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Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

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Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#371

Post by jdboyd »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #272
WWLink wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall I don't think it's horrendously priced as some of the previous Mac workstation components could get, but at the same time, unless you have a very specific use case or specifically need macOS, it's not exactly compelling. It is "good enough" to finally round out the lineup though. It's such a specific use case that I'm not entirely sure what the use case even is. Capturing off an SDI camera? Great! Why do we…

I don't even see the use case for SDI capture. You can buy SDI-to-Thunderbolt converters starting at $150.

Thunderbolt falls short at 4k resolutions. It is OK for 4k24 through 4k30, but for 4k60 or higher (HDR, high frame rates and not to mention 8k) you would probably want an internal PCIe card. 40gbit thunderbolt sounds like it should be fast enough, but it turns out that for PCIe traffic it tops out at 32gbit, which just isn't quite enough.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#372

Post by nottorp »

copperx wrote: post #283
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I was really impressed that even with regard to the Autocorrect update, they used technical terms like "transformer model" without using hype words. They very clearly labeled it as a predictive text engine rather than some magical pseudo-sentient enigma or something.

Why were you impressed by that? WWDC is a developer's conference. I bet many developers would have been offended if they were told AI is some enigma.

> I bet many developers would have been offended if they were told AI is some enigma.

You think? The "AI" enthusiasm i've seen everywhere online borders on religious fanaticism...

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#373

Post by nottorp »

version_five wrote: post #217
zbowling wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML is subset of AI. AI that is inclusive of other concepts and it's not a buzzword. It's valid to call anything ML as AI. Sure there is a lot of AI hype but it's not some made up marketing jargon.

Not anymore in common usage. ML is roughly "learning from data". AI has had some historical meanings, but in the last 10 years became first a marketing term for Deep Learning (a subset of ML) and now a term for LLMs and Diffusion Models (and the like). Which are subsets of deep learning. There still exist people who refer to AI as the general study of computerizing intelligence, just like somebody somewhere is still…

> marketing term for Deep Learning

Deep learning is just neural networks. With multiple layers ("deep") because we only recently have built hardware that can handle "deep" neural networks fast enough.

They've still been defined in the 1970s.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#375

Post by not_a_shill »

acchow wrote: post #192
jeffbee wrote: post #76

$7k starting price. High but compared to? Just glancing at the new HP Z6 G5, which may be a fair comparison, with a 16-core CPU, 8x16GB of memory (the lowest configuration that populates all 8 channels of that CPU), minimal storage, and a parts bin GPU that nobody wants, $6k. To get 8 thunderbolt ports like the mac pro you'd have to fill each and every one of its add-in card slots with a HP dual TB4 card. Edit: The H…

How many simultaneous 4K input video steams can that HP handle (input and encoding)?

You could probably configure it for more with those alveo ma35d cards, bifurcation, and risers if you really cared and you're after volume of AV1 instead of higher quality prores. It'd also be much more expensive at that point and look like a Frankenstein machine. Need a proper rack mount server.

But this is an extremely niche use case anyways

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#376

Post by ragazzina »

davidkuennen wrote: post #58
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they reach out to the developers in advance if it's actually used directly (and not just in the background, like on the Dock or something). But I'll bet it's a real opportunity to gain new users, so it's probably more exciting than terrifying!

I'm thinking more in the lines of getting this kind of attention it a strong indicator to get sherlocked [1] by Apple in the future. For example the hydration app. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...

Which hydration app was sherlocked?

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#377

Post by rldjbpin »

jeffbee wrote: post #76

$7k starting price. High but compared to? Just glancing at the new HP Z6 G5, which may be a fair comparison, with a 16-core CPU, 8x16GB of memory (the lowest configuration that populates all 8 channels of that CPU), minimal storage, and a parts bin GPU that nobody wants, $6k. To get 8 thunderbolt ports like the mac pro you'd have to fill each and every one of its add-in card slots with a HP dual TB4 card. Edit: The H…

this comparison is with a major caveat of the platform you're buying. using workstation-grade hardware to contrast is not quite fair imo, unless you really want 100s GB of RAM for cpu alone.

you can easily go with faster cores and like 128 GB ram with the latest ryzen platform and buy consumer-tier gpu and save on much more. however, it might make more sense if you just want to buy in bulk and not worry about all that. then might as well throw in the 1k monitor stand in your shopping cart.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#378

Post by speed_spread »

m463 wrote: post #299
speed_spread wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty certain you can buy yourself a Linux workstation that just works. ThreadRipper, ECC, NVidia proprietary drivers. Put Fedora on it. The trouble is leaving it alone and not messing with it after you get it going.

Curious - why do you suggest fedora? I'm familiar with ubuntu/debian and arch, but have never delved into why fedora/redhat/centos/rocky.

Ubuntu would probably work fine too, as any other well supported "big" distro. The reason for Fedora is more psychological, by choosing a "boring" distro one is less likely to be tempted to futz around with the config, etc. Which in my experience is now the primary source of Linux problems (as an over-experimenting user)

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#379

Post by andrekandre »

evilduck wrote: post #322
smoldesu wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple is afraid of the AI people switching to CUDA and neglecting Apple's own accelerators. Whatever the case is, it's entirely petty - Nvidia still ships FreeBSD drivers and would probably gladly pick up Apple support again (at least for CUDA drivers). If it was as simple as "Nvidia was an unreliable hardware partner", they wouldn't go out of their way to arbitrarily limit the drivers you can run.

Apple’s icy relationship with Nvidia started right around when CUDA came into existence and before Metal ever existed. Nvidia created tensions between Apple and Intel and later handed Apple the headache of a class action lawsuit by knowingly shipping faulty GPUs. I think Apple Silicon and Metal vs CUDA might have been a strategic reason for not repairing that relationship but that came years later.

  > knowingly shipping faulty GPUs.
wow, how did i miss this...

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/10/13/apple-vs-nvidia-w...

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#380

Post by bjelkeman-again »

jasoneckert wrote: post #244
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it hard to get Linux to run well on the trashcan? Mine is still my main machine, but there are no more MacOS upgrades for it.

It was trivially simple - boot the Mac from a USB thumb drive that has Ubuntu 20 or later installation media. No need to search for any drivers afterwards either.

Thanks
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