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Apple M1 Ultra

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Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#701

Post by hu3 »

astrange wrote: post #527
forrestthewoods wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters. I couldn’t give less of a shit about performance-per-watt. The ONLY metric I care about is performance-per-dollar. A Mac Studio and Threadripper are both boxes that sit on/under my desk. I don’t work from a laptop. I don’t care about energy usage. I even don’t really care about noise. My Threadripper is fine. I would not trade less power for less…

Did you know noise pollution causes dementia? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-no...

Ouch. I wonder what Apple thinks about that after selling millions of noisy intel macbooks.

As for desktops, watercooling makes computers dead silent.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#702

Post by hu3 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #564
forrestthewoods wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters. I couldn’t give less of a shit about performance-per-watt. The ONLY metric I care about is performance-per-dollar. A Mac Studio and Threadripper are both boxes that sit on/under my desk. I don’t work from a laptop. I don’t care about energy usage. I even don’t really care about noise. My Threadripper is fine. I would not trade less power for less…

I care about power only because it means louder fans, and I like quiet.

Same. That's why I use watercooling to keep the room silent.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#703

Post by tiernano »

nicoburns wrote: post #319
kasperni wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

They also said that the Mac Pro is still yet to transition. So they'll have to come up with something for that. My suspicion is that it won't be M branded. Perhaps P1 for pro?

I have been thinking about this, and one theory I came up with was a switch chip between M1 Max chiplets... you have 4 (or more?) M1 Maxes connected to the same switch chip... it might add latency for some tasks but it would be one way to scale without going to a new M2 processor... Then again, M2 could come out in June at the WWDC, doubling everything and adding 3 more ultra connect things to each M2 Max, allowing unlimited (ish) upgradability... but, probably not...

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#704

Post by arvinsim »

ricardobeat wrote: post #513
itstomkent wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just never understand this. Chances are you are at the same desk day in and day out. You probably have monitors and external keyboard/mouse hooked up because hunching over a laptop and using a touchpad is unnecessary torture for a fixed workspace. Given that why would you hamstring yourself with a thermally constrained and overpriced-because-miniaturization-isn't free setup? Until maybe these M1's (and I'm not e…

Meetings, working from home, travel, changing desks every few months. Not having a jungle of cables. Retina screen (still hard to find on external monitors). The vast majority of devs also don’t need an insanely powerful machine. If Docker on Mac wasn’t dog slow, I could easily get by with a $999 MacBook Air.

The only reason I also went up to 32GB RAM(almost bought the 64GB one) was because of Docker.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#705

Post by arvinsim »

cube2222 wrote: 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.

The CPU trend nowadays seem to be combining chiplets and having performance and efficiency cores.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#706

Post by trodrigues »

kllrnohj wrote: post #360
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]…

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…

> Well, assuming you can actually buy any of these, anyway. The M1 Ultra might win "by default" by simply being purchasable at all unlike pretty much every other GPU :/

Can we stop it with the meme that these GPUs are unobtainable? Yes, they are still overpriced compared to their supposed original prices and they'll likely never return to that price given that the base prices of manufacturing, materials and such have increased for multiple reasons.

But stock has been generally available for many months now and it's possible to get them as long as you can afford them.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#707

Post by formerly_proven »

inkyoto wrote: post #569
schmuelio wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong, the benefits of using ARM architectures for general purpose vs. x86 are really compelling. The performance of x86 has been a leader for a while mostly because of the sheer amount of optimization work that has gone into them, but the cruft of the x86 instruction set and the architectural stuff you have to do to make the instruction set work is really showing it's age. That being said, the GPU perfo…

> The performance of x86 has been a leader for a while mostly because of the sheer amount of optimization work that has gone into them Without denying some good work and engineering having gone into some x86 chips, they are not the reasons for the x86 becoming a leader. The duopoly of Intel and Microsoft – coupled with the aggressive Intel strategy to undermine competitors on the pricing and the sheer production volu…

GP was talking about performance not marketshare.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#708

Post by theodric »

The price alone is turning me back into a Linux user after 20 years. I simply cannot justify 6800 Swiss Francs (neighborhood of 7000 Euros or USD) for the max CPU/RAM and a 2TB SSD, and I cannot justify getting any less because it's soldered-down and not in any way upgradeable or repairable. Not to mention, even with AppleCare+ it's only guaranteed to work for 3 years (in Europe, I know you Americans can get long-term AppleCare subscriptions, but we don't have that option here).

This is a tragedy for the future of computing. It might as well be encased in resin. Great performance, but I won't spend car money on something I can't upgrade or repair.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#709

Post by danielktdoranie »

Pretty God damn impressive. I have a MacBook Air w/ the M1 and 16GB and it's more computer than I need for my work flows. Work gave me a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max w/ a 10-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, 64GB Unified Memory... it is a monster.

Intel's got a lot of work to do to catch up. I think the only way Intel will catch up is to completely embrace RISC-V

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#710

Post by izacus »

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]…

The GPU claims for M1 Pro and M1 Max were wildly above their actual performance in real life (as opposed to CPU performance) so maybe don't put all that much faith in Apple marketing here either.
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