381–390 of 403 posts
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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.
I have a 2013 Mac Pro running Alpine Linux and a bunch of Docker containers. Installing any Linux distro is trivial, just boot the installer for your distro of choice off a USB stick. Hold down the Option key when the Mac turns on and it'll appear as a boot option alongside the internal drive and internet recovery.
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Large language models are definitely AI.
Expert systems used to be considered "AI". Certainly some optimization algorithms like genetic algorithms were "AI". Pretty much any system that makes a decision was considered "AI" at some point. The problem is the general use of the term changes in a way to often make the meaning unclear to the point of being near useless. Outside of marketing, of course.
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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)
Interesting, only single CPU. I was thinking, that for Mac Pro they will go somehow with multiple processors and some magic with shared memory access solved in OS. Interesting though, how the external GPU support will look like if you have PCI and if it will be expanded to the TB4 as well.
> I was thinking, that for Mac Pro they will go somehow with multiple processors and some magic with shared memory access... That is what they did. Read what they wrote about their interconnect. It's just all inside a single package. Look up "chiplets".
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> I was thinking, that for Mac Pro they will go somehow with multiple processors and some magic with shared memory access... That is what they did. Read what they wrote about their interconnect. It's just all inside a single package. Look up "chiplets".
Well, no, they didn't. I understand the idea behind M1/2Ultra. However, it's not exactly the same. Can they put 4 of these dice? And 8? Currently it maxes out at 24 cores per machine, in a rack mounted chassis. That is nothing near what I can get with EPYC based servers. And there I can have multiple processors in a machine.
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Apple already outclasses everyone in throughput & throughput/watt especially. In case it wasn't already crystal clear, I was talking about everyone else finding ways to get their throughput up to more competitive levels, such as by supporting GDDR.
But a huge part of their throughput numbers is them having the equivalent of 16 memory channels. AFIK it's not that e.g. AMD couldn't do that and use on-die LPDDR5, I mean that is a bit different but not sustainable harder then using their chiplet + X3D tech. The problem is that for AMD it's not a good business decision. First they need to be price competitive (a problem Apple doesn't have). Most applications outside…
The PS5 and XboxX have an AMD APU (CPU+IGPU) with a wide memory interface. Seems like a fine decision. What surprises me is they haven't brought it to low/medium range desktops, until Strix Halo in 2024.
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They probably have very good data on how their machines are used, and are optimizing for the fat part of the market. This may not be a great machine for training models, which is what I happen care about (I couldn't care less about video). I wonder how big the model generation market actually is though.
I do wonder in these conversations how many people are actual users of these things - I'm not, I got a Studio last year to manage my photography addition better, and the Pro is pointless for that - but you'd assume that Apple have talked to major Pro users, and they've said things like "oh, no for training a model I just spin up terabyte instances on AWS, why would I do that on a workstation?", or whatever.
I struggle to think of anyone else with such an application. There are applications that could benefit from the features but it wouldn’t be cost effective (e.g. something more systolic where it’s better to rent cloud service, even if it were nominally slower, because once you’re done you don’t have the hardware lying around).
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> Sure, but what if a normal C code needs more bandwidth? https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
Putting things in context, the 3-thread measured memory bandwidth measured there on the M1 Max is approximately equal to the maximum theoretical memory bandwidth available across all channels and chiplets of a current Ryzen Threadripper PRO. If the M1 Ultra doubles the achievable memory bandwidth by virtue of having twice as many CPU clusters, then an 8-thread test should still be able to match AMD's latest EPYC proc…
Thinks like McCalpin do not seem to show much difference on the different number of chiplet Epycs, although I've not personally tested the newest Genoa chips.
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It has 8 x DDR4 3200, so about 204GB/s of memory bandwidth, 1/4th of the M2 Ultra.
Unless somethings dramatically changed with the M2, Apples chips can't leverage their full memory bandwidth in CPU-only workloads so comparing their numbers to those of a discrete CPU isn't especially meaningful. When Anandtech tested the "400GB/sec" M1 Max the most throughput they could coax out of it via the CPU was 224GB/sec. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... The huge bandwidth number…
Sure the AMD Epyc (12 channel) or Intel Xeon (8 channel) compete, but at even higher power ratings and large physical sizes.
Not to mention that 224GB/sec leaves a fair bit of bandwidth for compression, matrix multiply, ML acceleration, GPU, video encode/decode, and related.
$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…