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Last I read, there is potential for the M1 to get eGPU support. Other USB-C to PCIe cards have worked so it seems to be a driver issue and not a hardware limita

Last I read, there is potential for the M1 to get eGPU support. Other USB-C to PCIe cards have worked so it seems to be a driver issue and not a hardware limitation. Now whether Apple can work nicely with Nvidia & AMD to get drivers, that is a big question.

zamadatix 6y ago
GPU over USB if 3rd party drivers can be had is certainly a technical potential (hell PCIe over Ethernet has been a thing for a while) I just don't know if I'd call it a realistic one or one worth using for this use case if it did arrive. Especially since it seems extremely likely the scaled up iterations will be able to do this properly in short order. I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  I was under the impression that Thunderbolt and the latest USB protocols actually are PCIe under the hood. This is why you had to have Thunderbolt security, because essentially you can tap deep into the hardware via a simple external port.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    Ah yep you're right it supports Thunderbolt 3/USB 4, for some reason I had it in my head the ARM version just had plain USB 3.x type C.
smoldesu 6y ago
Apple can still work nicely with AMD, but Nvidia is basically out of the question. Apple burned their bridge with Nvidia a long time ago, to come crawling back now would be a sign of weakness from the company. That being said, I don't entirely understand how an eGPU would work on an ARM device. First of all, Apple would need to decide if the GPU can use unified memory, which is a double edged sword. If they choose to allow it, they would be creating a gaping hole in the security of their device. If they chose to use discrete memory, however, things would get really interesting. It makes me wonder how developers would maintain feature parity across M1 and external GPUs.
BearOso 6y ago
Drivers are an untenable problem. eGPU on regular Macs is helped by there being existing x86 drivers needed for first-party Apple hardware. There’s not much incentive for Apple or the third parties to write drivers targeting Apple silicon for external solutions that aren’t widely used. The cost would far outweigh the income.

zamadatix 6y ago

GPU over USB if 3rd party drivers can be had is certainly a technical potential (hell PCIe over Ethernet has been a thing for a while) I just don't know if I'd call it a realistic one or one worth using for this use case if it did arrive. Especially since it seems extremely likely the scaled up iterations will be able to do this properly in short order. I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.

olyjohn 6y ago
I was under the impression that Thunderbolt and the latest USB protocols actually are PCIe under the hood. This is why you had to have Thunderbolt security, because essentially you can tap deep into the hardware via a simple external port.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  Ah yep you're right it supports Thunderbolt 3/USB 4, for some reason I had it in my head the ARM version just had plain USB 3.x type C.

smoldesu 6y ago

Apple can still work nicely with AMD, but Nvidia is basically out of the question. Apple burned their bridge with Nvidia a long time ago, to come crawling back now would be a sign of weakness from the company. That being said, I don't entirely understand how an eGPU would work on an ARM device. First of all, Apple would need to decide if the GPU can use unified memory, which is a double edged sword. If they choose to allow it, they would be creating a gaping hole in the security of their device. If they chose to use discrete memory, however, things would get really interesting. It makes me wonder how developers would maintain feature parity across M1 and external GPUs.

BearOso 6y ago

Drivers are an untenable problem. eGPU on regular Macs is helped by there being existing x86 drivers needed for first-party Apple hardware. There’s not much incentive for Apple or the third parties to write drivers targeting Apple silicon for external solutions that aren’t widely used. The cost would far outweigh the income.