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Chip? Yes. Product? Not necessarily... It's not completely out of the question that the 512gb version of M3 Ultra was built for their internal Apple silicon se

Chip? Yes. Product? Not necessarily... It's not completely out of the question that the 512gb version of M3 Ultra was built for their internal Apple silicon servers powering Private Compute Cloud, but not intended for consumer release, until a compelling use case suddenly arrived. I don't _think_ this is what happened, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it impossible.

forrestthewoods 2y ago
DeepSeek R1 came out Jan 20. Literally impossible.
- reitzensteinm 2y ago
  The scenario is that the 512gb M3 Ultra was validated for the Mac Studio, and in volume production for their servers, but a business decision was made to not offer more than a 256gb SKU for Mac Studio. I don't think this happened, but it's absolutely not "literally impossible". Engineering takes time, artificial segmentation can be changed much more quickly.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    From “internal only” to “delivered to customers” in 6 weeks is literally impossible.
    - ryao 2y ago
      This change is mostly just using higher density ICs on the assembly line and printing different box art with a SKU change. It does not take much time, especially if they had planned it as a possible product just in case management changed its mind.
jahewson 2y ago
That's absurd. Fabing custom silicon is not something anybody does for a few thousand internal servers. The unit economics simply don't work. Plus Apple is using OpenAI to provide its larger models anyway, so the need never even existed.
- brookst 2y ago
  Apple is positively building custom servers, and quantities are closer to the 100k range than 1000 [0] But I agree they are not using m3 ultra for that. It wouldn’t make any sense. 0. https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/06/11/apple_built_ai_cloud_servers_os/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/06/11/apple_built_ai_cl...
- teknologist 2y ago
  That could be why they're also selling it as the Mac Studio M3 Ultra

forrestthewoods 2y ago

DeepSeek R1 came out Jan 20. Literally impossible.

reitzensteinm 2y ago
The scenario is that the 512gb M3 Ultra was validated for the Mac Studio, and in volume production for their servers, but a business decision was made to not offer more than a 256gb SKU for Mac Studio. I don't think this happened, but it's absolutely not "literally impossible". Engineering takes time, artificial segmentation can be changed much more quickly.
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  From “internal only” to “delivered to customers” in 6 weeks is literally impossible.
  - ryao 2y ago
    This change is mostly just using higher density ICs on the assembly line and printing different box art with a SKU change. It does not take much time, especially if they had planned it as a possible product just in case management changed its mind.

jahewson 2y ago

That's absurd. Fabing custom silicon is not something anybody does for a few thousand internal servers. The unit economics simply don't work. Plus Apple is using OpenAI to provide its larger models anyway, so the need never even existed.

brookst 2y ago
Apple is positively building custom servers, and quantities are closer to the 100k range than 1000 [0] But I agree they are not using m3 ultra for that. It wouldn’t make any sense. 0. https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/06/11/apple_built_ai_cloud_servers_os/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/06/11/apple_built_ai_cl...
teknologist 2y ago
That could be why they're also selling it as the Mac Studio M3 Ultra