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

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

#281

Post by AnthonyMouse »

matt-p wrote: post #278
SXX wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do it, but that gonna need to be different SKU not Mac Studio. Otherwise news will be full of discussions about Apple price hike from $8000 to $24,000 or who the hell knows $48,000. So yeah the only way I see them selling it is usual "call us" enterprise price tag. But since its not what Apple usually do its easier to sell 4x Mac Studio 256GB RAM boxes with interconnect for lets say $12,000 - $15,000 each.

I don't think it's needs 'call us' just a separate SKU, I mean if they called it Xserve Ultra and it was just a studio in a 1u format with dual PSUs and extra RAM, it would fly off the shelves.

Isn't that the same thing you can get from ordinary 2S Epyc/Xeon servers at a similar price that have 24 memory channels (when the M3 Ultra has the equivalent of 16)?

And the reason people rarely use that for AI is that the enterprise GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are only moderately more expensive but are significantly faster because they use HBM instead of DDR5.

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

#282

Post by harrouet »

aurareturn wrote: post #256
asimovDev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current MBPs are such a delight, I really don't want to think about a thinner MBP again, I just get shivers remembering the Ive butterfly keyboard models

I can see why people would want a more powerful machine but as someone who moves around a lot, the 16" MBP weight is a pain. The 14" MBP screen is not big enough.

Get a 15" MBA...

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

#283

Post by Lio »

SXX wrote: post #239

768GB RAM pipe dreams make no sense to Apple. By discontinuing 256GB / 512GB M3 Ultra and raising prices $5000 -> $7000 on Macbook pro with 128GB they basically confirmed how badly RAM shortage affecting them. 768GB is 64-times of 12GB which is rumored to be amount of RAM in new iPhones. Imagine what profit margin 768GB Mac Studio gonna need in order to justify making one instead of 64 iPhones. Apple is the company t…

I think you have an excellent point and I'll bet someone at Apple has all this in spreadsheet and is making that case.

However, I think without the very high end machines Apple is also seeding a lot of professional middle market too.

If the choice is between, say, a Framework desktop vs nothing from Apple I'll obviously pick the Framework.

If I get used to a Framework desktop running Linux then I'd probably stop buying MacBook Pros.

Right now Apple has a chance at capturing local AI but that opportunity won't last forever.

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

#285

Post by AnthonyMouse »

overfeed wrote: post #114
MisterKent wrote: post #57

Apple is actually interesting. They are one of the few companies with a chip / PC play with real power AND basically no play I'm the hyperscalar market. That means they're actually incentivized at least short term, to benefit PCs becoming strong enough to do local LLMs. Which makes this play make even more sense. Though, I've been saying for a while that the local AI inflectiom point is the death knell for these fron…

> Though, I've been saying for a while that the local AI inflectiom point is the death knell for these frontier labs. "Death knell" is a touch hyperbolic. Hardware that can only run quantized models that take up GBs in VRAM falls short of even an A100 (by almost an order of magnitude[0]), which in turn falls short of what an 8xH100 cluster can do (also by another order of magnitude[0]). I'm an avid believer in local…

> Hardware that can only run quantized models that take up GBs in VRAM

That's the today hardware.

Now suppose Apple goes to any of Samsung/Micron/Hynix and says "we'll pay you the entire cost of building another DRAM fab and in exchange we want its entire output" and then releases M7 devices with enough memory and compute to run bigger models.

> Unless Apple surprises everyone and brings back the XServe with M7, if not, then laptop and desktop for factors simply can't dump heat fast enough to compete head-to-head, and will be designed for lower input wattage.

Laptops maybe. Desktops can dissipate more heat than the amount of electricity you can draw from a typical household wall outlet.

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

#286

Post by matt-p »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #281
matt-p wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's needs 'call us' just a separate SKU, I mean if they called it Xserve Ultra and it was just a studio in a 1u format with dual PSUs and extra RAM, it would fly off the shelves.

Isn't that the same thing you can get from ordinary 2S Epyc/Xeon servers at a similar price that have 24 memory channels (when the M3 Ultra has the equivalent of 16)? And the reason people rarely use that for AI is that the enterprise GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are only moderately more expensive but are significantly faster because they use HBM instead of DDR5.

Yeah kind of, I think a 24 channels DDR5 works out approx 1TB/s, but the cost is astronomical, a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. You also get to use the GPU/NPU cores of the mac vs CPU only on the servers. M5 ultra studio with 128GB RAM could probably beat out a sever with a RTX 6000 pro at half the price.

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

#287

Post by simondotau »

khurs wrote: post #203
simondotau wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Apple doesn't need to generate artificial demand for their products. Apple doesn't need (or want) a perception of exclusivity.

It makes no sense as Hyper Cars are luxury status symbols and a store of wealth that appreciates in value. A top of range Mac is a depreciating asset and looks exactly the same as the other models physically.

And it's not like Apple hasn't dabbled in the luxury space, with utterly predictable results. Anyone remember the 24 carat gold plated Apple Watch Series 0, sold at ultra-high-end luxury boutiques?

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

#288

Post by andy_ppp »

petercooper wrote: post #252
SXX wrote: post #239

768GB RAM pipe dreams make no sense to Apple. By discontinuing 256GB / 512GB M3 Ultra and raising prices $5000 -> $7000 on Macbook pro with 128GB they basically confirmed how badly RAM shortage affecting them. 768GB is 64-times of 12GB which is rumored to be amount of RAM in new iPhones. Imagine what profit margin 768GB Mac Studio gonna need in order to justify making one instead of 64 iPhones. Apple is the company t…

They could treat the extreme spec machines separately from the prosumer ones, like they did with the Xserve. Let business customers spec up to 768GB (say) who are prepared for a $20-25k price tag, while keeping them away from the stores and usual consumer supply chains (Amazon et al). It may not be a big enough market segment for them to care about anymore, though.

Honestly you're still looking at (from my understanding) ~3 minutes prefill (TTFT) even with architectural improvements and so on with a 32k context window (against a large model). How is this going to be competitive with Nvidia and all of the tricks massive scale get's you to parallelise context across many machines?

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

#289

Post by sethops1 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #202
khurs wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this help Intel compete? If they have Apple's designs months prior to launch, rather than after launch.

Ripping off designs from your own fab customers is a pretty sure way to crater your fab business, and get sued into the ground at the same time.

Just competing against their own FPGA customers was enough to crater Intel Fab 1.0

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

#290

Post by KaiserPro »

SXX wrote: post #239

768GB RAM pipe dreams make no sense to Apple. By discontinuing 256GB / 512GB M3 Ultra and raising prices $5000 -> $7000 on Macbook pro with 128GB they basically confirmed how badly RAM shortage affecting them. 768GB is 64-times of 12GB which is rumored to be amount of RAM in new iPhones. Imagine what profit margin 768GB Mac Studio gonna need in order to justify making one instead of 64 iPhones. Apple is the company t…

Forward planning though.

They are assuming that they are able to get ram in the future, once the AI bubble either dissipates or pops. Its far easier to build something you planned for 3 years ago, than crash build it in 3 months.

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