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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

#311

Post by calgoo »

nok22kon wrote: post #205
lumost wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question for local LLMs is whether there is a 100 tok/s model which requires less than 16 GB of memory and is competitive on most tasks with the cloud models. There is some signal that this is possible through both hardware innovation and training/data improvements. Cloud models have their own constraints - I can’t have opus4.8 spend 4 hours on a deep research question I had in the shower without spending mon…

if you do the electricity math you'll see that you pay more on local models while getting less (local is more heavily quantized) compared with OpenRouter. I'm not talking local Gemma/Qwen vs cloud Opus, but against OpenRouter same Gemma/Qwen there are reasons to run local - privacy, availability, but cost is not one of them

I am allowed to plug in 800w of solar panels into a wall socket here in spain. That would more then cover my current computer with 16gb vram. Now if i went and built a LLM server, at full load i would probably be closer to 3600w (Dual Epyc CPUs that gives you 8 x16 PCI channels and up to 8 cards - Way overkill, i know). If i half that with 1 EPYC and 4 x16 PCI channels, and add the same amd 7800xt i currently have then i should in theory be able to run at around 1800w under full load. Now that could still be covered with a 2000w solar install (get a professional setup OR get a battery unit like a EcoFlow that can output 2000w and can input about the same amount of solar).

Now, this all brings the upfront costs way up, the solar panels are cheap, its all the rest around them that tends to cost money.

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

#313

Post by Schiendelman »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #87
techpression wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to even see it mentioned after all these years, literally haven’t thought about it a single time since I got my first MBP that had it.

It’s a complete embarrassment. They added it for aesthetic alignment with the iPhone 13. And then the 14 removed the notch soon after. They’ve kept it for years since then. It has no functional purpose. It’s not there for face ID or because they couldn’t figure out how to do a hole punch camera.

It's there to give you more screen space...

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

#314

Post by Schiendelman »

john_minsk wrote: post #73
Schiendelman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My menu items go around it...

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

#316

Post by AnthonyMouse »

spwa4 wrote: post #310
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 channels of DDR5-6400 is 1.2TB/s, M3 ultra is 0.8TB/s. They both use DDR5-6400. > a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. A barebones 2S system with no CPUs or memory is ~$2000, a pair of 16 core CPUs another ~$1000 each, and then however much memory you want. The price seems pretty comparable. The "problem" with doing this is actually that 128GB is too little memory, because you…

> but even using 16GB sticks, 24x16GB is already 384GB. Question: you need 16GB sticks because they're the smallest doublesided ones, which you need for maximum BW, right? Otherwise why not 8G?

If 8GB sticks of registered DDR5-6400 even exist, they're not common.

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

#317

Post by npunt »

subarctic wrote: post #303
npunt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kind request - please try to write HN replies without AI, but if you're going to, please at least edit out any "it's not X its Y" or "isn't just X, but also Y" AI tics. A lot of us come here to get away from talking to AIs all day.

The comment you're replying to doesn't sound like AI to me

It’s very obviously AI, several tells:

‘isn’t just / it’s also’ AI-ism should at least turn your AI radar on, then you get this weirdly formal structure that sounds like a trying-to-be-relatable press release:

“This shift eliminates A, thereby enhancing B, improving C, and facilitating D. The benefits? Better U, smoother V (hello, W), improved X, and potentially Y—freeing up Z.”

Question to self interjection, chipper ‘(hello, W)’ aside, topped off with a zero spaced emdash. 10000% AI, stylistically this isn’t text tuned to an HN audience, comments never sound like this. What’s funny is the paragraph it’s quoting has nearly the same style, the LLM probably picked that up.

Not trying to call anyone out, just pointing out the stylistic tells we should all be aware of.

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

#318

Post by matt-p »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #299
matt-p wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

24 channels of DDR5-6400 is 1.2TB/s, M3 ultra is 0.8TB/s. They both use DDR5-6400. > a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. A barebones 2S system with no CPUs or memory is ~$2000, a pair of 16 core CPUs another ~$1000 each, and then however much memory you want. The price seems pretty comparable. The "problem" with doing this is actually that 128GB is too little memory, because you…

M3 ultra is obviously 1-2 generations behind and new the studio is expected 'any day now. Even if this was M4 Ultra it would still be ~comparable to any EPYC system in bandwidth, but get to use the GPU for compute so potentially faster than the EPYC. Total Cost of Ownership in the Epyc is going to be WAY higher because of electricity costs, the EYPC is going to be consuming probably 5X the electricity and is probably not going to sit quietly on your desk. More RAM though, but again it's more about the ratio of RAM (size) to RAM (Memory Bandwith) to Compute and you may find a model bigger than e.g 70b suddenly is bottlenecked by the CPUs or memory bandwidth and therefore the extra RAM (size) is wasted. But maybe not, different use cases will yeild different results I guess.

> A barebones 2S system with no CPUs or memory is ~$2000, a pair of 16 core CPUs another ~$1000 each, and then however much memory you want.

As you say, the thing is it's not 'however much memory you want' it's 24 sticks which at $300 a stick for 16GB is $7200, then you also need at least one NVME disk so you're looking at what $13,000?

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

#319

Post by marmarama »

swiftcoder wrote: post #266
marmarama wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much ripping off the designs - nothing of what Apple Silicon is doing is particularly surprising and both x86 and Intel's microarchitectures are sufficiently different to Apple Silicon/ARM that knowledge of specific implementation approaches wouldn't be directly useful in most cases. The real advantage is knowing exactly what Apple is launching months or years in advance, because that can inform strategic…

> The real advantage is knowing exactly what Apple is launching months or years in advance, because that can inform strategic planning. While I'm sure some level of internal leakage does take place, at least on paper the fab's planning needs to be firewalled off from their own chip roadmap. I'm also not sure how much Apple actually cares, tbh. Yes, they currently have an edge in silicon, but it's heavily due to being…

I think Apple doesn't really have a choice. They've been very strongly encouraged by the current US government to move as much chip manufacturing to the US as possible, and particularly to make Intel Foundry work, or face... problems.

Also the AI boom means NVIDIA et al. can afford to buy TSMC's best processes at scale, which means less available capacity for Apple.

I'm sure given no other forces at work, Apple would prefer to stick with what they were doing previously, buying the lion's share of TSMC's best process.

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

#320

Post by gcanyon »

Apple to skip high-end versions of M6 Mac chips...

I read it as the M6 being "high-end" in general, and Apple skipping the whole generation, which made no sense to me. But they are going to use the M6 at all, just not bother to create Max and Ultra versions of it.

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