Can I do prefill on the eGPU and the decode on the Mac?
Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
171–180 of 262 posts
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Labeling it as a monopoly of M chips is not fair or accurate when comparing to MS on Intel. The relevant thing here isn't the chips, it's tying things to the chips, because those would otherwise be separate markets. If you could feasibly buy an iPhone and install Android or Lineage OS on it or use Google Play or F-Droid on iOS then no one would be saying that Apple has a monopoly on operating systems or app stores…
> It can't be a real thing that you can avoid being a monopoly by owning more of the supply chain. Move the most important aspects of your software to hardware. Hard for MacOS but for a Chromebook style thing you could write the browser into its own pice of wafer. Google should pay me to be this evil.
> Move the most important aspects of your software to hardware.
So now you have a piece of silicon with a two year old version of Chrome with seventeen CVEs hard-coded into it, and still have all the same antitrust problems because the device still also has an ordinary general purpose CPU that you're still anti-competitively impeding people from using to run Firefox or Ladybird.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#173If you could get Nvidia driver support on Mac’s I bet Apple would have sold more MacPro’s.
If unfamiliar: it is a big deal that AAPL & NVDA again have an official relationship.
For well over the previous decade Apple has not allowed newer nVidia GPUs (by not allowing drivers).
A seven year old GPU (e.g. VEGA64, RTX1080Ti) can still process more tokens/second than most Apple Silicon (particularly the lower-ends).
As discussed elsewhere, Apple MAX/Ultra processors are best-suited for huge models (but are not as fast as e.g. RTX5090).
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
eGPUs are kind of a joke. People would be way more likely to use dedicated GPUs with Macs if they had PCIe slots.
What exactly is the difference between an internal PCIe slot and Oculink or Thunderbolt from an electrical and functional perspective?
An internal PCIe slot can be had in up to 16x 5.0, whereas Thunderbolt 5 maxes out at 4x of 4.0.
Plus you have another Thunderbolt controller in between the CPU and the hardware, and it takes more energy to push that many bits 1m over a cable vs a few dozen cm over traces.
Also Thunderbolt is trivially disconnected, which in many critical workflows is not a positive, but an opportunity for ill-timed interruptions. Plus I don't have to buy a fucking dongle/dock for a real goddamn slot, make room for external power supplies, etc.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, Apple still won't release iMessage for Android or Linux (unlike every other messenger platform, like whatsapp, telegram, wechat, microsoft teams, etc, which are all cross-platform). Because of that, you need an apple device around to be able to deal with iMessage users.
Then it would be more correct to say that we "lose when we forego control" when our friends push the iMessage on us. In my bubble literally noone uses iMessage. More tech savvy use Signal/GroupMe, less tech savvy use SMS/Email. Family use Signal to chat with me, as I can steer my own family a little. Also I sometimes open web-interface of Facebook, but any attempts to offer WhatsApp I answer "sorry no Facebook apps o…
> In my bubble
Your green bubble? =P
My social circle is the complete opposite. We're all on iMessage (except for one group of extended family on Messenger), and we like it that way. I was the last holdout for years while I went from Android -> Windows Phone -> Android -> iPhone.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chicken/egg. NVidia tooling is lacking surely in part because the hardware wasn’t usable on macOS until now. Now that it’s usable that might change.
Nvidia GPUs were usable on Intel Macs, but compatibility got worse over time, and Apple stopped making a Mac Pro with regular PCIe slots in 2013. People then got hopeful about eGPUs, but they have their own caveats on top of macOS only fully working with AMD cards. So I've gotten numb to any news about Mac + GPU. The answer was always to just get a non-Apple PC with PCIe slots instead of giving yourself hoops to jump…
The 2019 Intel Mac Pro had PCIe slots. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro still has them as well, but they’re pretty much useless.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the blue and green bubble thing? I've never used an iPhone so don't understand the term. Does it classify messages as iMessage and non-iMessage?
iOS has two built-in messaging apps. Like all phones, they have SMS built in, and hardly anyone uses it for anything except SMS 2FA codes. And then they have iMessage, aka blue bubbles, which are kinda like Signal or Whatsapp or Telegram. Everyone in Europe uses whatsapp, and a lot of people in the US use iMessage. If you don't use whatsapp in europe, you'll have a rough time communicating with some social groups, an…
> I think everyone would prefer if apple split it into the 'Messages' app (SMS + RCS) and an optional 'iMessage' app which doesn't come installed by default, but you can download on the app store from Apple.
No, I don't think anyone would prefer that. People on iOS like iMessage, not SMS + RCS. Nobody is confused by it, they all know that green bubbles means you're texting someone who doesn't have an iPhone. It works seamlessly, it's just annoying when you want to have along conversation with a friend on Android because it doesn't have any nice iMessage extras available – that's why people don't like green bubbles.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the blue and green bubble thing? I've never used an iPhone so don't understand the term. Does it classify messages as iMessage and non-iMessage?
iOS has two built-in messaging apps. Like all phones, they have SMS built in, and hardly anyone uses it for anything except SMS 2FA codes. And then they have iMessage, aka blue bubbles, which are kinda like Signal or Whatsapp or Telegram. Everyone in Europe uses whatsapp, and a lot of people in the US use iMessage. If you don't use whatsapp in europe, you'll have a rough time communicating with some social groups, an…
No, Apple has one built-in messaging app: Messages. It switches between SMS, RCS, and iMessage automatically depending on the capabilities of the devices.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using your monopoly market share video service as a weapon against companies offering platforms that compete with your own is textbook antitrust behavior. Google used YouTube as a weapon against both Windows Phone and devices running Amazon's Fire fork of Android.
> monopoly market share video service A "monopoly" "service"? What have they monopolized, laziness? It's not the App Store, you can go replace it with DailyMotion at your earliest convenience. You're still retreading why your original comment was not at all relevant to the critique being made. We have precedent for prosecuting monopolistic behavior in America, but it doesn't encompass services even when they're manda…
When your product has a monopoly market share, you don't get to use it as a weapon against competitors in other markets, even if you claim there is some imaginary exception to antitrust law involving servers.
Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
They said eGPU
eGPUs are kind of a joke. People would be way more likely to use dedicated GPUs with Macs if they had PCIe slots.
The last Mac with good PCIe slots was the 2019-2023 Mac Pro. So that’s almost a decade ago, and sold poorly. It never got a real refresh.
Before that was the pre-trash can Mac Pro in 2006-2012. So that was canceled most of a decade before the 2019 model.
High bandwidth PCIe hasn’t been a thing in Apple world for most of 15 years.