Apple M3 Ultra • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#961

Post by nsteel » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 11:06 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #677

nsteel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is it only £9,699.00!! Does that dollar price include sales tax or are Brits finally getting a bargain?

What's the bargain? There is also "parity" in other products like a MacBook Pro from £1,599 / $1,599 or an iPhone 16 from £799 / $799. £9,699 / $9,499 is worse than that!

The bargain is the lower price in the UK compared to US, once US sales tax is added. It's not like the pound is strong. It's just cheaper in the UK. And you're right, all Apple products are better value in that UK. I'm not used to any electronics being good value in the UK.

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#962

Post by cyanydeez » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 11:33 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #931

happyopossum wrote: post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they specifically built this M3 Ultra for DeepSeek R1 4-bit Which came out in what, mid January? Yeah, there's no chance Apple (or anyone) has built a new chip in the last 45 days.

No one is saying they built a new chip. But the decision to come to market with a 512GB sku may have changed from not making sense to “people will buy this”.

Dies are designed in years.

This was just a coincidence.

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#963

Post by icedchai » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 11:38 PM UTC

water9 wrote: post #843

saagarjha wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that people are excited about here is unified memory that the GPU can address. Mac Pro had discrete GPUs with their own memory.

Intel integrated graphics, technically also used unified memory with the standard dram

So did the Amiga, almost 40 years ago...

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#964

Post by icedchai » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 11:43 PM UTC

kmacdough wrote: post #780

lynguist wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it’s not a coincidence and they specifically built this M3 Ultra for DeepSeek R1 4-bit. They also highlight in their press release that they tested it with 600B class LLMs (DeepSeek R1 without referring to it by name). And they specifically did not stop at 256 GB RAM to make this happen. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

That or it's the luckiest coincidence! In all seriousness, Apple is fairly consistent about not pushing specs that don't matter and >256GB is just unnecessary for most other common workloads. Factors like memory bandwidth, core count and consumption/heat would have higher impact. That said, I doubt it was explicitly for R1, but rather based the industry a few years ago when GPT 3s 170B was SOTA, but the industry was…

The high end Intel Macs supported over a TB of RAM, over 5 years ago. It's kinda crazy Apple's own high end chips didn't support more RAM. Also, the LLM use case isn't new... Though DeepSeek itself may be. RAM requirements always go up.

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#965

Post by rperez333 » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 12:22 AM UTC

VVilhelmsen wrote: post #846

Who is this made for? Who needs a personal computer this powerful? Not trying to be funny - it's a genuine question. Gamers don't generally use a mac because of the lack of games and I'm guessing those who are really into LLMs use Linux for the flexibility. Video editing can be done on much cheaper hardware. Very rich LLM enthusiasts who wants to try out mac?

Content creation usually, which consists of audio, photo, and video editing mostly. The hardware and software integration makes video editing on a Mac really superior, specially with their ProRes codec.

You can get a good experience on a Windows or Linux machine with DaVinci Resolve, but that’s mostly because of the way better GPUs like the 4090/RTX series you’ve got at your disposal.

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#966

Post by vaxman » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #926

lynguist wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it’s not a coincidence and they specifically built this M3 Ultra for DeepSeek R1 4-bit. They also highlight in their press release that they tested it with 600B class LLMs (DeepSeek R1 without referring to it by name). And they specifically did not stop at 256 GB RAM to make this happen. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

> they specifically built this M3 Ultra for DeepSeek R1 4-bit Which came out in what, mid January? Yeah, there's no chance Apple (or anyone) has built a new chip in the last 45 days.

"No chance?" But it has been reported that the next generation of Apple Silicon started production a few weeks ago. Those deliveries may enable Apple to release its remaining M3 Ultra SKUs for sale to the public (because it has something Better for its internal PCC build-out).

It also may point to other devices ᯅ depending upon such new Apple Silicon arriving sooner, rather than later. (Hey, I should start a YouTube channel or religion or something. /s)

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#967

Post by vaxman » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 1:22 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #941

vaxman wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm downvoting you because your use of language is so annoying, not because I work for Apple.

So, Microsoft?

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#968

Post by apatheticonion » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 2:16 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #860

apatheticonion wrote: post #756

God I wish Linux ran on Apple Silicon (with first class hardware support).

We need more mainline Linux devs to work on Apple Silicon feature gaps, instead of expecting tiny AsahiLinux to roll support up the mountain alone.

For sure. The work that Asahi have done is unbelievable, especially given the size of the team and the challenges they've faced. Would be amazing if there was more support from mainline devs (or better still, Apple directly).

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#969

Post by instagib » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 2:59 AM UTC

badc0ffee wrote: post #952

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the only reason the mac is faster is because the RAM is accessible by its GPU, right? Not because the RAM is faster than regular RAM, because AFAIK it isn't far off from workstation RAM speeds.

The RAM is faster. 8 DDR5 64GB sticks at 8800 MT/s would in theory give you a maximum of 563.2 GB/s. Whereas the M3 Ultra is 819 GB/s.

Can anyone even get 8 sticks to run together at 8800?

Re: Apple M3 Ultra

#970

Post by k_sze » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

Why did Apple call it M3 Ultra when it's supposed to be more performant than the current top of the line M4 Max? Why not just call it M4 Ultra?