5 ms·

Keep in mind the minimum configuration that has 512GB of unified RAM is $9,499.

by AlchemistCamp 2y ago

BoredPositron 2y ago
Still cheap if the only thing you look for is vram.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  This chip has 0GB vram. It has 8 channel lpddr5.
  - BoredPositron 2y ago
    Fun at parties and stuff.
  - imatrix 2y ago
    This is not correct. It is like VRAM, not like normal PC RAM. Lowest latency of DDR5-6400 on normal PC starting at 60ns+ Lowest latency of VRAM on GeForce RTX 4090 starting at 14 ns Lowest latency of Apple M1 Memory starting at 5 ns, its more like L3 cache And on Apple M chip, this ultrafast memory is available for CPU, GPU and NPU. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4090 https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4...
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      You are misreading that chart. 5ns is the L2 latency. The ram latency from your source is 111 ms (once the size gets bigger than the size of the cache). The ram on a 4090 is 240 ns https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4090 https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4...
nsteel 2y ago
And how is it only £9,699.00!! Does that dollar price include sales tax or are Brits finally getting a bargain?
- vr46 2y ago
  The US prices never include state sales tax IIRC. Maybe we're finally getting some parity.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    You could always buy one at an apple store without sales tax (e.g. Portland Oregon). But they might not have that one in stock...
- mastax 2y ago
  Tariffs perhaps?
- kgwgk 2y ago
  What's the bargain? There is also "parity" in other products like a MacBook Pro from £1,599 / $1,599 or an iPhone 16 from £799 / $799. £9,699 / $9,499 is worse than that!
  - nsteel 2y ago
    The bargain is the lower price in the UK compared to US, once US sales tax is added. It's not like the pound is strong. It's just cheaper in the UK. And you're right, all Apple products are better value in that UK. I'm not used to any electronics being good value in the UK.
    - kgwgk 2y ago
      > It's not like the pound is strong. It's just cheaper in the UK. You know that £9,699 are over $12k, right?
DrBenCarson 2y ago
Cheap relative to the alternatives
stego-tech 2y ago
I cannot express how dirt cheap that pricepoint is for what's on offer, especially when you're comparing it to rackmount servers. By the time you've shoehorned in an nVidia GPU and all that RAM, you're easily looking at 5x that MSRP; sure, you get proper redundancy and extendable storage for that added cost, but now you also need redundant UPSes and have local storage to manage instead of centralized SANs or NASes. For SMBs or Edge deployments where redundancy isn't as critical or budgets aren't as large, this is an incredibly compelling offering...if Apple actually had a competent server OS to layer on top of that hardware, which it does not. If they did, though...whew, I'd be quaking in my boots if I were the usual Enterprise hardware vendors. That's a damn frightening piece of competition.
- cubefox 2y ago
  I assume there is a very good reason why AMD and Intel aren't releasing a similar product.
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    From my outsider perspective, it's pretty straightforward why they don't. In Intel's case, there's ample coverage of the company's lack of direction and complacency on existing hardware, even as their competitors ate away at their moat, year after year. AMD with their EPYC chips taking datacenter share, Apple moving to in-house silicon for their entire product line, Qualcomm and Microsoft partnering with ongoing exploration of ARM solutions. A lack of competency in leadership over that time period has annihilated their lead in an industry they used to single-handedly dictate, and it's unlikely they'll recover that anytime soon. So in a sense, Intel cannot make a similar product, in a timely manner, that competes in this segment. As for AMD, it's a bit more complicated. They're seeing pleasant success in their CPU lineup, and have all but thrown in the towel on higher-end GPUs. The industry has broadly rallied around CUDA instead of OpenCL or other alternatives, especially in the datacenter, and AMD realizes it's a fool's errand to try and compete directly there when it's a monopoly in practice. Instead of squandering capital to compete, they can just continue succeeding and working on their own moat in the areas they specialize in - mid-range GPUs for work and gaming, CPUs targeting consumers and datacenters, and APUs finding their way into game consoles, handhelds, and other consumer devices or Edge compute systems. And that's just getting into the specifics of those two companies. The reality is that any vendor who hasn't already unveiled their own chips or accelerators is coming in at what's perceived to be the "top" of the bubble or market. They'd lack the capital or moat to really build themselves up as a proper competitor, and are more likely to just be acquired in the current regulatory environment (or lack thereof) for a quick payout to shareholders. There's a reason why the persistent rumor of Qualcomm purchasing part or whole of Intel just won't die: the x86 market is rather stagnant, churning out mediocre improvements YoY at growing pricepoints, while ARM and RISC chips continue to innovate on modern manufacturing processes and chip designs. The growth is not in x86, but a juggernaut like Qualcomm would be an ideal buyer for a "dying" or "completed" business like Intel's, where the only thing left to do is constantly iterate for diminishing returns.
baq 2y ago
This is a ‘shut up and take my money’ price, it’ll fly off the shelves.
jread 2y ago
$8549 with 1TB storage
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It can connect to external storage easily.

Keep in mind the minimum configuration that has 512GB of unified RAM is $9,499.

BoredPositron 2y ago

Still cheap if the only thing you look for is vram.

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
This chip has 0GB vram. It has 8 channel lpddr5.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  Fun at parties and stuff.
- imatrix 2y ago
  This is not correct. It is like VRAM, not like normal PC RAM. Lowest latency of DDR5-6400 on normal PC starting at 60ns+ Lowest latency of VRAM on GeForce RTX 4090 starting at 14 ns Lowest latency of Apple M1 Memory starting at 5 ns, its more like L3 cache And on Apple M chip, this ultrafast memory is available for CPU, GPU and NPU. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4090 https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4...
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    You are misreading that chart. 5ns is the L2 latency. The ram latency from your source is 111 ms (once the size gets bigger than the size of the cache). The ram on a 4090 is 240 ns https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4090 https://chipsandcheese.com/p/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4...

nsteel 2y ago

And how is it only £9,699.00!! Does that dollar price include sales tax or are Brits finally getting a bargain?

vr46 2y ago
The US prices never include state sales tax IIRC. Maybe we're finally getting some parity.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  You could always buy one at an apple store without sales tax (e.g. Portland Oregon). But they might not have that one in stock...
mastax 2y ago
Tariffs perhaps?
kgwgk 2y ago
What's the bargain? There is also "parity" in other products like a MacBook Pro from £1,599 / $1,599 or an iPhone 16 from £799 / $799. £9,699 / $9,499 is worse than that!
- nsteel 2y ago
  The bargain is the lower price in the UK compared to US, once US sales tax is added. It's not like the pound is strong. It's just cheaper in the UK. And you're right, all Apple products are better value in that UK. I'm not used to any electronics being good value in the UK.
  - kgwgk 2y ago
    > It's not like the pound is strong. It's just cheaper in the UK. You know that £9,699 are over $12k, right?

DrBenCarson 2y ago

Cheap relative to the alternatives

stego-tech 2y ago

I cannot express how dirt cheap that pricepoint is for what's on offer, especially when you're comparing it to rackmount servers. By the time you've shoehorned in an nVidia GPU and all that RAM, you're easily looking at 5x that MSRP; sure, you get proper redundancy and extendable storage for that added cost, but now you also need redundant UPSes and have local storage to manage instead of centralized SANs or NASes. For SMBs or Edge deployments where redundancy isn't as critical or budgets aren't as large, this is an incredibly compelling offering...if Apple actually had a competent server OS to layer on top of that hardware, which it does not. If they did, though...whew, I'd be quaking in my boots if I were the usual Enterprise hardware vendors. That's a damn frightening piece of competition.

cubefox 2y ago
I assume there is a very good reason why AMD and Intel aren't releasing a similar product.
- stego-tech 2y ago
  From my outsider perspective, it's pretty straightforward why they don't. In Intel's case, there's ample coverage of the company's lack of direction and complacency on existing hardware, even as their competitors ate away at their moat, year after year. AMD with their EPYC chips taking datacenter share, Apple moving to in-house silicon for their entire product line, Qualcomm and Microsoft partnering with ongoing exploration of ARM solutions. A lack of competency in leadership over that time period has annihilated their lead in an industry they used to single-handedly dictate, and it's unlikely they'll recover that anytime soon. So in a sense, Intel cannot make a similar product, in a timely manner, that competes in this segment. As for AMD, it's a bit more complicated. They're seeing pleasant success in their CPU lineup, and have all but thrown in the towel on higher-end GPUs. The industry has broadly rallied around CUDA instead of OpenCL or other alternatives, especially in the datacenter, and AMD realizes it's a fool's errand to try and compete directly there when it's a monopoly in practice. Instead of squandering capital to compete, they can just continue succeeding and working on their own moat in the areas they specialize in - mid-range GPUs for work and gaming, CPUs targeting consumers and datacenters, and APUs finding their way into game consoles, handhelds, and other consumer devices or Edge compute systems. And that's just getting into the specifics of those two companies. The reality is that any vendor who hasn't already unveiled their own chips or accelerators is coming in at what's perceived to be the "top" of the bubble or market. They'd lack the capital or moat to really build themselves up as a proper competitor, and are more likely to just be acquired in the current regulatory environment (or lack thereof) for a quick payout to shareholders. There's a reason why the persistent rumor of Qualcomm purchasing part or whole of Intel just won't die: the x86 market is rather stagnant, churning out mediocre improvements YoY at growing pricepoints, while ARM and RISC chips continue to innovate on modern manufacturing processes and chip designs. The growth is not in x86, but a juggernaut like Qualcomm would be an ideal buyer for a "dying" or "completed" business like Intel's, where the only thing left to do is constantly iterate for diminishing returns.

baq 2y ago

This is a ‘shut up and take my money’ price, it’ll fly off the shelves.

jread 2y ago

$8549 with 1TB storage

rbanffy 2y ago
It can connect to external storage easily.