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Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

darkbloom.dev

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Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#41
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power and racking are difficult and expensive?

How difficult? Is running 1000 minis worth $1,000,000/month of effort? I feel like it is.

And at that scale (1k) it ain't even that hard, a single room could be enough to hazardly drop them on shelves with a big fan to draw out the heat

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#42
post #38
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs do not have an accessible hardware TEE. Macs have secure enclaves.

Good point! But they argue that: > PT_DENY_ATTACH (ptrace constant 31): Invoked at process startup before any sensitive data is loaded. Instructs the macOS kernel to permanently deny all ptracerequests against this process, including from root. This blocks lldb, dtrace, and Instruments. > Hardened Runtime: The binary is code-signed with hardened runtime options and explicitly without the com.apple.security.get-task-a…

I'm not arguing anything. This is how it works. There is no but.

Protection here is conditional, best-effort. There are no true guarantees, nor actual verifiability.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#43
post #17

Cool idea. Just some back-of-the-envelope math here (not trusting what's on their site): My M5 Pro can generate 130 tok/s (4 streams) on Gemma 4 26B. Darkbloom's pricing is $0.20 per Mtok output. That's about $2.24/day or $67/mo revenue if it's fully utilized 24/7. Now assuming 50W sustained load, that's about 36 kWh/mo, at ~$.25/kWh approx. $9/mo in costs. Could be good for lunch money every once in a while! Around…

Their example big earner models are FLUX.2 Klein 4B and FLUX.2 Klein 9B, which i imagine could generate a lot more tokens/s than a 26B model on your machine.

For Gemma 4 26B their math is:

single_tok/s = (307 GB/s / 4 GB) * 0.60 = 46.0 tok/s

batched_tok/s = 46.0 * 10 * 0.9 = 414.4 tok/s

tok/hr = 414.4 * 3600 = 1,492,020

revenue/hr = (1,492,020 / 1M) * $0.200000 = $0.2984

I have no idea if that is a good estimate of how much an M5 Pro can generate - but that’s what it says on their site.

They do a bit of a sneaky thing with power calculation: they subtract 12Ws of idle power, because they are assuming your machine is idling 24/7, so the only cost is the extra 18W they estimate you’ll use doing inference. Idk about you, but i do turn my machine off when i am not using it.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#44
post #17

Cool idea. Just some back-of-the-envelope math here (not trusting what's on their site): My M5 Pro can generate 130 tok/s (4 streams) on Gemma 4 26B. Darkbloom's pricing is $0.20 per Mtok output. That's about $2.24/day or $67/mo revenue if it's fully utilized 24/7. Now assuming 50W sustained load, that's about 36 kWh/mo, at ~$.25/kWh approx. $9/mo in costs. Could be good for lunch money every once in a while! Around…

Maybe lunch money for you, but there are people in some parts of the world who live on $200/month. Like Ukraine.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#45
post #17

Cool idea. Just some back-of-the-envelope math here (not trusting what's on their site): My M5 Pro can generate 130 tok/s (4 streams) on Gemma 4 26B. Darkbloom's pricing is $0.20 per Mtok output. That's about $2.24/day or $67/mo revenue if it's fully utilized 24/7. Now assuming 50W sustained load, that's about 36 kWh/mo, at ~$.25/kWh approx. $9/mo in costs. Could be good for lunch money every once in a while! Around…

Well. Running your machine to do inference will utilize more than 50W sustained load, I'd say more than double that. Plus electricity is more expensive here (but granted, I do have solar panels). Plus don't forget to factor in that your hardware will age faster. I'd say it's not worth it. But the idea is cool.

Their estimate is based on significantly lower consumption when under load. E.g. 25W for an M4 Pro mac mini. I have no idea if that’s realistic - but the m4s are supposedly pretty efficient (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/m4-mac-minis-efficien...)

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#46
post #17

Cool idea. Just some back-of-the-envelope math here (not trusting what's on their site): My M5 Pro can generate 130 tok/s (4 streams) on Gemma 4 26B. Darkbloom's pricing is $0.20 per Mtok output. That's about $2.24/day or $67/mo revenue if it's fully utilized 24/7. Now assuming 50W sustained load, that's about 36 kWh/mo, at ~$.25/kWh approx. $9/mo in costs. Could be good for lunch money every once in a while! Around…

Maybe lunch money for you, but there are people in some parts of the world who live on $200/month. Like Ukraine.

But they probably don’t have M5 MacBook pros idling

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#47
post #34
post #25

You might not even know it as a user but the payment/distribution here is all built on crypto+stablecoins. This is a great use case for it.

Good. Another great non-speculative use-case for crypto and stablecoins.

Amazing! Let me see, doing the math r/n… carry the one, yup that makes the total number of non-speculative uses for crypto and stablecoin: 1

;P

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#48
post #38
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs do not have an accessible hardware TEE. Macs have secure enclaves.

Good point! But they argue that: > PT_DENY_ATTACH (ptrace constant 31): Invoked at process startup before any sensitive data is loaded. Instructs the macOS kernel to permanently deny all ptracerequests against this process, including from root. This blocks lldb, dtrace, and Instruments. > Hardened Runtime: The binary is code-signed with hardened runtime options and explicitly without the com.apple.security.get-task-a…

Couldn't someone just uhh... patch their macOS/kernel, mock these things out, then behold, you can now access all the data?

If it's not running fully end to end in some secure enclave, then it's always just a best effort thing. Good marketing though.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How difficult? Is running 1000 minis worth $1,000,000/month of effort? I feel like it is.

There are many people who do not have ready access to a million dollars to purchase said Mac minis, much less the operating capital to rack & operate them. Very smart play to build a platform, get scale, and prove out the software. Then either add a small network fee (this could be on money movement on/off platform), add a higher tier of service for money, and/or just use the proof points to go get access to capital…

If those numbers are true, they could tart with one Mac and can double every few months. But, I guess there are also many people who do not have ready access to whatever a Mac mini costs either...

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#50
I installed this so you don't have to. It did feel a bit quirky and not super polished. Fails to download the image model. The audio/tts model fails to load.

In 15 minutes of serving Gemma, I got precisely zero actual inference requests, and a bunch of health checks and two attestations.

At the moment they don't have enough sustained demand to justify the earning estimates.

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