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Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

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Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#511

Post by bdhess »

866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #314
RankingMember wrote: post #170

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out…

Thunderbolt docks being absolute dogshit is universal across the market, it's not limited to one manufacturer. Apple doesn't have this problem because they don't even make docks they're so problematic. Enjoy dongles, Mac users. Modern docks usually run their own internal OS and require frequent reboots to even attempt to appear stable. The worst part is most use docks to get Ethernet, but docks nearly universally use…

> Apple doesn't have this problem because they don't even make docks they're so problematic

There’s a Thunderbolt dock built into every display that they sell

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#512

Post by coldtea »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #502
fodkodrasz wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On th…

> I can recall the horror on reading articles how Raspberry Pi boot was working I am confused by this comment. RPi is legendary for their driver support. A large portion of the company is dedicated to it. I would say this is the primary reason that they can fend off cheap clones from China, whereas 3D printers are all but defeated at this point.

The bootloader boot/process however is not related to driver support.

Not that I know what's nightmarish about it in the Pi.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#513

Post by coldtea »

thewebguyd wrote: post #346
exmadscientist wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with some of the people responsible for the Surface Book, Surface docks, and specifically the Surface Book's dock. These were hardware people (EEs), not software people, and this was after their time at MS. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics (both because it's been a few years, and because I'd probably have to fuzz details anyway), but... : Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly ho…

> Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying. I believe it. From all my years as a sysadmin, docks were by far the second largest source of headaches (after printers). Super high failure rate, all kinds of quirks, shoddy power delivery. And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

>And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

Most of premium "docks" (if not all) are repackaged cheap hw sold much lower as no-name.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#514

Post by girvo »

illiac786 wrote: post #225
chis wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also shockingly twitter-nerd-coded. "The cure for token anxiety", it advertises. To be honest it's hard to see why anyone would buy this product so maybe they decided to take a wild swing with the marketing. The only use is people who really, really, want to run models locally vs getting a much cheaper and higher performance result from a cloud host.

Higher performance, I agree, but cheaper? I didn’t check how much this costs, but if you use AI locally a lot, it’s going to be amortised pretty quickly. Burning 100$ a month on tokens has become insanely easy. I remember when it was unimaginable for me…

You top out at 20 tokens per second on hardware with memory bandwidth this low for any local model actually worth using. Doing the maths, it’s not financially worth it. Only worth it for privacy and control reasons.

I do love my GB10 Asus Spark-like though still!

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#515

Post by coldtea »

numpad0 wrote: post #494
whatever1 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docks ok. But why printers are such a hot mess? For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to. But no, we had to install random drivers on our machines, get blue screens and have to plug and unplug the printers until they get reset properly.

Because everyone wants 100% PostScript-compatible printers and nothing else. The PostScript was created by ex-PARC people as they were founding a small startup called Adobe Systems, and it was chosen by Apple for its revolutionary 1985 LaserWriter printer. LaserWriter was partially OEM'd by Canon, and its competitors couldn't simply steal the protocol; most others to date use a 100% compatible proprietary protocols t…

>Because everyone wants 100% PostScript-compatible printers and nothing else.

Nothing about what the parent wrote prevents that.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#516

Post by coldtea »

colechristensen wrote: post #413
whatever1 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docks ok. But why printers are such a hot mess? For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to. But no, we had to install random drivers on our machines, get blue screens and have to plug and unplug the printers until they get reset properly.

Printers are complex robots, require frequent supply refills, and are high touch interactions with people. (people printing things wrong, people misusing printing resources, managing quotas for same, etc.) It's not just firmware.

It's 100% just firmware + crappy business model.

Printers are hardly "complex" - a few very standard gear/roller/sensor based mechanisms we've built for 4 decades pretty identically with hardly any innovation. Besides far more complex frequent-use devices don't have such shit problems and experience.

Nor is "you're out of blue ink, you can't print this b&w document" or "you didn't install the official $50 cartridge, but a third-party $10 one, you can't print" and such crap related even remotely to printers being "complex robots" or "requiring frequent supply reffils".

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#517

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

This is obviously intended for running local AI, but the memory bandwidth of 300 GB/sec seems a limiting factor, since this is what limits single user LLM inference tokens/sec. For comparison the M2 Ultra does up to 800 GB/sec, thanks to having a 1024-bit bus vs the RTX Spark's 256-bit bus.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#518

Post by strobe »

jraph wrote: post #509
thisislife2 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, with 128GB RAM, I guess one could even ignore that it is soldered (and hence "unrepairable"), but if it can't run Linux or *BSD it is a definite no go. We definitely don't need two closed hardware platform duopoly (Apple and Microsoft), as together they will dominate and kill the "open" platforms. But I am pessimistic here as everything seems headed towards that eventuality. We should never have accepted smartph…

> Yes, with 128GB RAM, I guess one could even ignore that it is soldered Unless that RAM fails in some way or another, then you have to replace the whole motherboard because of this.

in case of macbooks even if something like usb port controller failed is most likely leads to board replacement as well so is high change that even if RAM is fine it could be useless because some $2 component failure

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#519

Post by rbanffy »

Looking into the Apple counterpart, an M5 Max with 128GB of RAM and 2TB of flash, it comes at around EUR 6K here in Ireland, probably in the $5K range in the US. I am assuming Microsoft will charge a similar premium for it, because this is not a machine that'll help with vendor lock-in for them - it helps mostly Nvidia, so Microsoft and other OEMs will likely get the chips with lower margins.

It's also a way for Nvidia to protect itself (a bit) from the impending doom at the AI datacenter sector.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#520

Post by illiac786 »

girvo wrote: post #514
illiac786 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher performance, I agree, but cheaper? I didn’t check how much this costs, but if you use AI locally a lot, it’s going to be amortised pretty quickly. Burning 100$ a month on tokens has become insanely easy. I remember when it was unimaginable for me…

You top out at 20 tokens per second on hardware with memory bandwidth this low for any local model actually worth using. Doing the maths, it’s not financially worth it. Only worth it for privacy and control reasons. I do love my GB10 Asus Spark-like though still!

I don’t understand your calculation, can you elaborate? At 25USD/Mtk output, assuming your 20tk/s, I generated/saved (minus power costs) ~15k$ in a year.

Granted, it won’t run 24/7, but over a couple of years, this is definitely cheaper.

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