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Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#71

Post by olalonde »

ggm wrote: post #67

What's their backup plan if the AI world doesn't pan out? What if it turns out people want base compute capability and lots of RAM for filestore cache and programs? Maybe this strategy works, even in that world. Remember when we all thought (were told we thought) the world was heading to 3D views of our 2D lived experience like a solid Cube of GUI we could rotate around and live inside? Well Apple took the simple 2D…

AI already has massive, growing adoption, whereas "3D immersive GUI cubes" never really had any.

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#72

Post by [deleted] »

ls612 wrote: post #46
aurareturn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hypothetical M7 Ultra with LPDDR6 14.4Gbps memory would be 1.85 Tb/s. You're look at about 100 tokens/s for a 1T MoE 37B active 4bit model. It'd probably cost $30k or more I'm guessing if memory prices do not come down. Even at $30k, it could still be a relative bargain since an RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell 96GB card costs $12k today. The M3 Ultra with 512GB was around $8k before Apple discontinued it. I expect an M7 Ult…

I’d assume by next year the open weights models will be outlawed the way things are going nowadays :/ Edit: for those of you downvoting I don’t celebrate this prospect. I’m merely realistic about where things are going given the rapid vibe shift from the administration on AI since the start of June.

[deleted]

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#73

Post by john_minsk »

Schiendelman wrote: post #52
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #47

Well this kind of sucks. I've been waiting for the M6 MBPs because they're rumored (strong rumors, though) to finally remove the notch that has been a historic self-own. But it sounds like I might as well wait longer for the M7 lineup. Or maybe get a Framework Pro instead.

The notch does not matter at all, you will forget it's there.

Well… your menu items will disappear behind it still in 2026. You would need an extra app for that…

But in terms of “noticing it” you are correct. You won’t pay attention after a day or two.

EDIT: this menu managing app will need permissios to make screen captures. So much for the privacy. Forgot to mention.

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#74

Post by jghn »

ggm wrote: post #67

What's their backup plan if the AI world doesn't pan out? What if it turns out people want base compute capability and lots of RAM for filestore cache and programs? Maybe this strategy works, even in that world. Remember when we all thought (were told we thought) the world was heading to 3D views of our 2D lived experience like a solid Cube of GUI we could rotate around and live inside? Well Apple took the simple 2D…

The worst case scenario is that we're at a plateau and LLMs max out around here. And it'd stand to reason that if that happens we'd see local models catch up at least to some extent. Compared to 5 years ago, that's a pretty good world.

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#75

Post by airstrike »

bel8 wrote: post #60
Schiendelman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely the capacity they have reserved can be in different combinations.

Note that this reserved capacity now has competition from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, Microsoft, Chinese data centers and so on, all willing to pay premium. If comapnies keep spending half a macbook neo worth of subscription on AI plans monthly per person, Apple is going to have a hard time competing.

That's a very big if, though. There's been extensive news coverage about companies increasingly trying to move away from tokenmaxxing

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#76

Post by airstrike »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #66
Schiendelman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notch does not matter at all, you will forget it's there.

Except that it hides stuff...

If you have that much in your menubar you have bigger problems

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#78

Post by brookst »

aurareturn wrote: post #17
vessenes wrote: post #7

The article says base M7 memory bandwidth is targeted at 240GB/s. M1 had 70 GB/s, M1 Pro: 200, M1 Max 400, M1 Ultra 800. Modern RTX 6000: ~1,600 or so. If we get a 1,200-1,500 GB/s bandwidth M7 variant in late 2027 with 512GB of RAM, that will be a very interesting chip. Tracking LLM size and performance improvements, I can imagine that being a sort of inflection point for local inference. I wonder what the power bud…

A hypothetical M7 Ultra with LPDDR6 14.4Gbps memory would be 1.85 Tb/s. You're look at about 100 tokens/s for a 1T MoE 37B active 4bit model. It'd probably cost $30k or more I'm guessing if memory prices do not come down. Even at $30k, it could still be a relative bargain since an RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell 96GB card costs $12k today. The M3 Ultra with 512GB was around $8k before Apple discontinued it. I expect an M7 Ult…

Where did you get 55% from? iPhone and Mac gross margins behave been 40% or so for years IIRC.

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#79

Post by monocasa »

craigjb wrote: post #65
monocasa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any explanations of what WLCM means that are more industry focused? I couldn't find anything that didn't look like blogspam. And that explanation of the DRAM being on the same wafer doesn't really make sense. For one, at that point there's no "multi chip" part if you're integrating more onto the same die rather than less. And their explanation isn't really passing the smell test for me for other reasons, f…

The terms to search for are fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP) and TSMC InFO. The chiplets come from different wafers and are reconstituted into a molded plastic wafer, allowing multiple die side-by-side. Then multiple layers of wires are built on top, terminating in a BGA.

Ok, part of my confusion was that it was being presented in contrast to InFO-oS and InFO-PoP, but it appears to mostly be a modified version of InFO-PoP called InFO-M? Because Apple has been using InFO-PoP for almost a decade at this point, starting with the A10.

Re: Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line

#80

Post by brookst »

evanjrowley wrote: post #4

Seems like a made-up distinction that shouldn't be necessary since M6 has not even released. I suspect this is a marketing ploy to meant to drive up both interest while also increasing prices for the next generation of Mac hardware.

It’s an amusing conspiracy theory, but I don’t get it.

Are you thinking Apple is leaking that there will be a long wait for much more expensive chips in order to… what?

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