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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

#111

Post by rjrjrjrj »

seabrookmx wrote: post #100
rjrjrjrj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the Mac have extremely strong vendor lock-in? Sure, you can use the App Store and use all the stuff that integrates with iPhone, iCloud, etc But you can also just treat it as Linux for Laptops (that actually works), and roll with all the standard open source tools.

I don't disagree with you, but technically speaking MacOS is still proprietary and Asahi is not compatible with the latest and greatest Apple devices. While they don't _prevent_ Asahi from doing what they're doing, they certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy for them.

I wasn't thinking of Asahi. Just pointing out that you can run all the standard unix/open source tools and apps on Mac OS (vi, git, qgis, blender, vsc, python, node, etc). With the advantage of higher quality hardware and generally less fiddling.

But if you don't like it, switch. I don't see vendor lock-in.

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

#112

Post by jimbokun »

ErneX wrote: post #9
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…

Problem is affording the ram…

Apple is finally going to realize Jobs vision where sand comes into the factory, is turned into RAM and CPU chips, then installed in a Mac or iPhone then shipped to a customer.

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

#113

Post by jimbokun »

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…

Without AI everyone’s computing needs were pretty well satisfied with current phones and laptops. LLMs are the one thing that could drive new demand if they can run locally.

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

#114

Post by overfeed »

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 LLMs, but I cannot deceive myself - data center accelerators will win on power dissipation numbers alone[1], even when giving generous allowances for higher efficiency on Apple chips - and assuming the Apple-efficiency advantage persists on the same TSMC process node.

0. Based on my unscientific fine-tuning training experiments across local and rented GPUs. YMMV for inference.

1. 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.

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

#115

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #93
matheusmoreira wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. If Apple makes it feasible to run models like GLM 5.2 at home, I will become their customer.

It's plausible but is the Apple Tax for a 1TB memory machine on top of current memory prices really worth it? I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop with 16GB VRAM back in 2023, it's great but DoA for even quantized LLMs. I can run SLMs and fine tune it but that's it. We need one of those specialized inference chip startups to succeed and a PC manufacturer willing to bet on them against Nvidia for the local AI to find…

If you think the apple tax is high you should see the nvidia tax.

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

#117

Post by pipeline_peak »

simondotau wrote: post #107
pipeline_peak wrote: post #97

Local AI isn’t gonna help Apple, especially not with the rate hardware prices are increasing. They need to pull out of this half assed bandwagon approach.

Local AI is going to help Apple, especially with a return to normal RAM pricing being an inevitability, even if it takes years. They don't need to pull out of this approach.

How is it going to help them?

Do you really think the average Apple user will use it when there’s already better AI provided by OpenAI and Anthropic which don’t require advanced local hardware?

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

#118

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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 was the only reason I bought a new computer (a refurb M3 max with 64GB). Without AI, no idea what we should bother with, it depends on what application comes out to drive local computing power (maybe better games? Yawn).

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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