5 ms·

Given that there are several brands of Mac mini server rack mount kits on the market, clearly there is a demand for Apple hardware in the server room. If nothi

Given that there are several brands of Mac mini server rack mount kits on the market, clearly there is a demand for Apple hardware in the server room. If nothing else they would be a nice alternative to rack mount Mac Pros for a build farm. I would think the performance per watt would be very competitive with other server vendors on the market as well.

smoldesu 3y ago
They fill a niche, and so did Xserve. It had an accompanying software suite that was fully fleshed out to an Apple user's likings. The biggest gap right now (afaik) is Apple's virtualization limits. Regardless of the cores in your system, any Mac can host no more than 2 instances of MacOS. It's a huge kneecap to how Macs can be used as a server, and a death-blow to any serious hosting company that wants to provision them as a virtual resource. > I would think the performance per watt would be very competitive with other server vendors on the market as well. I can go get a 4 core Ampere ARM instance for free. The market goes so much cheaper than Apple's CPUs it's not even funny. Performance-wise, Apple kinda got their lunch ate by Nvidia's Grace server. There isn't really a demand to fill for high-performance ARM computing, and the cheap end goes so cheap that Apple can't even touch them. I see two ways for Apple to escape this: 1. They can double-down on their ecosystem investments to create a "CUDA-killer" and accompanying hardware, spending tens-of-billions of dollars across multiple years to obsolete Nvidia's industry ties. 2. Initiate or join an Open Source pact to write a CUDA replacement or translator a-la Vulkan/DXVK that gives vendors no choice but to abandon Nvidia. Of course, the easier play is to just pretend all of this is beneath you and continue building your current ecosystem. It's what I would do, and I don't see a rational reason why Tim Cook would read your pitch and greenlight a project like that.
- ta988 3y ago
  Where do you get a 4 core ampere for free?
  - tagyro 3y ago
    Not OP, but I presume he is referring to Oracle Cloud, as they offer "free-forever" 4 core (24 Gb RAM) instances. Fairly good deal, the only problem being that it's Oracle. ps. if you do decide to give them a try, be sure to upgrade to "pay-as-you-go" (and never go beyond the free offering) otherwise they will close your account without any warning (ask me how I know).
    - ta988 3y ago
      Thanks! that's good to know. As much as I like free things I may stay away from that one.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        Suit yourself. It's great for the stuff I don't want to host on my homeserver, like AI Discord bots and big remote builds. That being said, I wouldn't trust the server as far as I could throw it. It's a bad deal unless you have ephemeral compute requirements that don't matter too much.
- re-thc 3y ago
  > I don't see a rational reason why Tim Cook would read your pitch and greenlight a project like that. Why not? Even just Apple's internal expense could justify it - for the same reason Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc all dog food their own cloud. Apple currently pays AWS, Akamai, Cloudflare, etc lots of $$$. As the current focus is to expand on services and managed offerings you would focus on controlling such a cost (as is typical Apple). > I can go get a 4 core Ampere ARM instance for free. The market goes so much cheaper than Apple's CPUs it's not even funny. Is the market full of people that only use 4 cores? If that was really the case AWS would have closed shop already instead of being the market leader. It's not like Oracle doesn't charge you for anything else. > Apple kinda got their lunch ate by Nvidia's Grace server And where is Grace? Which cloud currently? It doesn't work that way. If all you think about a server and its ecosystem is hardware then lots of Android phones have better hardware than iphone e.g. in screens, battery life, etc. Was that really the deciding factor? No. I mean by your logic, AMD's EPYC has been winning Intel Xeon's by years. Has Xeon been decimated? No. There's still room for both. AMD can't even produce enough. Considering Apple can exclusive lock TSMC down for a year on bleeding edge, who can really compete if Apple was in?
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > Is the market full of people that only use 4 cores Ampere CPUs on Oracle, Hetzner and (I assume?) Azure are still remarkable cheap compared to Intel/AMD if they are sufficient for your workflows. I'm not sure if the margins in this market are high enough for Apple to enter it and they would probably still have issues scaling production capacity if they are serious about it.
    - re-thc 3y ago
      > Ampere CPUs on Oracle, Hetzner and (I assume?) Azure are still remarkable cheap compared to Intel/AMD if they are sufficient for your workflows. Hetzner has always been there. It didn't impact Intel/AMD use cases. There are lots of cheap providers (since the start of time) and I doubt that's the space Apple would ever get into.
      - 3y ago

smoldesu 3y ago

They fill a niche, and so did Xserve. It had an accompanying software suite that was fully fleshed out to an Apple user's likings. The biggest gap right now (afaik) is Apple's virtualization limits. Regardless of the cores in your system, any Mac can host no more than 2 instances of MacOS. It's a huge kneecap to how Macs can be used as a server, and a death-blow to any serious hosting company that wants to provision them as a virtual resource. > I would think the performance per watt would be very competitive with other server vendors on the market as well. I can go get a 4 core Ampere ARM instance for free. The market goes so much cheaper than Apple's CPUs it's not even funny. Performance-wise, Apple kinda got their lunch ate by Nvidia's Grace server. There isn't really a demand to fill for high-performance ARM computing, and the cheap end goes so cheap that Apple can't even touch them. I see two ways for Apple to escape this: 1. They can double-down on their ecosystem investments to create a "CUDA-killer" and accompanying hardware, spending tens-of-billions of dollars across multiple years to obsolete Nvidia's industry ties. 2. Initiate or join an Open Source pact to write a CUDA replacement or translator a-la Vulkan/DXVK that gives vendors no choice but to abandon Nvidia. Of course, the easier play is to just pretend all of this is beneath you and continue building your current ecosystem. It's what I would do, and I don't see a rational reason why Tim Cook would read your pitch and greenlight a project like that.

ta988 3y ago
Where do you get a 4 core ampere for free?
- tagyro 3y ago
  Not OP, but I presume he is referring to Oracle Cloud, as they offer "free-forever" 4 core (24 Gb RAM) instances. Fairly good deal, the only problem being that it's Oracle. ps. if you do decide to give them a try, be sure to upgrade to "pay-as-you-go" (and never go beyond the free offering) otherwise they will close your account without any warning (ask me how I know).
  - ta988 3y ago
    Thanks! that's good to know. As much as I like free things I may stay away from that one.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Suit yourself. It's great for the stuff I don't want to host on my homeserver, like AI Discord bots and big remote builds. That being said, I wouldn't trust the server as far as I could throw it. It's a bad deal unless you have ephemeral compute requirements that don't matter too much.
re-thc 3y ago
> I don't see a rational reason why Tim Cook would read your pitch and greenlight a project like that. Why not? Even just Apple's internal expense could justify it - for the same reason Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc all dog food their own cloud. Apple currently pays AWS, Akamai, Cloudflare, etc lots of $$$. As the current focus is to expand on services and managed offerings you would focus on controlling such a cost (as is typical Apple). > I can go get a 4 core Ampere ARM instance for free. The market goes so much cheaper than Apple's CPUs it's not even funny. Is the market full of people that only use 4 cores? If that was really the case AWS would have closed shop already instead of being the market leader. It's not like Oracle doesn't charge you for anything else. > Apple kinda got their lunch ate by Nvidia's Grace server And where is Grace? Which cloud currently? It doesn't work that way. If all you think about a server and its ecosystem is hardware then lots of Android phones have better hardware than iphone e.g. in screens, battery life, etc. Was that really the deciding factor? No. I mean by your logic, AMD's EPYC has been winning Intel Xeon's by years. Has Xeon been decimated? No. There's still room for both. AMD can't even produce enough. Considering Apple can exclusive lock TSMC down for a year on bleeding edge, who can really compete if Apple was in?
- qwytw 3y ago
  > Is the market full of people that only use 4 cores Ampere CPUs on Oracle, Hetzner and (I assume?) Azure are still remarkable cheap compared to Intel/AMD if they are sufficient for your workflows. I'm not sure if the margins in this market are high enough for Apple to enter it and they would probably still have issues scaling production capacity if they are serious about it.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > Ampere CPUs on Oracle, Hetzner and (I assume?) Azure are still remarkable cheap compared to Intel/AMD if they are sufficient for your workflows. Hetzner has always been there. It didn't impact Intel/AMD use cases. There are lots of cheap providers (since the start of time) and I doubt that's the space Apple would ever get into.
    - 3y ago