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macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

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Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#201

Post by geerlingguy »

wmf wrote: post #191
kjkjadksj wrote: post #180

Remember when they enabled egpu over thunderbolt and no one cared because the thunderbolt housing cost almost as much as your macbook outright? Yeah. Thunderbolt is a racket. It’s a god damned cord. Why is it $50.

In this case Thunderbolt is much much cheaper than 100G Ethernet. (The cord is $50 because it contains two active chips BTW.)

Yeah, even decent 40 Gbps QSFP+ DAC cables are usually $30+, and those don't have active electronics in them like Thunderbolt does.

The ability to also deliver 240W (IIRC?) over the same cable is also a bit different here, it's more like FireWire than a standard networking cable.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#202

Post by SunlitCat »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #132
inferiorhuman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blip in high end RAM prices It's not a blip and it's not limited to high end machines and configurations. Altman gobbled up the lion's share of wafer production. Look at that Raspberry Pi article that made it to the front page, that's pretty far from a high end Mac and according to the article's author likely to be exported from China due to the RAM supply crisis. I can get a Ryzen 7 system with 32gb of ddr5, and a…

People that can reliably predict the future, especially when it comes to rising markets, are almost always billionaires. It is a skill so rare that it can literally make you the richest man on earth. Why should I trust your prediction of future markets that this pricing is the new standard, and will never go down? Line doesn’t always go up, even if it feels like it is right now, and all the tech media darlings are sa…

Don’t forget that many of these manufacturers operate with long-term supply contracts for components like RAM, maintain existing inventory, or are selling systems that were produced some time ago. That helps explain why we are still seeing comparatively low prices at the moment.

If the current RAM supply crisis continues, it is very likely that these kinds of offers will disappear and that systems like this will become more expensive as well, not to mention all the other products that rely on DRAM components.

I also don’t believe RAM prices will drop again anytime soon, especially now that manufacturers have seen how high prices can go while demand still holds. Unlike something like graphics cards, RAM is not optional, it is a fundamental requirement for building any computer (or any device that contains one). People don’t buy it because they want to, but because they have to.

In the end, I suspect that some form of market-regulating mechanism may be required, potentially through government intervention. Otherwise, it’s hard for me to see what would bring prices down again, unless Chinese manufacturers manage to produce DRAM at scale, at significantly lower cost, and effectively flood the market.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#203

Post by nickysielicki »

This is such a weird project. Like where is this running at scale? Where’s the realistic plan to ever run this at scale? What’s the end goal here?

Don’t get me wrong... It’s super cool, but I fail to understand why money is being spent on this.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#204

Post by dagmx »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #197

That’s great for AI people, but can we use this for other distributed workloads that aren’t ML?

Sure, there’s nothing about it that’s tied to ML. It’s faster interconnect , use it for many kinds of shared compute scenarios.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#205

Post by sspiff »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #102
dghlsakjg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Home PCs are as cheap as they’ve ever been. Adjusted for inflation the same can be said about “home use” Macs. The list price of an entry level MacBook Air has been pretty much the same for more than a decade. Adjust for inflation, and you get a MacBook air for less than half the real cost of the launch model that is massively better in every way. A blip in high end RAM prices has no bearing on affordable home c…

A blip in high end RAM prices It's not a blip and it's not limited to high end machines and configurations. Altman gobbled up the lion's share of wafer production. Look at that Raspberry Pi article that made it to the front page, that's pretty far from a high end Mac and according to the article's author likely to be exported from China due to the RAM supply crisis. I can get a Ryzen 7 system with 32gb of ddr5, and a…

Add to that a case, PSU and monitor and you're realitically over $1000

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#206

Post by teaearlgraycold »

morshu9001 wrote: post #159
platevoltage wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man you positively demolished that straw man. How much as a base model MacBook Air changed in price over the last 15 years? With inflation, it's gotten cheaper.

It's also gotten cheaper nominally. I just got a new base MBA for $750. Kinda surprised, like there has to be some catch.

I feel bad for their competitors. We need good competition in the long run but over the last few years it's made less and less sense to get something other than an Apple laptop for most use cases.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#208

Post by aurareturn »

nickysielicki wrote: post #203

This is such a weird project. Like where is this running at scale? Where’s the realistic plan to ever run this at scale? What’s the end goal here? Don’t get me wrong... It’s super cool, but I fail to understand why money is being spent on this.

The end goal is that Macs become good local LLM inference machines and for AI devs to keep using Macs.

Re: macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

#210

Post by nickysielicki »

aurareturn wrote: post #208
nickysielicki wrote: post #203

This is such a weird project. Like where is this running at scale? Where’s the realistic plan to ever run this at scale? What’s the end goal here? Don’t get me wrong... It’s super cool, but I fail to understand why money is being spent on this.

The end goal is that Macs become good local LLM inference machines and for AI devs to keep using Macs.

The former will never happen and the latter is a certainty.
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