4 ms·

Maybe I'm a naive fanboy, but I would put my money on Apple catching Nvidia before AMD or Intel.

by avidphantasm 2y ago

preisschild 2y ago
But Apple doesn't produce servers or server hardware.
- threecheese 2y ago
  Good point; if the Mx architecture does prove to be a viable competitor to Nvidia/AMD for training and/or inference, do you think Apple would enter the server market? They continue to diversify on the consumer side, I wonder if they have their eye on the business market; I am not sure if their general strategy of “prettier is better” would work well there though.
- sroussey 2y ago
  They should buy Grok (the hardware inference company, not the lame twitter bot).
- bbatha 2y ago
  Currently no, but the XServe was a product for a decade. And they have built an internal ML cloud, presumably with rack mountable hardware. The bigger issue for apple IMO is they ditched the server features of their OS and they're not going to sell a hypothetical M4ultra Xserve with linux.
- ein0p 2y ago
  I don’t think that’s true anymore: see WWDC presentation about Private Cloud
- fmajid 2y ago
  Clearly they are building their own Apple Silicon powered servers for their Private Computing Cloud, even if it is not sold to outsiders like the XServe used to be.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dragontamer 2y ago
Apple doesn't have any hardware SIMD technology that I'm aware of. At best, Apple has Metal API which iOS video games use. I guess there's a level of SIMD-compute expertise here, but it'd take a lot of investment to turn that into a full scale GPU that tangos with Supercomputers. Software is a bit piece of the puzzle for sure, but Metal isn't ready for prime time. I'd say Apple is ahead of Intel (Intel keeps wasting their time and collapsing their own progress from Xeon Phi / Battlemage / etc. etc. Intel cannot keep investing in its own stuff to reach critical mass). Intel does have OneAPI but given how many times Intel collapses everything and starts over again, I'm not sure how long OneAPI will last. But Apple vs AMD? AMD 100% understands SIMD compute and has decades worth of investments in it. The only problem with AMD is that they don't have the raw cash to build out their expertise to cover software, so AMD has to rely upon Microsoft (DirectX), Vulkan, or whatever. ROCm may have its warts, but it does represent over a decade of software development too (especially when we consider that ROCm was "Boltzmann", which had several years of use before it came out as ROCm). ------- AMD ain't perfect. They had a little diversion with C++Amp with Microsoft (and this served as the API for Boltzmann / early ROCm). But the overall path AMD is making at least makes sense, if a bit suboptimal compared to NVidia's huge efforts into CUDA. I'd definitely rate AMD's efforts above Apple's Metal.
- ein0p 2y ago
  Their GPUs are literally “hardware SIMD”, and Metal is conceptually very close to CUDA. Apple just chooses to focus on consumer hardware instead.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Apple makes a better consumer GPU than AMD does. M3 Max's GPU is significantly more efficient in perf/watt than RDNA3, already has better ray tracing performance, and is even faster than a 7900XT desktop GPU in Blender.[0] [0]https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=HIP&compute_type=METAL&compute_type=ONEAPI&blender_version=4.1.0&group_by=device_name https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=...
  - captainbland 2y ago

Maybe I'm a naive fanboy, but I would put my money on Apple catching Nvidia before AMD or Intel.

preisschild 2y ago

But Apple doesn't produce servers or server hardware.

threecheese 2y ago
Good point; if the Mx architecture does prove to be a viable competitor to Nvidia/AMD for training and/or inference, do you think Apple would enter the server market? They continue to diversify on the consumer side, I wonder if they have their eye on the business market; I am not sure if their general strategy of “prettier is better” would work well there though.
sroussey 2y ago
They should buy Grok (the hardware inference company, not the lame twitter bot).
bbatha 2y ago
Currently no, but the XServe was a product for a decade. And they have built an internal ML cloud, presumably with rack mountable hardware. The bigger issue for apple IMO is they ditched the server features of their OS and they're not going to sell a hypothetical M4ultra Xserve with linux.
ein0p 2y ago
I don’t think that’s true anymore: see WWDC presentation about Private Cloud
fmajid 2y ago
Clearly they are building their own Apple Silicon powered servers for their Private Computing Cloud, even if it is not sold to outsiders like the XServe used to be.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dragontamer 2y ago

Apple doesn't have any hardware SIMD technology that I'm aware of. At best, Apple has Metal API which iOS video games use. I guess there's a level of SIMD-compute expertise here, but it'd take a lot of investment to turn that into a full scale GPU that tangos with Supercomputers. Software is a bit piece of the puzzle for sure, but Metal isn't ready for prime time. I'd say Apple is ahead of Intel (Intel keeps wasting their time and collapsing their own progress from Xeon Phi / Battlemage / etc. etc. Intel cannot keep investing in its own stuff to reach critical mass). Intel does have OneAPI but given how many times Intel collapses everything and starts over again, I'm not sure how long OneAPI will last. But Apple vs AMD? AMD 100% understands SIMD compute and has decades worth of investments in it. The only problem with AMD is that they don't have the raw cash to build out their expertise to cover software, so AMD has to rely upon Microsoft (DirectX), Vulkan, or whatever. ROCm may have its warts, but it does represent over a decade of software development too (especially when we consider that ROCm was "Boltzmann", which had several years of use before it came out as ROCm). ------- AMD ain't perfect. They had a little diversion with C++Amp with Microsoft (and this served as the API for Boltzmann / early ROCm). But the overall path AMD is making at least makes sense, if a bit suboptimal compared to NVidia's huge efforts into CUDA. I'd definitely rate AMD's efforts above Apple's Metal.

ein0p 2y ago
Their GPUs are literally “hardware SIMD”, and Metal is conceptually very close to CUDA. Apple just chooses to focus on consumer hardware instead.
aurareturn 2y ago
Apple makes a better consumer GPU than AMD does. M3 Max's GPU is significantly more efficient in perf/watt than RDNA3, already has better ray tracing performance, and is even faster than a 7900XT desktop GPU in Blender.[0] [0]https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=HIP&compute_type=METAL&compute_type=ONEAPI&blender_version=4.1.0&group_by=device_name https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=...
- captainbland 2y ago