TV 4K with M1 inside, assuming Apple released it with less of this or that.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#626

Post by hajile »

greenknight wrote: post #222
flatiron wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People care about performance per watt now. So they could compete. The real question is if they would support Linux. In our containerized world I can’t see their servers getting super big running macOS

The reason they dominate at PPW, is because they are on TSMCs 5nm process. No one else has made a cpu chip on this process yet. AMD are scheduled for later this year (they are currently using 7nm). It will be interesting to see the difference in performance and performance per watt, when both companies are on the same node.

Apple's older 7nm chips still handily beat out Zen on the same 7nm process in performance by watt (and it's not even close).

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#627

Post by doublepg23 »

mixedCase wrote: post #501
momothereal wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believed that until I realized I couldn't individually upgrade my CPU or RAM because I have a mobo with LGA1150 socket and only supports DDR3 (and it's only 6 years old). So eventually you still have to "replace everything" to upgrade a PC.

AMD has never disappointed me in this regard.

Zen 4 will being using a new socket, I wouldn’t go buying a Zen 3 with plans to upgrade the CPU down the road.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#628

Post by ceroxylon »

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…

I play Rust (the game, not the language) with decent graphics on an M1 Air with no issues other than heat, which an external fan quickly mitigates.

Really looking forward to Apple's VR offering after seeing the performance of their compact SoC

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#629

Post by fomine3 »

bee_rider wrote: post #618
fomine3 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect this for CPU side. Multiple SoC introduces NUMA but it's already done on Dual Xeon based Mac. I wonder how their GPU work for the configuration.

In a world where latency:storage size tradeoffs need to be made for practical reasons (and will, at some point, be required for fundamental physical reasons), we should just embrace NUMA anyway. Death to the lie of uniform access! NUMA is the future! Ehrm, anyway. It actually isn't clear to me whether designing a two socket motherboard is fundamentally an easier task than jamming more of the things into a single pack…

I believe designing/manufacturing a 5nm chip only used for Mac Pro can't be profitable. That's why they designed M1 Ultra as MCM of M1 Max.
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