What to Expect From Apple's M4 Ultra Chip Next Year

[cpnotebook80]

Can it compete with a RTX 4090?

Apple should not be playing catchup with the 4090 but should exceed expectations and performance at this point. The 4090 is 2 years old to date and I’m sure a 5090 is coming albeit with more power consumption as usual.

If Apple can have a balance of power and performance on their silicon chips, more power to them, especially if they can jump past the 4090s into 5090 territory! Maybe the extreme might do it

 

[257Loner]

Apple’s use of various superlatives (Pro, Studio, Max, Ultra, Extreme) gets a little confusing at times. The hierarchy of which is better than the others isn’t always clear.

By dictionary definition, both “Max” and “Ultra” refer to something that’s at the absolute top end, which would make “Extreme” a step below them.

JUST SAYING

I agree Apple should be a little more specific in their superlative descriptors. They should add:
M4 Super Duper
M4 Super
M4 Decent
M4 A'ight
M4 Okeydoke

 

[Christopher Pelham]

One day Mac Pro should be able to configure up to 4 Mac extreme chips together. I dream.

Or they could take ALL the extreme chips they can produce and put them into one giant supercomputer in the sky that can tell us all what we're supposed to do with our lives...except for the crazy ones. They'll get to go live with Steve.

 

[Chuckeee]

Apple’s use of various superlatives (Pro, Studio, Max, Ultra, Extreme) gets a little confusing at times. The hierarchy of which is better than the others isn’t always clear.

I don’t believe Apple use the term “Extreme” it is just a hope/Fantasy/delusion of Apple rumors mongers.

 

[Chuckeee]

I agree Apple should be a little more specific in their superlative descriptors. They should add:
M4 Super Duper
M4 Super
M4 Decent
M4 A'ight
M4 Okeydoke

Let not forget:
M4 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

 

[svish]

If it is launched, expecting it to happen by WWDC

 

[rezwits]

Apple’s use of various superlatives (Pro, Studio, Max, Ultra, Extreme) gets a little confusing at times. The hierarchy of which is better than the others isn’t always clear.

By dictionary definition, both “Max” and “Ultra” refer to something that’s at the absolute top end, which would make “Extreme” a step below them.

JUST SAYING

IDK, Extreme could also mean the severity of how "ridiculous" you're being...
almost to the point of being drastic...

 

[sunny5]

When the M4 Max is available to the public someone needs to take a look and see if there is an interconnect on the chip. That’ll tell us if Apple plans to simply glue two M4 Max chips together or whether it’ll be a unique chip of its own. When the M3 Max didn’t have one, people did jump to conclusions that Apple would make a unique M3 Ultra, but they never intended to make one. An interconnect on the M4 Max will tip off their intentions.

Didnt Amazon already leaked M4 Mac Studio?

 

[sunny5]

Can it compete with a RTX 4090?

I highly doubt it and I would assume it will match with RTX 3090's performance. M2 Ultra is similar to RTX 3060 and 4~5 times slower than RTX 3090 and could be much slower for some GPU intensive and CUDA friendly softwares such as Blender.

Let us not forget that RTX 40 series are still 5nm based which is identical to what M1 series used. Which means Apple has at least three generation ahead of Nvidia and RTX 50 series will use N4P which is still ANOTHER TSMC 5nm.

The good thing about Apple Silicon is that they are making a new series almost annually while Nvidia takes 2~3 years to make a new series so Apple might surpass Nvidia's performance after several years despite having an advantage with 1,2nm.

 

[Kulfon]

Chips are chips. Where is the monitor???

 

[DavidSchaub]

Apple’s use of various superlatives (Pro, Studio, Max, Ultra, Extreme) gets a little confusing at times. The hierarchy of which is better than the others isn’t always clear.

By dictionary definition, both “Max” and “Ultra” refer to something that’s at the absolute top end, which would make “Extreme” a step below them.

JUST SAYING

I made a list of all the current suprelatives used to differentiate inside of an individual product line:

 

[nova motum]

As long as we are hoping, how about 1TB of RAM? Or at least ½TB

I'd be OK with 1/4 of 1TB Unified Memory (256 GB "RAM") to run LLMs of 70 billion parameters at 16 bit quantisation (FP16) locally (really: 140 GB "RAM"). And, indeed, to run such LLMs locally even at 32 bit quantisation (FP32), it needs 280 GB really or max. 512 GB "RAM" which is 1/2 TB... But 384 GB "RAM" would also fit for the latter

 

[throAU]

I'm not sure what to expect. On the one hand, apple COULD spend a bunch of R&D to create a Mac Pro with a backplane for M4 Ultra packages to insert into slots or sockets.

But I doubt they will.

It will likely just be 2x M4 max in a socket and some slots.

 

[Boil]

View attachment 2446523
Didnt Amazon already leaked M4 Mac Studio?

Look closer, that is the M2 Max / M2 Ultra Mac Studio listed in the graphic...

 

[Admiral]

They really need MULTIPLE M4 Extreme chip for Mac Pro for high-end uses.

Or a card full of Neural Engines.

 

[basehead617]

I’m still happy with my beefy 2019 Mac Pro, I would love to upgrade it to a new silicon Mac Pro but ONLY when it performs better than the Studio. So yes i’ve been hoping for a double-Ultra for years now.

 

[Admiral]

This would be infinitely dumber than just discontinuing the Mac Pro.

If they don't give the Mac Pro multiple M4 chips this time... it should be discontinued. if the same hardware can fit inside a Mac Studio case, then that is where it belongs.

The Mac Pro's PCI slots are awfully helpful for massive solid-state storage, though. Or 100Gb Ethernet.

 

[mode11]

Can it compete with a RTX 4090?

Don’t be ridiculous. But the CPU performance will be awesome.

 

[krakman]

By the time the M4 Mac pro is released there will be an M5 Mac Mini which will be more than 25% faster, smaller and efficient......

 

[ThomasJL]

[sarcasm]
I really hope the Mac Pro with the M4 Ultra does not have upgradable RAM nor upgradable SSDs. I want the RAM and SSD soldered to the motherboard because, that way, when I need more RAM, I have to buy a new Mac Pro, and that will benefit ultra-rich Apple shareholders instead of benefitting me. You see, I am not rich, so therefore, I am less human than ultra-rich people like Apple shareholders and Tim Cook. Cook is such a wonderful CEO who can do no wrong. Apple should put shareholders first, and customers like me a distant second.
[/sarcasm]

 

[Boil]

I want to see a Mac Pro Cube...

Two daughtercard slots, one for a Mn Extreme card & the other for a Mn Compute card...

One card to work on, another to send compute/render jobs to...

 

[Tago]

[sarcasm]
I really hope the Mac Pro with the M4 Ultra does not have upgradable RAM nor upgradable SSDs. I want the RAM and SSD soldered to the motherboard because, that way, when I need more RAM, I have to buy a new Mac Pro, and that will benefit ultra-rich Apple shareholders instead of benefitting me. You see, I am not rich, so therefore, I am less human than ultra-rich people like Apple shareholders and Tim Cook. Cook is such a wonderful CEO who can do no wrong. Apple should put shareholders first, and customers like me a distant second.
[/sarcasm]

Well, typically it was always like you got 2 banks of lower capacity ram (bandwidth advantage) and had to replace them with 2 of higher capacity and soforth. You`d always be stuck with a ssd and ram nobody needs and nobody wants, and the system performance remains more or less the same as different bottlenecks kicks in.

If you borrowed money for the spec difference and got what you needed in the first place, it would probably be cheaper. Another alternative is simply to sell the mac when you need a higher spec and get a new mac when you actually need the additional capacity. One just have to be awake and dispose of the old before it gets too long in the tooth.

I have done a lot of upgrades, and it was never cost efficient. New cpu and old mainboard? A graphics card outperforming the cpu and mainboard.... Nah.....

The way Apple moves ahead with their M`s it will not make sense.

Who would want to upgrade a M1 Mini base iteration when M4 is on the table, who would upgrade a M1 Studio "outperformed" by a M4 Mini and pay nearly just as much for the upgrade as what you pay for a new machine. The M1 got give or take 2-3 years left before it stops receiving new MacOS editions, then 1 year of updates to the last one, then 1-2 years where it is outdated but gets the critical security updates.

 

[neomorpheus]

Apple will never do the same mistake that they did with the cMP 4.1 and 5.1.

 

[dwaite]

One day Mac Pro should be able to configure up to 4 Mac extreme chips together. I dream.

it wouldn’t be unified memory at that point, you’d be doing NUMA. Not impossible for Apple to do but it does have new ramifications for any app which might want to use all those resources.

 

[patent10021]

no blu-ray drive, no sale