Ultra, in my reading, stands above Max. As in, if you have me an option for a Max and an Ultra I would assume the Ultra is the higher end one.
Maybe it’s a language thing, but Ultra to me reads as “there’s nothing higher tier than this”.
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Apple Announces 'M1 Ultra' Chip With 20-Core CPU, Up to 64-Core GPU, and Support for 128GB of Memory
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Maybe it’s a language thing, but Ultra to me reads as “there’s nothing higher tier than this”.
The definition of Maximum is “there’s nothing higher tier than this”. Max is short for maximum.
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I sold some of my 3090's for $4200 just last year. Yes, retail is $2K+, but they've been in huge demand due to mining. So my PC computer alone was sitting at a huge value.This is a huge bargain, especially considering against the Mac Pro. The 'real' Mac Pro's will be absolutely ludicrous. Though now that it's faster than the Xeon's, does that make me a Pixar professional? I always wanted to work there.
That's absurd. It's Dual M1 Ultra Max Pro+.
The M1 pro max ultra?
But jokes aside, max typically refers to size, not so much specs. Just like the iPhone pro max is the largest version of the pro iPhone sold.
So M1 Max makes sense in that this is the largest processor Apple has created (the M1 ultra is two of them taped together). So whatever they call the 4-chip combination used in the Mac Pro, it doesn’t change the internal consistency of the M1 Max chip naming convention.
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Never heard of local maxima?
Was Pepsi Max literally the best Pepsi?
My dog Max - he was a small dog, smaller than my dog Herbie. Did I commit a faux pas?
Think of the M1 Ultra as the ne plus ultra of current Apple silicon SoCs: "the most extreme example of its kind; the ultimate" as per the Oxford Dictionary.
So do you think we'll see the Ultra in an iMac? I'm debating because my 4K, 43" monitor was two grand. It's for my gaming 3090 rig, but I'm thinking of using a switch, best of both worlds.
"And up to two M1 Ultras."
Clearly it's going to be called the Quadra in a tip of the hat to the Mac's past!
No I don’t think so.
The Mac Studio & the 27 inch Studio Display are the ‘new’ 27 inch iMac Pro.
Apple made it very clear that after tue introduction of the Mac Studio, there is just one more M1 computer to go - the Mac Pro - and the intel iMac Pro is not available for sale anymore.
The iMac is the ‘fun/stylish’ all in one & I think it’ll stick at 24 inches - which is plenty big for most people.
And if you’re not ‘most people’ you must be a (studio) pro.
Oh for sure that’s what it’s going to be - at least."And up to two M1 Ultras."
I think we might even see double that.
But it has to have a new marketing name… 😂🙄
(as if research scientists, people working on insanely large ML data sets & compositing scenes in Hollywood movies/TV will care about a chip’s marketing name)
And the M2 is going to be on 4 nm process and significantly faster than M1 silicon, followed within 18 months by the M3 on 3 nm process. What's your point?
Crap I forgot Tim said that. I guess with the new monitor, you just make it yourself. Which isn't so bad, can just replace the Mac and leave the monitor.
Have they fixed it to where 4K is perfect? When I last used it, just didn't look right since 5K was the norm.
Honestly they should have just scrapped the distinction between M1 Pro and Max and just have it GPU configurable like storage (A 512GB MacBook Air isn’t suddenly called a MacBook Pro isn’t it?) And call it M1 plus
Apple today announced the M1 Ultra chip, the third iteration to the M1 family, and it represents the next "breakthrough" for Apple Silicon.
M1 Ultra consists of two M1 Max chips connected with die-to-die technology called "UltraFusion." The new highest-end chip of Apple Silicon features 114 billion transistors, with higher support for bandwidth memory at 800GB/s.
UltraFusion allows two M1 Max chips to connect together across more than 10,000 signals, offering 2.5TB/s of bandwidth, according to Apple.
M1 Ultra has a 20-core CPU, with 16 high-performance and four high-efficiency cores. M1 Ultra supports up to 128GB of unified memory, an increase from the up to 64GB memory supported by the M1 Pro and M1 Max.
In graphics, M1 Ultra has a 64-core GPU, which offers 8x faster graphics than M1. M1 Ultra has a 32-core Neural Engine, which can operate 22 trillion operations per second and has two separate media engines.
As is common with Apple Silicon, Apple claims that M1 Ultra offers "unprecedented" power efficiency with equally unprecedented power.
The first Mac to feature the M1 Ultra is the Mac Studio, which is aimed at creative professionals. The Mac Studio is available for order today.
Article Link: Apple Announces 'M1 Ultra' Chip With 20-Core CPU, Up to 64-Core GPU, and Support for 128GB of Memory
and then called this chip M1 Plus ultra.
Trick is, the differences between an M1 Pro and M1 Max go well beyond just the number of GPU cores.
First of all, the GPU cores in the Ultra are already 18 months old (debuted in the A14 in Fall of 2020)… This Fall Apple will release new cores that are two generations newer.
The 3090 is a 360W GPU, The entire Ultra is just over 200W, with the 64-core GPU using 120W. And the newer GPU cores in the A15 are much more powerful and more efficient. I’m sure the next gen. GPU cores in the A16 will be even more so.
And lastly… Apple has only been designing GPU’s for a few years now. The fact that they have been able to achieve what they have is astounding.
Yes. They have not caught up to NVIDIA yet- and they are two nodes ahead- but they are making steady progress. Just like in CPUs, Apple started out behind but improved year after year after year to get to where they are now, I am confident that in a few years Apple will be the leader in GPUs all-around, not just in PPW.
I think they are already ahead. An 3090 might be better on paper according to some benchmarks, what matters is how it behaves in actual applications. (Not games). My old iMac 27 had a GPU which on paper was much faster than M1, yet my girlfriends M1 Macbook Air did so many video/gpu related tasks faster than my iMac. At that point who cares about the Tflops unless you are doing pure computing?
Yeah, you can't really rely on benchmarks for much (other than bragging rights). All GPUs are going to differ in some way from everything else. Especially when software is optimized (or not) for each. There have been real world tests that demonstrate when software is (finally) optimized for Apple's GPUs they are in fact extremely powerful with the M1 Max holding its own against the 3090.
Again, though, I don't think Apple is all that interested in raw core performance in their SoCs... they're looking for overall performance (and efficiency) of the whole package.
I think many are missing the impressive feat that $1999/1799 (students) can get an M1 Max! That's a tremendously powerful chip, one that I've yet to tap its potential on my 16".
The Ultra is going to have crazy benchmarks. The only sadness is the lack of boot camp, which I feel would make this a flawless machine to also game.
The Ultra is going to have crazy benchmarks. The only sadness is the lack of boot camp, which I feel would make this a flawless machine to also game.
