Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple introduces M4 chip

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#521

Post by deanishe »

joelthelion wrote: post #461
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

>n case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) I'm curious: is anyone seriously using apple hardware to train Ai models at the moment? Obviously not the big players, but I imagine it might be a viable option for Ai engineers in smaller, less ambitious companies.

Isn't Apple hardware too expensive to make that worthwhile?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#522

Post by teaearlgraycold »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #499
joelthelion wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>n case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) I'm curious: is anyone seriously using apple hardware to train Ai models at the moment? Obviously not the big players, but I imagine it might be a viable option for Ai engineers in smaller, less ambitious companies.

Not really (I work on AI/ML Infrastructure at a well known tech company and talk regularly w/ our peer companies). That said, inference on apple products is a different story. There's definitely interest in inference on the edge. So far though, nearly everyone is still opting for inference in the cloud for two reasons: 1. There's a lot of extra work involved in getting ML/AI models ready for mobile inference. And thi…

Pytorch actually has surprisingly good support for Apple Silicon. Occasionally an operation needs to use CPU fallback but many applications are able to run inference entirely off of the CPU cores.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#523

Post by reaperducer »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #216
mvkel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here it is in an OS that can't even max out an M1! That said, the function keys make me think "and it runs macOS" is coming, and THAT would be extremely compelling.

We've seen a slow march over the last decade towards the unification of iOS and macOS. Maybe not a "it runs macOS", but an eventual "they share all the same apps" with adaptive UIs.

Maybe not a "it runs macOS", but an eventual "they share all the same apps" with adaptive UIs

M-class MacBooks can already run many iPhone and iPad apps.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#524

Post by can16358p »

izacus wrote: post #84
praseodym wrote: post #10

"With these improvements to the CPU and GPU, M4 maintains Apple silicon’s industry-leading performance per watt. M4 can deliver the same performance as M2 using just half the power. And compared with the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a fourth of the power." That's an incredible improvement in just a few years. I wonder how much of that is Apple engineering a…

Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it half the power use in some scenarios (so we'll get like... 15% more battery life total) ?

Apple is one of the few companies that underpromise and overdeliver and never exaggerate.

Compared to the competition, I'd trust Apple much more than the Windows laptop OEMs.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#525

Post by lunfard000 »

rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

Prob beacuse they are like super-behind in the cloud space, it is not like they wouldn't like to sell the service. They ignored photos privacy quite a few times in the icloud.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#526

Post by fabrice_d »

deadmutex wrote: post #503
dheera wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy Apple has never been privacy-first in practice. They give you the illusion of privacy but in reality it's a closed-source system and you are forced to trust Apple with your data. They also make it a LOT harder than Android to execute your own MITM proxies to inspect what exact data is being sent about you by all of your apps including the OS itself.

Yeah, given that they resisted putting RCS in iMessage so long, I am a bit skeptical about the whole privacy narrative. Especially when Apple's profit is at odds with user privacy.

How is RCS a win on the privacy front? It's not even e2e encrypted in an interoperable way (Google implementation is proprietary).

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#527

Post by cafed00d »

joelthelion wrote: post #461
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

>n case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) I'm curious: is anyone seriously using apple hardware to train Ai models at the moment? Obviously not the big players, but I imagine it might be a viable option for Ai engineers in smaller, less ambitious companies.

I like to think back to 2011 and paraphrase what people were saying: "Is anyone seriously using gpu hardware to write nl translation software at the moment?"

"No, we should be use cheap commodity abundantly available cpus and orchestrate then behind cloud magic to write our nl translation apps"

or maybe "no we should build purpose built high performance computing hardware to write our nl translation apps"

Or perhaps in the early 70s "is anyone seriously considering personal computer hardware to ...". "no, we should just buy IBM mainframes ..."

I don't know. Im probably super biased. I like the idea of all this training work breaking the shackles of cloud/mainframe/servers/off-end-user-device and migrating to run on peoples devices. It feels "democratic".

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#528

Post by phkahler »

>> And with AI features in iPadOS like Live Captions for real-time audio captions, and Visual Look Up, which identifies objects in video and photos, the new iPad Pro allows users to accomplish amazing AI tasks quickly and on device. iPad Pro with M4 can easily isolate a subject from its background throughout a 4K video in Final Cut Pro with just a tap, and can automatically create musical notation in real time in StaffPad by simply listening to someone play the piano. And inference workloads can be done efficiently and privately...

These are really great uses of AI hardware. All of them benefit the user, where many of the other companies doing AI are somehow trying to benefit themselves. AI as a feature vs AI as a service or hook.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#529

Post by threeseed »

jajko wrote: post #508
croes wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't privacy if Apple knows. They are the gatekeeper of your data for their benefit not yours.

Yes at the end its just some data representing user's trained model. Is there a contractual agreement with users that apple will never ever transfer a single byte of those, otherwise huge penalties will happen? If not, its pinky PR promise that sounds nice.

Apple publicly documents their privacy and security practices.

At minimum, laws around the world prevent companies from knowingly communicating false information to consumers.

And in many countries the rules around privacy are much more stringent.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#530

Post by aurareturn »

themagician wrote: post #421
simonbarker87 wrote: post #21

Seeing an M series chip launch first in an iPad must be result of some mad supply chain and manufacturing related hangovers from COVID. If the iPad had better software and could be considered a first class productivity machine then it would be less surprising but the one thing no one says about the iPads is “I wish this chip were faster”

Welcome to being old! Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion. The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some…

I'm with you. I think HN (and conversational internet) disproportionally contains more laptop people than the public.

A lot of of the younger generation does all their work on their phone and tablet and does not have a computer.

Post reply on HN