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Why doesn't apple support NVIDIA though? Considering the whole ML and AI community use only NVIDIA GPUs, it sucks that we can't use apple laptops for the same.
by alphagrep12345 7y ago
Why doesn't apple support NVIDIA though? Considering the whole ML and AI community use only NVIDIA GPUs, it sucks that we can't use apple laptops for the same.
- bitL 7y agoNVidia didn't want to pay for failing NVidia chips in MacBooks when they had problems with their manufacturing over half a decade ago and since then Apple tries everything to make NVidia's and its customers' life difficult.
- amelius 7y agoWeren't these chips failing because of bad thermal design of the enclosure?
- mciancia 7y agoThey were failing in any computer with that chip (Nvidia 8600m), whether it was MacBook, Thinkpad or some Dell.
- mikhailt 7y agoNope. This was a confirmed defective GPUs by Nvidia themselves. All companies that used these GPUs were affected. They even sued Nvidia. Here is example: https://blog.dell.com/en-us/nvidia-gpu-update-nvidia-class-action-lawsuit-and-limited-warranty-enhancement/ https://blog.dell.com/en-us/nvidia-gpu-update-nvidia-class-a...
- Symmetry 7y agoNVidia changed solders without changing to a thermal potting compound with the same expansion coefficient as the new solder. Cycles of thermal stress caused the solder to fracture and the chip to lose electrical contact with the board eventually.
- sdan 7y agoTensorflow stopped supporting MacOS w/GPUs a year or two ago. Maybe if you're using Pytorch or some other framework that supports MacOS w/GPU/external gpu... but to my knowledge that doesn't exist/isn't widely used.
- mlazos 7y agoI think for the larger models now it's more likely people are remotely logging into GPU clusters at this point. I don't think it will be that big of a change.
- fortran77 7y agoI do GPGPU programming for a livng. It's all NVIDIA. They have the best developer support and the best hardware. It's nice having a laptop with nvidia so I can test and develop software even if real models are run on big iron.
- lmeyerov 7y agoIt's not a change in the sense of the status quo being bad. Everyone on our team wanted os x dev, and the choices of remote dev vs linux dev were subpar for them. I'm optimistic about Nvidia eGPUs, but will be awhile to smooth out.
- kragen 7y agoApple hates hackers. Didn't the missing Esc key clue you in?
- pvg 7y agoThat only flies if Ctrl-[ also enables Nvidia support.
- mirekrusin 7y agoMacBooks with iPhone stripe don’t have Nvidia hardware.
- pvg 7y agoThe fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free
- mirekrusin 7y agoBeing downvoted I'm genuinely interested - are there new MacBooks with Nvidia cards? I'd like to get one if it exists. Am I missing something? All have AMD/Intel graphics cards, right?
- vbezhenar 7y agoThey added Esc key to the latest Macbook. Do you feel their love now?
- kragen 7y agoOh, I thank Your Highness for only whipping me 40 times instead of 50! Truly Your Highness is wise and merciful!
- fmajid 7y agoApple wants to force people to use APIs it controls like OpenCL then Metal. The availability of CUDA meant if Apple shipped Macs with nVidia devices, there would be an alternative.
- ActorNightly 7y agoWhy would you do anything compute intensive on laptops that suffer from cooling issues?
- gambiting 7y agoWhy make such a broad statement at all? There are laptops for nearly every need - yes there are some which will throttle very quickly and are only good for light work, but there are laptops in every size that have decent enough cooling that they can run at max load 24/7 without any issues. As to why someone would do this - can you really not think of a single reason?
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoI'm not so sure I agree. My old laptop (still in use) is a Dell Precision m4800. It has a quad-core i7, and is so thick and heavy the word "laptop" is kind of a joke. It has massive heatsinks and fairly loud fans. Still it will throttle back after ~90 seconds of "make -j 4" or other heavily parallel jobs. If you have a laptop that will run at 100% load indefinitely, it's only because the manufacturer has chosen a low power CPU.
- gambiting 7y agoWell, then you need to look a little bit longer around the market. At work we use Eurocom laptops with desktop-grade i7 and i9s rated at 90W of power - and we use them for conferences and trade shows to run our demonstrations, they do absolutely fine under full load. Sure they weigh about 5KG, but that's absolutely fine for the target use. I hope that answers the question of "why would you possibly want to do that". I have a Razer Blade Stealth, 13" laptop where the manufacturer has actually gone against the advice from Intel, and gave the CPU a budget of 25W instead of the advised 15W - and the cooling to work with that. Both the CPU and GPU can be at full load indefinitely and will not throttle. It's just a well designed dual-fan cooling solution. My wife has a Lenovo Y540 - with an i5-9300H, 45W CPU - again, the cooling on it is super beefy and it will run indefinitely at full load. And that's a completely normal 15.6" laptop. But you know what throttles? Laptops like the MacBook Air, where Apple used a Y-series CPU and gave it zero cooling - that will throttle hard after a while. And that's a 5W chip. It's almost an achievement that they managed to mess this up. But maybe they shouldn't feel too bad - a lot of other companies do mess it up too. Dell XPS. HP Envy. Those are top lines for these brands and they are famous for aggressive throttling under load. My point is - of course there are laptops on the market that are designed for sustained full load and are completely absolutely fine with it. I'm just baffled by 1) how can this not be obvious 2) how can it be hard to think of one usecase where that's useful?