will be great fun if one M5 Ultra with 512GB memory at 1.2T bandwidth capable of doing 3x smallish local model inferencing each at Opus 4.5 level of intelligence.
Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#132From what I’ve noticed, Apple products have been getting worse in quality year after year. Sometimes they even ruin their own devices with updates... I guess it’s all because of marketing.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#133> M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. Apple never needed to participate in the AI race to zero. Because they were already at the finish line years ago building their own chips that can run large >100B parameter AI models locally.
As someone who works in AI now, I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software, and focused more on the hardware side. I think this is what the future of AI is going to look like, local models run on your mac for your workflow. It's possible that they're working on their own LLM that's going to work very well on their chips, and possibly outperform anything out there when they do…
>I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software
The iPhone 15 was almost entirely marketed based upon AI (I would say fraudulently so, advertising features they still haven't delivered), and a huge portion of the OS work was on local AI or AI integration.
And for that matter Apple has been dumping enormous sums into their own AI development. Their failure to have a lot to show for it doesn't void the fact that they tried really, really hard.
It's bizarre how often this "Apple sat on the sidelines and let the AI people fight...so smart!" narrative appears on HN. Apple hasn't gone down the path of spending hundreds of billions on nvidia GPU data centres, but they absolutely tried really hard to matter in AI.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#134The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?
I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a holistic and flexible way. We have one crawling the web for local events we'll like, and it judges them based on what it knows about us, and it tells us about the best matches every weekend,…
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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#135The page says 170G/s memory bandwidth for the NPU and 1.2T/s for the GPU. Why the discrepancy if it's all "unified memory"? The former is nothing to write home about as far as AI compute is. The latter is really nice. Which one is it you can run local models on? I suppose the NPU only.
Unified memory is about address space. The bandwidth is still determined by bottlenecks to the processor. CPU/RAM links are still fairly narrow.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#136The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?
If you want to run reasonably big, local AI models, what are your alternatives?
That may not be many people, but there certainly will be some people who want to do that, and are willing to pay big bucks to do so.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#137Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.
when was the turing test beaten?
2001 according to Wikipedia
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
when was the turing test beaten?
1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect It turns out the limiting factor isn't how sophisticated algorithms are, it's how gullible humans are.
What does that have to do with the Turing Test? The TT has clear rules: There are judges that have a dialogue with anonymized AI/humans. The humans cannot cheat and impersonate a machine, they have to act normally. The AI obviously should try to sound human.
No AI would pass this test with experienced judges.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#139Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.
The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8). I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.
Looks like I'll be sporting my 5800X3D + DDR4 + 9070 XT gaming box for a little while. Too bad the CPU's ST is slower than my MB Air m4.
Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
#140Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.
Sigh.. Is there anything better now though? All I see from AI, is an amplification of the enshittification of the internet. And people being even more alone.
Sure, when you look a little wider, since 2000 we have seen the following major improvements:
- Extreme poverty has dropped from 30% to under 10% globally. - Child mortality rates have dropped in half - Internet access has exploded from 10% to 70% - Solar energy costs have dropped 90% - Cancer death rates have declined by 30%
All of these massive improvements in less than 30 years.
While there certainly are issues to solve, and if you simply follow journalism you may think the world is worse off, but for many, their lives have been significantly improved.