4 ms·

GX10 vs MacBook Pro M4 Max: - Price: $3k / $5k - Memory: same (128GB) - Memory bandwidth: ~273GB/s / 546GB/sec - SSD: same (1 TB) - GPU advantage: ~5x-10x

GX10 vs MacBook Pro M4 Max: - Price: $3k / $5k - Memory: same (128GB) - Memory bandwidth: ~273GB/s / 546GB/sec - SSD: same (1 TB) - GPU advantage: ~5x-10x depending on memory bottleneck - Network: same 10Gbe (via TB) - Direct cluster: 200Gb / 80Gb - Portable: No / Yes - Free Mac included: No / Yes - Free monitor: No / Yes - Linux out of the box: Yes / No - CUDA Dev environment: Yes : No

tassadarforaiur 11mo ago
On the networking side. M4 max does have thunderbolt 5, 80gbps advertised. Would ip over TB not allow for significantly faster interconnects when clustering Macs?
- WhitneyLand 11mo ago
  Made the correction to 80Gb/sec thank you. W.r.t ip, the fastest I’m aware of is 25Gb/s via TB5 adapters like from Sonnet.
  - tgma 11mo ago
    You should not be using an adapter to get IP over Thunderbolt. Just connect a Thunderbolt5 cable to both machines.
    - WhitneyLand 11mo ago
      For point to point sure, but if you want to connect multiple machines in an actual fabric you’ll need some kind of network interop. The Asus clustering speed is not limited to p2p.
      - tgma 11mo ago
        Fair enough. On the other hand you have more thunderbolts to make up a clique mesh of seven point to point Macs.
- wmf 11mo ago
  Yes, people use Thundebolt networking to build Mac AI clusters. The Spark has 200G Ethernet that is even faster though.
josefresco 11mo ago
> Free monitor: No / Yes How is the monitor "free" if the Mac costs more?
bigyabai 11mo ago
> Linux out of the box: Yes / No For homelab use, this is the only thing that matters to me.
hasperdi 11mo ago
AMD 395+ is more bang for the buck IMO. GMKtec EVO-X2 vs GX10 vs MacBook Pro M4 Max Price: $2,199.99 / $3,000 / $5,000 CPU: Ryzen AI Max 395+ (Strix Halo, 16C/32T) / NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB200 Superchip (20-core ARM v9.2) / Apple M4 Max (12C) GPU: Radeon 890M (RDNA3 iGPU) / Integrated Blackwell GPU (up to 1 PFLOP FP4) / 40-core integrated GPU Memory: 128GB LPDDR5X / 128GB LPDDR5X unified / 128GB unified Memory bandwidth: ???GB/s / ~500GB/s / ~546GB/s SSD: 1TB PCIe 4.0 / 4TB PCIe 5.0 / 1TB NVMe GPU advantage: Similar (EVO-X2 trades blows with GB10 depending on model and framework) Network: 2.5GbE / 10GbE / 10GbE (via TB) Direct cluster: 40Gb (USB4/TB4) / 200Gb / 80Gb Portable: Semi (compact desktop) / No / Yes Free Mac included: No / No / Yes Free monitor: No / No / Yes Linux out of the box: Yes / Yes / No CUDA dev environment: No (ROCm) / Yes / No
- wtallis 11mo ago
  The DGX Spark, Ascent GX10, and related machines have no relation to NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB200. The chip they are based on is called GB10, and is architecturally very different from NVIDIA's datacenter solutions, in addition to being vastly smaller and less powerful. They don't have anything resembling the Grace CPU NVIDIA used in Grace Hopper and Grace Blackwell datacenter products. The CPU portion of GB10 is a Mediatek phone chip's CPU complex that metastasized, not NVIDIA's datacenter CPU cut down.
  - tgma 11mo ago
    Where does MediaTek come into the picture? Don't they take some ARM Cortex IP directly from ARM just like MediaTek and many others?
    - wtallis 11mo ago
      Mediatek is in the picture because NVIDIA outsourced everything in GB10 but the GPU to Mediatek. GB10 is two chiplets, and the larger one is from Mediatek. Yes, Mediatek uses off the shelf ARM CPU core IP, but they still had to make a lot of decisions about how to implement it: how many cores, what cluster and cache arrangements, none of which resemble NVIDIA's Grace CPU.

tassadarforaiur 11mo ago

On the networking side. M4 max does have thunderbolt 5, 80gbps advertised. Would ip over TB not allow for significantly faster interconnects when clustering Macs?

WhitneyLand 11mo ago
Made the correction to 80Gb/sec thank you. W.r.t ip, the fastest I’m aware of is 25Gb/s via TB5 adapters like from Sonnet.
- tgma 11mo ago
  You should not be using an adapter to get IP over Thunderbolt. Just connect a Thunderbolt5 cable to both machines.
  - WhitneyLand 11mo ago
    For point to point sure, but if you want to connect multiple machines in an actual fabric you’ll need some kind of network interop. The Asus clustering speed is not limited to p2p.
    - tgma 11mo ago
      Fair enough. On the other hand you have more thunderbolts to make up a clique mesh of seven point to point Macs.
wmf 11mo ago
Yes, people use Thundebolt networking to build Mac AI clusters. The Spark has 200G Ethernet that is even faster though.

josefresco 11mo ago

> Free monitor: No / Yes How is the monitor "free" if the Mac costs more?

bigyabai 11mo ago

> Linux out of the box: Yes / No For homelab use, this is the only thing that matters to me.

hasperdi 11mo ago

AMD 395+ is more bang for the buck IMO. GMKtec EVO-X2 vs GX10 vs MacBook Pro M4 Max Price: $2,199.99 / $3,000 / $5,000 CPU: Ryzen AI Max 395+ (Strix Halo, 16C/32T) / NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB200 Superchip (20-core ARM v9.2) / Apple M4 Max (12C) GPU: Radeon 890M (RDNA3 iGPU) / Integrated Blackwell GPU (up to 1 PFLOP FP4) / 40-core integrated GPU Memory: 128GB LPDDR5X / 128GB LPDDR5X unified / 128GB unified Memory bandwidth: ???GB/s / ~500GB/s / ~546GB/s SSD: 1TB PCIe 4.0 / 4TB PCIe 5.0 / 1TB NVMe GPU advantage: Similar (EVO-X2 trades blows with GB10 depending on model and framework) Network: 2.5GbE / 10GbE / 10GbE (via TB) Direct cluster: 40Gb (USB4/TB4) / 200Gb / 80Gb Portable: Semi (compact desktop) / No / Yes Free Mac included: No / No / Yes Free monitor: No / No / Yes Linux out of the box: Yes / Yes / No CUDA dev environment: No (ROCm) / Yes / No

wtallis 11mo ago
The DGX Spark, Ascent GX10, and related machines have no relation to NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB200. The chip they are based on is called GB10, and is architecturally very different from NVIDIA's datacenter solutions, in addition to being vastly smaller and less powerful. They don't have anything resembling the Grace CPU NVIDIA used in Grace Hopper and Grace Blackwell datacenter products. The CPU portion of GB10 is a Mediatek phone chip's CPU complex that metastasized, not NVIDIA's datacenter CPU cut down.
- tgma 11mo ago
  Where does MediaTek come into the picture? Don't they take some ARM Cortex IP directly from ARM just like MediaTek and many others?
  - wtallis 11mo ago
    Mediatek is in the picture because NVIDIA outsourced everything in GB10 but the GPU to Mediatek. GB10 is two chiplets, and the larger one is from Mediatek. Yes, Mediatek uses off the shelf ARM CPU core IP, but they still had to make a lot of decisions about how to implement it: how many cores, what cluster and cache arrangements, none of which resemble NVIDIA's Grace CPU.