4 ms·

They could treat the extreme spec machines separately from the prosumer ones, like they did with the Xserve. Let business customers spec up to 768GB (say) who a

They could treat the extreme spec machines separately from the prosumer ones, like they did with the Xserve. Let business customers spec up to 768GB (say) who are prepared for a $20-25k price tag, while keeping them away from the stores and usual consumer supply chains (Amazon et al). It may not be a big enough market segment for them to care about anymore, though.

SXX 3mo ago
They can do it, but that gonna need to be different SKU not Mac Studio. Otherwise news will be full of discussions about Apple price hike from $8000 to $24,000 or who the hell knows $48,000. So yeah the only way I see them selling it is usual "call us" enterprise price tag. But since its not what Apple usually do its easier to sell 4x Mac Studio 256GB RAM boxes with interconnect for lets say $12,000 - $15,000 each.
- porphyra 3mo ago
  Imagine if they bring back the Mac Pro with 768GB of ram to compete with the $100k DGX Station.
  - matt-p 3mo ago
    A very good idea, the Mac Pro also had a rack mount option didn't it? That would be the kind of thing you could sell as many as you could make.
    - bigyabai 3mo ago
      > That would be the kind of thing you could sell as many as you could make. People said that about the M1 Ultra Mac Pro, a few years before it was discontinued. I don't think there are many HPC customers looking at Apple hardware.
  - newsclues 3mo ago
    The timing of the demise of the Mac Pro has been about as bad as the Steam Machine launch timing.
    - icedchai 3mo ago
      You mean the Mac Pro that was still on the M2 and hadn't been updated for 3+ years?
- matt-p 3mo ago
  I don't think it's needs 'call us' just a separate SKU, I mean if they called it Xserve Ultra and it was just a studio in a 1u format with dual PSUs and extra RAM, it would fly off the shelves.
  - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
    Isn't that the same thing you can get from ordinary 2S Epyc/Xeon servers at a similar price that have 24 memory channels (when the M3 Ultra has the equivalent of 16)? And the reason people rarely use that for AI is that the enterprise GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are only moderately more expensive but are significantly faster because they use HBM instead of DDR5.
    - matt-p 3mo ago
      Yeah kind of, I think a 24 channels DDR5 works out approx 1TB/s, but the cost is astronomical, a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. You also get to use the GPU/NPU cores of the mac vs CPU only on the servers. M5 ultra studio with 128GB RAM could probably beat out a sever with a RTX 6000 pro at half the price.
      - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
        24 channels of DDR5-6400 is 1.2TB/s, M3 ultra is 0.8TB/s. They both use DDR5-6400. > a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. A barebones 2S system with no CPUs or memory is ~$2000, a pair of 16 core CPUs another ~$1000 each, and then however much memory you want. The price seems pretty comparable. The "problem" with doing this is actually that 128GB is too little memory, because you want to populate all the channels, but even using 16GB sticks, 24x16GB is already 384GB. > You also get to use the GPU/NPU cores of the mac vs CPU only on the servers. You only need enough cores to make sure the bottleneck is memory bandwidth.
        spwa4 3mo ago
        > but even using 16GB sticks, 24x16GB is already 384GB. Question: you need 16GB sticks because they're the smallest doublesided ones, which you need for maximum BW, right? Otherwise why not 8G?
rdsubhas 3mo ago
> Let business customers spec up to 768GB who are prepared for a $20-25k price tag There is a clear difference between $25k and $100k. 64 iPhones at retail price is already around $64k. For something at 768GB to be profitable at Apple's terms, this has to retail at $100k for it to be profitable. That was the OP's point.
andy_ppp 3mo ago
Honestly you're still looking at (from my understanding) ~3 minutes prefill (TTFT) even with architectural improvements and so on with a 32k context window (against a large model). How is this going to be competitive with Nvidia and all of the tricks massive scale get's you to parallelise context across many machines?
- mrngld 3mo ago
  Is it supposed to be? I think the point with some of these Macs is you get the capability in something the size of a heatsink from Intel's Netburst architecture era, or a Macbook light enough to stick in a backpack and take with you to lunch. If you're talking about chaining together multiple GPUs you're talking about a different game -- I suspect, anyway. Seems like a high-spec Mac would be good for development and testing. Arrays of GPUs, better aimed at production use.
waffletower 3mo ago
They'll sell more $20-25k Macs when Goldman green lights Apple Card credit limits that will fit one of them.
- zerohp 3mo ago
  Apple Card already offers credit limits high enough for it

SXX 3mo ago

They can do it, but that gonna need to be different SKU not Mac Studio. Otherwise news will be full of discussions about Apple price hike from $8000 to $24,000 or who the hell knows $48,000. So yeah the only way I see them selling it is usual "call us" enterprise price tag. But since its not what Apple usually do its easier to sell 4x Mac Studio 256GB RAM boxes with interconnect for lets say $12,000 - $15,000 each.

porphyra 3mo ago
Imagine if they bring back the Mac Pro with 768GB of ram to compete with the $100k DGX Station.
- matt-p 3mo ago
  A very good idea, the Mac Pro also had a rack mount option didn't it? That would be the kind of thing you could sell as many as you could make.
  - bigyabai 3mo ago
    > That would be the kind of thing you could sell as many as you could make. People said that about the M1 Ultra Mac Pro, a few years before it was discontinued. I don't think there are many HPC customers looking at Apple hardware.
- newsclues 3mo ago
  The timing of the demise of the Mac Pro has been about as bad as the Steam Machine launch timing.
  - icedchai 3mo ago
    You mean the Mac Pro that was still on the M2 and hadn't been updated for 3+ years?
matt-p 3mo ago
I don't think it's needs 'call us' just a separate SKU, I mean if they called it Xserve Ultra and it was just a studio in a 1u format with dual PSUs and extra RAM, it would fly off the shelves.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  Isn't that the same thing you can get from ordinary 2S Epyc/Xeon servers at a similar price that have 24 memory channels (when the M3 Ultra has the equivalent of 16)? And the reason people rarely use that for AI is that the enterprise GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are only moderately more expensive but are significantly faster because they use HBM instead of DDR5.
  - matt-p 3mo ago
    Yeah kind of, I think a 24 channels DDR5 works out approx 1TB/s, but the cost is astronomical, a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. You also get to use the GPU/NPU cores of the mac vs CPU only on the servers. M5 ultra studio with 128GB RAM could probably beat out a sever with a RTX 6000 pro at half the price.
    - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
      24 channels of DDR5-6400 is 1.2TB/s, M3 ultra is 0.8TB/s. They both use DDR5-6400. > a M5 studio would probably beat that performance for around half the cost. A barebones 2S system with no CPUs or memory is ~$2000, a pair of 16 core CPUs another ~$1000 each, and then however much memory you want. The price seems pretty comparable. The "problem" with doing this is actually that 128GB is too little memory, because you want to populate all the channels, but even using 16GB sticks, 24x16GB is already 384GB. > You also get to use the GPU/NPU cores of the mac vs CPU only on the servers. You only need enough cores to make sure the bottleneck is memory bandwidth.
      - spwa4 3mo ago
        > but even using 16GB sticks, 24x16GB is already 384GB. Question: you need 16GB sticks because they're the smallest doublesided ones, which you need for maximum BW, right? Otherwise why not 8G?

rdsubhas 3mo ago

> Let business customers spec up to 768GB who are prepared for a $20-25k price tag There is a clear difference between $25k and $100k. 64 iPhones at retail price is already around $64k. For something at 768GB to be profitable at Apple's terms, this has to retail at $100k for it to be profitable. That was the OP's point.

andy_ppp 3mo ago

Honestly you're still looking at (from my understanding) ~3 minutes prefill (TTFT) even with architectural improvements and so on with a 32k context window (against a large model). How is this going to be competitive with Nvidia and all of the tricks massive scale get's you to parallelise context across many machines?

mrngld 3mo ago
Is it supposed to be? I think the point with some of these Macs is you get the capability in something the size of a heatsink from Intel's Netburst architecture era, or a Macbook light enough to stick in a backpack and take with you to lunch. If you're talking about chaining together multiple GPUs you're talking about a different game -- I suspect, anyway. Seems like a high-spec Mac would be good for development and testing. Arrays of GPUs, better aimed at production use.

waffletower 3mo ago

They'll sell more $20-25k Macs when Goldman green lights Apple Card credit limits that will fit one of them.

zerohp 3mo ago
Apple Card already offers credit limits high enough for it