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The real problem is the amount of Ram they include in the processors, Apple's insistence on keeping 8gb as the base is going to hold them back here.

jmull 2y ago
The amount of ram on their lower end configurations really has nothing to do with this.
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  I'm not sure that a MacBook Pro at £1,899.00 should be a 'lower end configuration', if we are talking bout running AI locally and Apple want's to get in this game, they can't expect everyone to buy an extremely high end machine because their Macbook 'PRO' only has 8gb of RAM.
stetrain 2y ago
What does the base 8GB RAM option have to do with how Apple will spec their servers? The M2 Ultra supports up to 196GB of RAM in the products Apple offers it in.
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  I was responding to a comment that directly said this was a stop gap before they made a real AI centric chip, in that context, the chips will need more ram, until they do, they will be offloading a lot of stuff to the server. The Ultra may support 192gb but that also comes at an insane cost, if AI is going to become mainstream and Apple want to do this on device, the base models are going to need more Ram, processing power on these systems is not the bottleneck, the RAM is.
  - stetrain 2y ago
    The whole context of this article and post is Apple using their own chips on the server for AI tasks. The “stopgap” is using the existing M2 Ultra for this, versus a chip specifically designed for AI server duty. I don’t think the person you responded to is talking about on-device processing. Apple definitely wants to do as much of this on-device as they can of course, that’s just kind of tangential to this discussion on which server chips they are using.
duxup 2y ago
Why would a low end config that they don't have to choose limit them?
1123581321 2y ago
The base on the M2 Ultra was 64GB.
dagmx 2y ago
M2 Ultra machines don’t come in an 8GB variant
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  It's also £4,199.00 for the M2 Ultra studio. I'm talking about more normal machines, all have 8gb including 2 out of the 3 MacBook Pro models, meaning you have to drop two grand for a MacBook Pro with 16gb memory and even that is low for AI.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    But those aren’t the subject of the thread or this article
    - ChildOfChaos 2y ago
      Original comment I was responding too 'Probably as a stop gap solution until they make a true AI-centric chip.' They are using M2 Ultra on the servers because that has enough power / memory, the issue is there baseline machines don't and only have 8gb, hence needing to offload to a server and it's going to be a stop gap until they put more ram in the standard machines.
deleted 2y ago
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jmull 2y ago

The amount of ram on their lower end configurations really has nothing to do with this.

ChildOfChaos 2y ago
I'm not sure that a MacBook Pro at £1,899.00 should be a 'lower end configuration', if we are talking bout running AI locally and Apple want's to get in this game, they can't expect everyone to buy an extremely high end machine because their Macbook 'PRO' only has 8gb of RAM.

stetrain 2y ago

What does the base 8GB RAM option have to do with how Apple will spec their servers? The M2 Ultra supports up to 196GB of RAM in the products Apple offers it in.

ChildOfChaos 2y ago
I was responding to a comment that directly said this was a stop gap before they made a real AI centric chip, in that context, the chips will need more ram, until they do, they will be offloading a lot of stuff to the server. The Ultra may support 192gb but that also comes at an insane cost, if AI is going to become mainstream and Apple want to do this on device, the base models are going to need more Ram, processing power on these systems is not the bottleneck, the RAM is.
- stetrain 2y ago
  The whole context of this article and post is Apple using their own chips on the server for AI tasks. The “stopgap” is using the existing M2 Ultra for this, versus a chip specifically designed for AI server duty. I don’t think the person you responded to is talking about on-device processing. Apple definitely wants to do as much of this on-device as they can of course, that’s just kind of tangential to this discussion on which server chips they are using.

duxup 2y ago

Why would a low end config that they don't have to choose limit them?

1123581321 2y ago

The base on the M2 Ultra was 64GB.

dagmx 2y ago

M2 Ultra machines don’t come in an 8GB variant

ChildOfChaos 2y ago
It's also £4,199.00 for the M2 Ultra studio. I'm talking about more normal machines, all have 8gb including 2 out of the 3 MacBook Pro models, meaning you have to drop two grand for a MacBook Pro with 16gb memory and even that is low for AI.
- dagmx 2y ago
  But those aren’t the subject of the thread or this article
  - ChildOfChaos 2y ago
    Original comment I was responding too 'Probably as a stop gap solution until they make a true AI-centric chip.' They are using M2 Ultra on the servers because that has enough power / memory, the issue is there baseline machines don't and only have 8gb, hence needing to offload to a server and it's going to be a stop gap until they put more ram in the standard machines.

deleted 2y ago

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