MP All Models Apple sleeping on the mac pro is comically bad timing

[Bug-Creator]

Using DDR5 DIMMS might be a "design choice"

Would be interesting to see what kind of DDR5 setup one would need to get the same performance as with unified memory on a MxMax or Ultra chip.
8 channels? 16? What speed? How tight would the timings have to be? How much more power used on the CPU and DIMM to run through longer exposed lanes and a slot?

 

[jakey rolling]

also Macs are the only things that support the iOS/iPadOS structure due to being the only officially allowed platforms for development for these OSes. So they definitely have to exist in one way or another for Apple

That is a wholly artificial limitation that Apple themselves created. I'm pretty sure Apple would have the capability of removing that limitation if they ever identify a need to.

 

[mattspace]

I do this with an old Mac mini

Yes I did it as well, with a large DAS attached to the mini, but it still shares stuff with SMB, the avoidance of which is the whole point of the suggested product. It was a mediocre solution, compared to local storage on the machine.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Yes I did it as well, with a large DAS attached to the mini, but it still shares stuff with SMB, the avoidance of which is the whole point of the suggested product. It was a mediocre solution, compared to local storage on the machine.

so what exactly did this solution prevent you from accomplishing?

 

[mattspace]

so what exactly did this solution prevent you from accomplishing?

As I've said, there are certain apps and workflows, both Apple and third party, that don't work correctly when their storage, or the files being worked upon are not on an APFS volume, ie they're an SMB share.

 

[Omega Mac]

Agree, abandoning the "high-end may have been part of Apple's business strategy and it may have made the most sense overall. I think the OP was arguing it was a mistake. Time will tell. However, let's not pretend their current designs are not without tradeoffs or there were no alternatives. Maybe the best trade-offs given the chosen business strategy that may work out quite well for them but not without trade-off. And nobody likes being the traded-off.

They may have abandoned the old style of high end to circle back with a new style of high end, Apple style, but they had to get the other end and middle which is the mass market share in groove first.

So as you might expect of Apple culture, trying not to signal your prime market moves to the competition and forsake any market advantage, especially in a one more thing scenario (I'm not implying they are perfect or don't strategically leak either).

If the high end is being left to the very end, it may be explained as attenuated within the context of the complete realignment of the entire Apple range with Apple silicon - if you're re-inventing everything in these terms you have a type of leverage few if any have, then it's also logical that the high-end most demanding needs to be left to then end becasue it has to meet expectation while trying to exceed, after you've worked in and worked out a lot of the foibles, then you end with the High-end on a high!

I'm being optimistic.

 

[MoonCakeTropics]

For those that think the studio is an ok substitution for a mac pro, with AI or otherwise, youre wrong.

Beyond the snake pit of cables of the old trashcan mac showing the problem, the unified memory itself is not enough for AI.

Thunderbolt is a huge bottleneck. 100gbe ethernet is now "not a big deal" with 800gbe fiber ethernet available. You cant get 100gbe ethernet through an 80gbe thunderbolt port pinhole. You need PCIe.

Also, in addition to large amounts of RAM (something apple is UNABLE to furnish with studio's being limited to a paltry 128gb of ram for the unforeseeable future), for many AI cases, you need a lot of storage.

Hint, 16TB is paltry. Currently with EDSFF you can get 31, 62, 122, 247TB *single drive* SSDs with insane PCIe5 throughput. We're talking 14GB/sec before you raid them. These are an impossibility via the bandwidth joke that is thunderbolt 5.

These very fast network and storage options are possible on the MacPro M2ultra, but an impossibility on whatever the new studio will be. Sadly the MacPro M2ultra didnt have a 512gb+ ram option (minimum you need to run the really large full LLMs locally), so really, you have no great AI machine that's been made by Apple.

They easily could slap the M5ultra into a MacPro like case like they did with the M2ultra, and let people put in their own fast storage and networking options, but with the enterprise, and pro/enthusiast markets, apple loves to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

[Bug-Creator]

apple loves to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yeah, the victory of selling something that would cost billions in development to a few 1000 costumers who really want to switch (back) from existing server/HPC solutions.

Hint if Apple wanted to be in that market, they would be in that market.

 

[uacd]

But what if AI turns out to be a bubble?
Right now many companies are burning thru investor money to stay afloat. Larger ones can allow more “free” money and data center resources to be burnt, smaller fully rely on loans/stock price.

Local LLM is cool. But these companies will do everything so you don’t want to run it on your computer. That’s a cycle. So for the best experience you will still use smth like server-based Gemini.

There is a chance tho that AI becomes something purely corporate and niche, in case corporations see some perspective in it. For other users it is gonna be like 100$ per month with no free tiers or draconian limits and so no one is gonna use it.

In fact those RTX are either gonna be ultimate dust collectors or Windows will load them with some brand new telemetry scripts to steal even more data, literally data mining but done “locally” under the disguise of “LLM” from Microsoft. They call it Copilot.

See this vid for further thoughts, about laptop NPUs and how those are purely put in for marketing purposes. P.S: yeah I know this video is highly likely made with ChatGPT. But that’s what I am saying: why Apple would ever need their computers to be big and expensive if ChatGPT works in the cloud, wherever you have Internet connection?

However in this unstable world and WWIII risks local LLMs can become one of the “stability” frontiers. But it would take quite some time for those LLMs to mature and hardware to actually become useful.

UPD: my vision is that over time there will be like 3 major companies providing both cloud and paid local LLMs for computers that will be distributed akin to Windows OS. They will be regularly updated and maintained but will require tremendous amounts of power, so this will be aimed at institutions capable of building 20000$ “supercomputers”. It will probably become popular with said private companies, governments, hospitals, universities and such. Regular users will be fed with server-based slop, because even if they will be able to purchase those AI-ready computers, they will highly likely not be able to pay for the electricity bills