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Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#231

Post by rewgs »

thefounder wrote: post #221
rewgs wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that they're going to release a new Mac Pro that's about half the size of the current one. Enough space for some PCIe slots, but otherwise smaller given the enormous amount of wasted space in that thing since moving from Intel to Apple Silicon. Guessing the rack-mount model, should they continue selling it, will be 3 or 4u instead of 5u. I know everyone thinks they're going to just kill it, but I don't s…

Why people buy the Studio with the high ram config is actually the unified memory. This is unique to Apple. I'm not sure what Mac Pro would do with PCIe cards . It would be useless for AI because what you want is unified memory that can be used by the GPU/AI not just ram.

PCIe cards would indeed be useless for AI unless Apple supports third-party GPUs, but there are certainly some pro creators that would still prefer to have them. I myself work in large-template film/game scoring and while we all love our Mac Studios, they're usually housed in a Sonnet chassis so that we can continue to use PCIe cards. Had Apple kept them in parity with the Studio w/r/t CPU and RAM, the rack-mount version of the Pro would've been a no-brainer.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#232

Post by AnthonyMouse »

asdff wrote: post #178
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the fact that they were charging $200 to add 8GB of RAM before the prices went up, when that much RAM was something like $70 at retail . The problem then is that when the supply gets more expensive and you were already charging the maximally-extractive price to customers, they can't eat much more of a price increase, so instead most of it has to come out of margins.

Actually that is relatively cheaper than Apple has ever sold ram. They would always charge $200 for each ram upgrade and it might have been only 4gb or less back then. The twist now though is they started soldering in the RAM with the retina macbook, so you can't run around apple's extortionate pricing like you could in the past and just buy components off the market. Such a stupid cartoon evil villain move too, just…

> I have never been memory bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM)

This isn't even a plausible excuse. For the entry level machines, the soldered RAM only has the same memory bandwidth as ordinary laptops. For the high end machines it likewise doesn't have any more than other high end machines (Threadripper/Epyc/Xeon) which just do the same thing as Apple -- use more memory channels -- without soldering the RAM.

And it's especially a kick in the teeth right now because it means you can't buy a machine with less RAM than you might prefer and then upgrade it later if prices come back down. If it's soldered then only what you can afford at the right now prices is all the machine will ever have.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#233

Post by bombcar »

wtallis wrote: post #216
bombcar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the MacBook Pro can handle the thermal envelope of actually running an Ultra flat out.

There are gaming laptops that come with power bricks rated for higher output than a Mac Studio's power supply. M3 Ultra levels of power dissipation are possible to handle in a laptop, but it wouldn't look much like a MacBook Pro. That kind of gaming laptop typically has four fans (compared to two on a MacBook Pro), and large vents on the sides, bottom, and back of the machine allowing them to move a lot more air thro…

Post-Jobs Apple is willing to do some things he’d not allow but I can’t see them selling such a beast.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#234

Post by 827a »

thefounder wrote: post #221
rewgs wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that they're going to release a new Mac Pro that's about half the size of the current one. Enough space for some PCIe slots, but otherwise smaller given the enormous amount of wasted space in that thing since moving from Intel to Apple Silicon. Guessing the rack-mount model, should they continue selling it, will be 3 or 4u instead of 5u. I know everyone thinks they're going to just kill it, but I don't s…

Why people buy the Studio with the high ram config is actually the unified memory. This is unique to Apple. I'm not sure what Mac Pro would do with PCIe cards . It would be useless for AI because what you want is unified memory that can be used by the GPU/AI not just ram.

Its not entirely unique to Apple: the Ryzen AI Max platform (in the e.g. Framework Desktop) is a unified memory platform. The PlayStation 5 also has a unified memory architecture (which given the chiplet was made by AMD, not too surprising) (people sleep on PlayStation hardware engineering; they're far better at skating to where the puck is headed than most hardware tech companies. remember Cell?)

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#235

Post by shadowpho »

pera wrote: post #43
dwedge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The raspberry pis have been bad value for money for at least 4 or 5 years now unless you're really sensitive to the power draw. Once you add in a case and fan (required if you don't want it to overheat and screw the SD card), the charger, SD card it generally comes in at roughly the same price as more capable intel 1L PC like the Lenovo M920Q (though of course, they aren't new)

Yeah power consumption (and performance per watt) is the main reason I keep buying Raspberry Pi, I haven't find anything similar on that regard, specially for pi zeros

I thought x64 was better for perf per watt just because perf is so much better

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#236

Post by bytesandbits »

bytesandbits wrote: post #180
criddell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Apple telling the "you can run local models" story, or is it third parties?

Apple

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/exploring-llms-ml...

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#237

Post by ConfuSomu »

dwedge wrote: post #38
esskay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you specifically need a pi (unlikely) then they really are awful value now. Hard to really go out of the way to support them now they've stuck two fingers up at the solo/indie/educational community and gone all enterprise. Second hand mini pc's are a good option. Half the price of a pi 5 + sd + power and you often get them with 16gb ram, a decent ssd, etc. If you need GPIO then many of the rockchip boards are…

Don't forget the case and fan. I think the RPi 3 was the last one you could comfortably run without a fan and not worry about it frying the SD card

I have been using a Pi 4 as a desktop computer for a few years (didn't have anything else) with an microSD card and without any fan, heatsink or case. Haven't had anything problems. Obviously, this depends on your environment, but it worked fine for me.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#238

Post by rbanffy »

bombcar wrote: post #195
lolive wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the price of that beast? #meCryingTearsOfBlood

Let's assume a Mac Studio M5 would start at $1999, and that a M5 Max upgrade 128 GB would be about the 1000 it is now. Then an M5 Ultra 768 would be something like $1999 + 1000 + $4000 - cheaper than the current top of the line (which will never happen) so I'd presume about the same $10,000. Or they could finally make the Mac Pro respectable and have it two M5 Ultra Mac Studios stuck together (or give it NUMA RAM: on…

I was betting on the 1TB Mac Studio, but half a terabyte was already an insane amount of memory.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#239

Post by pjmlp »

bombcar wrote: post #195
lolive wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the price of that beast? #meCryingTearsOfBlood

Let's assume a Mac Studio M5 would start at $1999, and that a M5 Max upgrade 128 GB would be about the 1000 it is now. Then an M5 Ultra 768 would be something like $1999 + 1000 + $4000 - cheaper than the current top of the line (which will never happen) so I'd presume about the same $10,000. Or they could finally make the Mac Pro respectable and have it two M5 Ultra Mac Studios stuck together (or give it NUMA RAM: on…

Apple clearly no longer cares about workstation market, Mac Pro has joined OS X Server.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#240

Post by pjmlp »

rewgs wrote: post #201
827a wrote: post #152

IMO its more nuanced. They're likely in production ramp-up of the M5 Ultra Mac Studio, for release in the next ~3 months; they have pre-purchased bins of memory from the supply-constrained major memory supplies; and they need as much as they can get because they want to push an M5 Ultra config to 768gb to continue the "you can run local models" story that the M5 Max Macbook Pro started telling last week. Going beyond…

My theory is that they're going to release a new Mac Pro that's about half the size of the current one. Enough space for some PCIe slots, but otherwise smaller given the enormous amount of wasted space in that thing since moving from Intel to Apple Silicon. Guessing the rack-mount model, should they continue selling it, will be 3 or 4u instead of 5u. I know everyone thinks they're going to just kill it, but I don't s…

It is already a walking zombie, Apple clearly no longer cares about the workstation market, regardless of how many "I still believe" t-shirts get sold to wear at WWDC.
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