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Apple Introduces M2 Ultra
- marsven_422 3y ago[dead]
- JLCarveth 3y ago134 billion transistors, impressive.
- jedisct1 3y agoFor scale, the 8086 had 29,000 transistors.
- grumpyprole 3y agoMy first CPU, the 6502, also used in the Apple II, had approx 4500 transistors!
- nerpderp82 3y agoThat isn't really a good example of transistors well spent. You can do 32 bit RISCV or MIPS cpu in the same process node that is 2-6x faster than that 8086 using the same number of transistors.
- mannyv 3y agoThe human brain has 0 transistors!
- shmde 3y agoLet's see Nvidia's transistor count.
- alecco 3y agoIt's apples to oranges but here we go: M2 134bn 192GB RAM 800GB/s 3 TFlops? $9,600 H100 80bn 188GB VRAM 900GB/s 60 TFlops $40,000 A100 54bn 80GB VRAM 600GB/s 20 TFlops $10,000 4090 76bn 24GB VRAM 1000GB/s 82 TFlops $1,400 [1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/h100/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/h100/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_(microarchitecture)#A100_accelerator_and_DGX_A100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_(microarchitecture)#A10... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_proces...
- skunkworker 3y agoM2 Ultra on a Mac Studio with 192gb is $5599 (60 core gpu), or $6599 (76 core gpu).
- alecco 3y agoSomebody please correct why 4090 looks so close to H100, it looks off.
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- shpx 3y agoCerebras's Wafer Scale Engine Two (WSE-2) has 2.6 trillion transistors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebras https://www.anandtech.com/show/16626/cerebras-unveils-wafer-scale-engine-two-wse2-26-trillion-transistors-100-yield https://www.anandtech.com/show/16626/cerebras-unveils-wafer-...
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- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago> For example, M2 Ultra can train massive machine learning workloads in a single system that the most powerful discrete GPU can’t even process. It's interesting to see that Apple is explicitly targeting the M2 Ultra as an alternative to GPUs for machine learning. I think it is great for consumers for Nvidia to have a competitor in this space. If you wanted to do ML, you really didn't have much of an option other than Nvidia, which allowed Nvidia to do things like disable certain features in consumer GPUs even though the hardware was capable and limit RAM. Having Apple as a competitor in the consumer space will force them to up their game.
- senko 3y agoYup! > It's interesting to see that Apple is explicitly targeting the M2 Ultra as an alternative to GPUs for machine learning. For many purposes the limiting factor on local LLMs is the amount of VRAM. nVidias with 64GB+ are insanely expensive (unless you're a funded startup). The ability of Apple Sillicon GPUs to use system RAM for the GPUs is a game-changer.
- nordsieck 3y ago> The ability of Apple Sillicon GPUs to use system RAM for the GPUs is a game-changer. It'd be a lot more of a game change if Apple didn't continue its tradition of charging extortionate prices for ram.
- minhazm 3y agoWhile I agree it's expensive it's not quite apples to apples. GPU memory is very very expensive. A100 80GB costs $10k msrp (> $15k on ebay). An RTX 4090 only has 24gb of vram at $1600. Even if you do dual 3090's + nvlink for $1600 you only get up to 48GB, no where near the up to 192GB of vram you can access on apple silicon. The upgrade from 64GB to 192GB of ram is $1600. That's still expensive of course, but 128GB of 800GB/s memory that your GPU has access to for $1600 is actually not bad value. It's not like just sticking an extra 128gb of ram into your computer. DDR5-6400 dual channel will give up up to 102 GB/s, which is no where near M2 Ultra or GDDR6X.
- kimovski 3y agoMade in Taiwan?
- nilsbunger 3y agoThey have a silicon interposer to connect two dies. That’s a really cool way to effectively make a chip twice as big. Is this a new technique ?
- BooneJS 3y agoThis is what the industry calls 2.5D technology. Intel has EMIB and TSMC has CoWoS. It’s one way the industry has been able to keep Moore’s Law limping along with chiplets.
- loser777 3y agoAMD has been doing this with Zen/EPYC since 2017, and I'm not sure they were the first
- wtallis 3y agoI don't think any of those have used a silicon interposer. For examples of that, you have to look at the kind of devices using HBM RAM.
- p_l 3y agoIn the mid 90s IBM used it for multiple chips in POWER and S/390
- kjs3 3y agoSo did Intel with the Pentium Pro and later Pentium 2, didn't they?
- p_l 3y agoI believe Pentium 4D counts more than Pentium 2, but Pentium Pro does count and it was part of why it was so expensive (comparably). The slot-mounted CPU modules were essentially avoidances of multi-chip-modules or large easily broken (thus low yield) dies, and ran a normal PCB.
- duskwuff 3y ago
- varispeed 3y agoOk why is it so expensive? Is it because there is no competition or because they have poor yields on that chip? I mean after all this is just a phone in a fancy big case. I mean, they are not too constrained by the size nor the cooling. Extra connections on board add how much, $50? I'd think the beefiest version wouldn't cost more than $2000. It doesn't have a screen like a laptop etc.
- samcat116 3y agoIts two of the worst yield chips. Its a lot more than a phone...
- varispeed 3y agoIt's less complex as you don't have the size constraints and more freedom regarding heat and power, everything else is very much the same in principle. I don't believe it costs more than producing a phone. Only substantial costs may be when it comes to poor chip yield. But you think otherwise, I am all ears.
- xcv123 3y agoBy the same logic, the Nvidia H100 is just a phone and should cost a few hundred dollars (H100 is priced at $40,000 per unit and has fewer transistors than M2 Ultra)
- buffington 3y agoNot all product pricing is determined by the cost to produce the product. Not all product pricing is intuitive to consumers. Products are frequently sold at a loss as well (google "loss leader") for various reasons - usually to ease adoption of a platform (Microsoft's Xbox 360 comes to mind, though my memory of it being a loss-leader might be apocryphal). Whether or not you believe it costs more or less to produce a chip than it costs to produce a phone isn't relevant. The price of phones aren't determined solely by the cost to produce phones. There are many more factors involved. Supply chain agreements, labor contracts, marketing, regulatory, tooling, distribution, market factors, etc, etc - those are just some of the things that influence a product's pricing. The factors considered when setting a chip's price shares those same concerns and probably more.
- behnamoh 3y agoThis paves the way for really large local LLMs coming to Apple's ecosystem.
- speedgoose 3y agoIt may be much cheaper than the Nvidia "the more you buy the more you save" priced GPUs for low loads.
- ActorNightly 3y ago[flagged]
- bombolo 3y agoRAM on apple is only 3$ per kb :D
- Taywee 3y agoI would love to be able to socket one of these suckers in a Linux desktop for a reasonable price. I'm loving seeing competition in this field, but I don't like using MacOS and don't want to pay the Apple hardware tax.
- ddorian43 3y agoWhy? Do you want to save electricity costs?
- aaomidi 3y agoThere’s really nothing like them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- diffeomorphism 3y agoHow so? Apple says 20% faster cpu than the M1 ultra. So now it should be about as fast as a 13th gen i9 chip or comparable Amd chip. Power consumption is still very impressive, performance is as expected, so yeah it is good but "nothing like it" sounds like much, much more.
- nordsieck 3y agoIMO, they really stand out as a laptop chip. If you want something that's thin-and-light but still powerful, that's getting tough on the x86 side. As you point out, the power efficiency isn't as great a benefit in a desktop form factor where cooling is a lot easier to accomplish.
- ActorNightly 3y agoThreadripper?
- Taywee 3y agoThey excel at a lot of workloads I do a lot of, and I'm really keen to experiment with non x86 desktop processors.
- pseudopersonal 3y agoWith a unified 192GB memory, could this challenge nvidia's lock on ML training? Or is CUDA still insurmountable?
- bufo 3y agoThe memory bandwidth is still a bit lower than Nvidia's best cards, and it doesn't have the equivalent of Tensor Cores. If they wanted they could compete, but it's clearly not their desire. They build consumer end products.
- zamadatix 3y agoRegarding Tensor cores, it does have them as part of the 32 core Neural Engine. Apple considers AI/ML a consumer feature, all the way down to the iPhone hardware. At the same time, this isn't a data-center supercluster. It's still just a mid sized workstation.
- earthnail 3y agoThe Neural engine is for inference, not training.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoThere’s no difference between inference and training. Training is simply ~4x more expensive inference. The submitted article also talks about training models.
- bufo 3y agoThere is a difference. We train with large batch sizes these days. The ANE silicon size is tiny and can't do the large matrix multiplications for big LLMs with or without a batch size higher than 1. Meaning that it cannot saturate the RAM bandwidth and that you're better using off the much bigger GPU on the Apple die.
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- drexlspivey 3y agoI’m guessing those might power the upcoming headset
- frankjr 3y agoInteresting that the chip still doesn't seem to support hardware acceleration for AV1 despite the fact that Apple is a member of the Alliance for Open Media consortium which developed the format.
- brianwawok 3y ago1) What percent of all media is AV1? 2) Does software encoding/decoding block any workflows? Which ones?
- thfuran 3y agoSoftware decoding tends to use a lot more energy even if the CPU can keep up.
- c0balt 3y ago1) Some small sites, like YouTube, are adopting it. However it is a chicken-egg problem that usually has to start from the hardware site because, in contrary to software, it can't be added later. That's why those organizations usually include Companies like Intel, which had delivered AV1 with their GPUs recently. 2) None, really, the increased use of bandwidth + CPU time is not a blocker per se. In this case y don't need hardware support but it sure as heck wold be nice to use those CPU cycles for something else.
- Havoc 3y agoMost of the live streaming stuff seems to be converging towards AV1.
- mdasen 3y agoApple seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach with AV1. Sure, they're an AOM member, but lots of companies are members of bodies that they aren't enthusiastic about. I'm not saying that's the case with Apple. I'm just pointing out that membership doesn't mean enthusiastic support. Microsoft withheld AVIF (AV1 image format) support from Edge despite the fact that Chrome/Chromium support it and Microsoft said it was due to licensing issues (https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/109899372183448386 https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/109899372183448386). It is finally getting support, but clearly there was something Microsoft's lawyers were worried about. It's possible that Apple has some similar concerns, despite the fact that AVIF is supported for Safari. Maybe Apple thinks that some portions of AV1 that are only in video are problematic. It's even possible that Apple has hardware support for AV1 in their M2 chips and just has it locked away until their lawyers green-light it. Companies and their lawyers are going to see a lot more claims than we do about this stuff. We know Microsoft was concerned about AVIF, but we have no idea what their licensing concerns were. It might just remain a mystery to us for a while.
- tester756 3y agoIs there a name for this kind of speak? >"(...) further than ever" >"(...) largest and most (...) Apple has ever created" >"(...) the most powerful (...) ever made" >"performance to a whole new level (...)" You can say this thing at every release, what's the point? Of course you aren't going to release product which is going to be slower, right?
- raincom 3y agobullshit, simply.
- rob74 3y ago...or hyperbole, if you want to be more charitable.
- BossingAround 3y agoOr "technically, the truth" since all of the statements are the truth colored by marketing speak :)
- raincom 3y agoOne can use truths to bullshit; that's what media, marketing, corporate do. In this case, phrases such as 'further than ever', 'the most powerful ever made', 'the largest and most .. ever created' are hedged. One has to add many missing ceteris paribus clauses (which cetera is paria?) to make something out of these lines. Media, corporate people don't lie, but they use truths to bullshit.
- HDMI_Cable 3y agoI guess it could be considered a superlative?
- senko 3y agoThey are saying this thing at every release.
- varispeed 3y ago
- mnky9800n 3y agoThey really missed out on the chance to call it MK Ultra.
- user6723 3y agoI would gladly pay Apple $30,000, like I will get financing and see this as a new car payment, for a machine where all chips are full open source and documented and detachable and auditable.
- nonrepeating 3y agoFull open source of their latest chips? Make that $30 billion and you’ve got a deal.
- quesera 3y ago> $30 billion No chance. That's one month of revenue. Maybe one quarter of profit. You might get a meeting if you opened with $300 billion, but just to satisfy Tim's curiosity. I bet they'd still turn you down.
- anaganisk 3y agoAt that point, offer it to TSMC, and reserve capacity to make a chip to build one computer and call it PineApple.
- j-kent 3y agogreat, I can't wait to buy a new Mac Air with the most powerful consumer chip ever made paired with 8gb ram and 128g HD. Note: I have a M1 Air that I love, best computer I've ever owned.
- endorphine 3y agoIsn't 8GB too little these days?
- Def_Os 3y agoThat discrepancy is his point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hoorible 3y agoThe MBA line has 256GB standard now.
- schainks 3y agoYou can equip 24GB RAM now, no?
- JohnTHaller 3y agoThe base model M2 SSD is 256GB. But it's 1/2 the speed of the M1 256GB SSD.
- throwaway485 3y agoI have over 2 million Marriott points. On their online store, I can get a Macbook Pro with M2 with a 1TB HD. Or I can get an iPad Pro with a 2TB HD. I know this pain, as a cheapskate with too many points from work travel :(
- Mayora13 3y agoToday, I had an interesting encounter after work when I brought my Framework laptop to the store. I had a chance to closely compare it with the current MacBook Pro line and wanted to share some thoughts. Firstly, I was not particularly impressed with the MacBook Pro cases and haptics. The build quality seems to have deteriorated compared to previous iterations. Granted, this could be a matter of personal preference, but it seems to me that Apple's relentless pursuit of thinness and lightness has come at the expense of the premium, robust feel of their older MacBook models. As for the haptic feedback, it felt a bit off. Earlier MacBooks had a satisfying clickiness and responsiveness, but that didn't seem to be the case with the current model I tested. I suppose this could be subjective, and perhaps some may prefer the current haptic approach. On a positive note, the brightness of the screen was impressive - it certainly stood out. Apple has always been at the forefront of display technology and it's evident they are maintaining their standards in that regard. Comparing with other laptops in the store, I couldn't help but appreciate the Framework's design and user-focused approach even more. Other laptops felt plasticky and cheap in comparison, with subpar build quality and aesthetic. Despite the MacBook's stellar screen, it's hard to beat the Framework when it comes to customization, repairability, and the ethos of the company. It's a refreshing change in an industry that seems to be moving towards sealed units that discourage user modification and repairs. The old MacBooks were in a different league altogether, and it's disheartening to see how things have evolved. I would love to see a return to a focus on robust build quality and user experience beyond just raw specifications and form factor.
- stonegray 3y ago> relentless pursuit of thinness and lightness has come at the expense of the premium, robust feel of their older MacBook models. The 14/16" are significantly thicker and heavier than previous generations, both in actual measurements and in appearance (as they don't taper at the edge like they have since the 2012) I truly cannot imagine looking at that and thinking any part of the design was imagined with the words "thinness and lightness" in the mind.
- antipaul 3y ago"Apple's relentless pursuit of thinness and lightness" That ended in the previous generation. The 12" MacBook and previous-gen (final-gen Intel) MacBook pros were the most beautiful and the most thin/light MacBooks With the new MB Pros, Apple went with much more compromise towards functionality and quality. I think they are almost flawless – just much more ugly than previous gen! I am not sure about the Airs – and maybe that's your primary comparison.
- qweifjoiOIJ32 3y agoOn desktop benchmarks no Apple CPU in top 20 (AMD beats the most powerful apple chip by 2.5 times): https://www.cpubenchmark.net/desktop.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/desktop.html On laptops it looks the same (AMD is 2.x times faster): https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html So where is the astonishing performance Apple claims all the time? Yes, I know it consumes less power, but my laptop is docked 95% of the time, so I'd rather have more power than more battery life.
- kitsunesoba 3y agoGood perf per watt means more than just good battery life. It also means the laptop's fans won't be screaming like the machine is being burned alive when being pushed, that the chassis won't get uncomfortably hot easily, and and performance doesn't fall off of a cliff when you're unplugged. In short, it's about balance, which I think is just as important as raw performance for most people.
- zamadatix 3y agoThe M2 Ultra will definitely crack the top 20 but it's no surprise a 24 core option is beat by 64 core competition, which tops that chart. Usually their performance claims are about previously available x86 Mac workstations, not x86 in general. You could even go beyond that chart and look at dual socket AMD to get 192 cores, you just won't be able to run a supported macOS on it. Their more traditional "vs the rest of the industry" performance claims on laptops aim towards the single thread performance of M2. While maybe not a chart topper a year later, it's quite a far cry from the 2.5x difference you've found there. In the end though, if all you want is the fastest, loudest, most plugged in laptop you can just go out and buy a laptop chassis which accepts desktop CPUs from the likes of Clevo et al.
- alpaca128 3y agoI don't get paid to run benchmarks, so I couldn't care less what the high scores are. My M2 laptop is 3x as fast as my previous laptop while being completely silent, making it very enjoyable to work with.
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- linuxhansl 3y agoI mentioned this before... As a Linux user I am getting more and more afraid of being left behind. In the end this spurring Intel to innovate, but will it be enough? I realize there are some Linux' running on Apple H/W, but due to do the closed nature (H/W specs anyone?) it will already be inferior to MacOS. I have a MacBook from work, and strongly dislike (hate?) MacOS.
- dangus 3y agoThis worry you have is only a worry if we assume that the M2 Ultra is unmatched by AMD and Intel. In reality, Apple doesn't make the fastest desktop chips money can buy. Unbiased benchmarks need to be compared. Apple's press release doesn't compare performance to x86 with quantitative benchmarks and that is intentional. Don't just believe Apple when they tell us that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. For one thing, both Nvidia and AMD kick the pants out of Apple's graphics solution. Nothing comes close to touching the RTX 4090. High memory workloads are completely off the table with Apple systems now. The previous Intel Mac Pro could handle more memory (1.5TB compared to 192GB), and it was modular. Apple Silicon only really shines in performance per watt, but once you need a higher level of performance you reach a point where Apple has no product to compete. In a desktop environment, the advantages of Apple Silicon get whittled away.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mo_42 3y agoThe people from Asahi Linux are doing an exceptional job. They’re moving pretty fast. So you won’t have to wait too long. I'm using Asahi Linux on my M1 because I dislike MacOS. I would already recommend it for a Mac Mini but not for a MacBook.
- stavros 3y agoWhy not for a Macbook? What are the issues?
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- tough 3y agoWaiting for MK2 Ultra
- aqme28 3y agoSo there's an M2 Ultra, M2 Max, and M2 Pro. I hate this naming scheme. It is totally unclear how you're supposed to order those in terms of performance.
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI think Apple kind of realizes that the naming doesn't really matter. Even with the Intel i-series, you're not looking at the model name to make a purchase decision. You're looking at the technical specs.
- chii 3y agowhich makes the name redundantly uninformative! So why not make the differentiating technical spec part of the name, or have something similar like M2 XXXXX where XXXXX is the number being comparable?
- SkyPuncher 3y agoIt still has some value. It indicates a group of product. Non-sequential naming also gives them the flexibility to shift new products into the category over time. They do this with the M1/M2 in the iPad.
- Toutouxc 3y agoBecause that's what the others are doing with their i6-12345B and it makes even less sense than three simple names anyone can memorize in two minutes.
- postalrat 3y agoNah, Apple thinks these names are perfect.
- aqme28 3y agoI think it's more comparable to GPU naming. 40XX gives me the generation, and the XX part (e.g. "4060"/"3080 Ti", etc gives me relative the performance within that group. Except instead of something informative, Apple just goes with an arbitrary word that means "the best."
- ofou 3y agoCheck here, Geekbench performance per dollar. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12cza6j1QuSMbc5cOf3pBmjtyCUnc6cADPdFBJSrsp8k/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12cza6j1QuSMbc5cOf3pB...
- metta2uall 3y ago"Better for the Environment"... What's even better for the environment is not buying a new computer unless it's actually necessary.. my refurbished M1 Air 8GB still works great - I can comfortably run a Debian VM with Vivaldi & VS Code (doing .NET development), and when I need a GPU for a few hours a month I just use a cloud instance.
- lincpa 3y ago[dead]
- THENATHE 3y agoI find it laughable that they advertise “gaming performance” every year and fail to mention that they’ve actively kept gaming out of of the apple ecosystem for essentially forever (or at least as long as I can remember)