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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#451

Post by Detrytus »

angoragoats wrote: post #443
jiwidi wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. I never liked apple hardware, but they are now untouchable since their shift to own sillicon for home hardware.

This has changed since Sam Altman started buying up all the chip supply, raising prices on memory, storage, and GPUs for everyone, but it used to be the case that you could build a PC that was both cheaper and faster than a Mac for LLM inference, with roughly equal performance per watt. You would use multiple *90-series GPUs, throttled down in terms of power. Depending on the GPU, the sweet spot is between 225-350W,…

With 6-7 GPUs and EPYC cpu it will also cost 2-3x more than a Mac Studio.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#452

Post by NetMageSCW »

embedding-shape wrote: post #397
diabllicseagull wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of reducing computing as a whole to just inference. Apple has done quite a bit besides that and it deserves credit. Mac Pro disappearing from the product line is a testament to it, that their compact solutions can cover all needs, not just local inference, to a degree that an expandable tower is not required at all.

> Mac Pro disappearing from the product line is a testament to it Apple removing/adding something to their product line matters nothing, for all we know, they have a new version ready to be launched next month, or whatever. Unless you work at Apple and/or have any internal knowledge, this is all just guessing, not a "testament" to anything.

Did you read the article?

“Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.”

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#453

Post by NetMageSCW »

alberth wrote: post #440
chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

Just a reminder that the old Intel Mac Pro could handle 1.5TB of RAM ... today's Mac Studio can only handle 0.25TB. Seem odd that a computer from a decade ago could have more than a 1TB of incremental RAM vs what we can buy today from Apple.

The M5 Ultra Studio may support more as it becomes a replacement for the Mac Pro.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#454

Post by pwython »

utopiah wrote: post #448
chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

> ...making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. I really don't get why anybody would want that. What's the use case there? If someone doesn't care about privacy, they can use for-profit services because they are basically losing money, trying to corner the market. If they care about privacy, they can rent cloud instances in order to setup, run, close and it will be both cheaper, faster (if they can affo…

Genuine question: If I were to fine-tune a model with 10 years of business data in a competitive space, would you feel safe with cloud training?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#455

Post by traceroute66 »

chocochunks wrote: post #323
chpatrick wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're pretty fast and can have loads of RAM, which would be prohibitively expensive with Nvidia.

A 128GB 2TB Dell Pro Max with Nvidia GB10 is about $4200, a Mac Studio with 128GB RAM and 2TB storage is $4100. So pretty comparable. I think Dell's pricing has been rocked more by the RAM shortage too.

> So pretty comparable.

The Mac Studio almost certainly uses at least half the power

(educated guess, I'm too lazy to go look at all the spec sheets and run the numbers)

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#456

Post by NetMageSCW »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #361
chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

how about the newly announced GB300 DGX Workstation?

Comparing a $100K workstation to a $4K desktop PC seems a bit Apples and oranges?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#457

Post by Forgeties79 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #119
Forgeties79 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper than what you’d expect though. You could get a nice setup for $20-40k 6mo ago. As far as enterprise investments go, that’s a rounding error.

Drop that down to 5k, and make it useful. Give every iPhone family a in house Siri that will deal with canceling services and pursuing refunds. Your customer screw up results in your site getting an agent drive DDOS on its CS department till you give in. Siri: "Hey User, here's your daily update, I see you haven't been to the gym, would you like me to harass their customer service department till they let you out of…

I’m running modest setup using a mistral model (24B) on a 9070 (AMD) and 32gb of ram. $1800 machine at the time I built it. It ultimately boils down to what you want to do with it. For me, it’s basically a drafting tool. I use it to break through writer’s block, iterate, or just throw out some ideas. Sometimes summarize but that can be hit or misss.

I don’t need the latest and greatest and I fine tuned LM studio enough that I get acceptable results in 30 to 90 seconds that help me keep moving ahead. I am not a software engineer, I am definitely not as much of a “coder” as the average person on HN. So if I can do it for less than $2000, I bet a lot of (smarter/experience coding) people could see great results for $5000.

You can get an M3 ultra Mac studio with 96gb ram for $4000. If you’re willing to go up to $6k it’s 256gb. Wayyyyy more firepower than my setup. I imagine plenty powerful for a lot of people.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#458

Post by giobox »

nextaccountic wrote: post #433
sippeangelo wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Chinese sources sell modded Nvidia GPUs with extra VRAM. They're quite affordable in comparison to even a Mac Pro.

Any links to them? Never heard of this..

It’s been going on for a while. Search YouTube or the web for 48gb 4090 (this is one of the most popular modded Nvidia cards), Nvidia of course never officially made a 4090 with this much memory.

There are some on sale via eBay right now. The memory controllers on some Nvidia gpus support well beyond the 16-24gb they shipped with as standard, and enterprising folks in China desolder the original memory chips and fit higher capacity ones.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#459

Post by embedding-shape »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #452
embedding-shape wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac Pro disappearing from the product line is a testament to it Apple removing/adding something to their product line matters nothing, for all we know, they have a new version ready to be launched next month, or whatever. Unless you work at Apple and/or have any internal knowledge, this is all just guessing, not a "testament" to anything.

Did you read the article? “Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.”

I did indeed! Did you read the article? Did you like it? Have you also read the HN guidelines by any chance?

None the less, what Apple says or doesn't say doesn't really matter. If their plan for a new Mac Pro is secret, they'll answer exactly that when someone asks them about it. Doesn't mean we won't see new Mac Pro hardware this summer. Plenty of cases in the past where they play coy and then suddenly, "whoops, we just had to keep it a secret, never mind".

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#460

Post by yomismoaqui »

pwython wrote: post #454
utopiah wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. I really don't get why anybody would want that. What's the use case there? If someone doesn't care about privacy, they can use for-profit services because they are basically losing money, trying to corner the market. If they care about privacy, they can rent cloud instances in order to setup, run, close and it will be both cheaper, faster (if they can affo…

Genuine question: If I were to fine-tune a model with 10 years of business data in a competitive space, would you feel safe with cloud training?

If you already have those 10 years of bussiness data on Microsoft or Google services or their respective clouds, are you feeling safe?
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