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Apple Lists M1-Based Mac Mini Logic Boards With 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Internal Parts Ordering System

Facebook use to use Mac mini's chained together in their data center.

Maybe Apple is offering this upgrade in hopes Facebook will do this with the M1 Mini?

www.wired.com

Facebook Erects Supercomputers With Giant Stacks of Mac Minis

If you walk into one of the massive data centers that underpin Facebook’s ever-expanding online empire, you’ll find tens of thousands of computer servers, many of them designed by Facebook itself. But those aren’t the only machines you’ll see stacked by the dozens inside these warehouse-sized...
www.wired.com www.wired.com
 
Maconplasma said:
Excellent post! The good old glass half empty. Negative nancie. Look at the worst about Apple. SMH.
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Apple has already done the lower the price and make it go up later game with the Mac mini. Is it bad to point that out? They don't perpetually get less expensive and every time they do they go right back up a few years later. They justify their price hikes with new designs but the silver model is the consumer model. Therefore it wont get faster ethernet by default because its just not needed at that level. It wont get it until all low end Macs can by default use the same ethernet speed and it doesn't cost extra to add it in a manufacturing standoint.
When they come back out with the dark aluminum model again, they will make that model several hundred of dollars more expensive as they did the last time they made it more pro, that's already been done before, or is that negative to point out the formula Apple uses to keep the usual price points of their products that they have for a very long time? Because they liked selling $1,000 Mac minis, people bought them, they make money. Just like they like selling $1,300+ MacBook Pros and iMacs and $1,500 and up and up for more professional computers. They wont stop doing that. They don't have to. Their entire business model is to create products that demand those prices, because people keep buying them. Did I say you shouldn't get this Mac? I'll probably get this Mac. Will I be surprised if they come out with a more expensive dark gray Mac again that starts at $1,000 for the non water down version? No, will I want to own that one too, probably. I'll probably trade up to it. Was it worth paying that much in the intel days? Heck no. Thank goodness they changed chips. They are actually worth it now. And for their bottom of the line Macs, you don't need 10g ethernet. So again, those SKU's are for much larger customers than you and I, wait till next year.
 
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Why in the hell would Apple not include this as a CTO option? Especially when the Mac mini is the one M1 Mac that is tipping everyone off to the fact that the M1 actually has limitations (rather than merely Apple wanting to market the Apple Silicon Air and 2-port 13" Pro with the same port and RAM options as before).

I maintain that the M1 Mac mini launch could've and should've been done differently. The other two are perfectly adhering to the 2006 Apple architecture switch playbook.
 
Freeangel1 said:
Facebook use to use Mac mini's chained together in their data center.

Maybe Apple is offering this upgrade in hopes Facebook will do this with the M1 Mini?

www.wired.com

Facebook Erects Supercomputers With Giant Stacks of Mac Minis

If you walk into one of the massive data centers that underpin Facebook’s ever-expanding online empire, you’ll find tens of thousands of computer servers, many of them designed by Facebook itself. But those aren’t the only machines you’ll see stacked by the dozens inside these warehouse-sized...
www.wired.com www.wired.com
Click to expand...

Apple doesn’t do anything in hopes of Facebook doing anything.
 
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827538 said:
I'm really glad they haven't forgotten about 10GbE. Ethernet is as popular as its every been and 10GbE is starting to trickle down to the consumer level.
Click to expand...
I’m not convinced we’ll see a 10GbE M1 mini. I’m not against it, but Apple might have decided to wait for a 6 or 8 (performance) core mini.

The main reason for my skepticism is they didn’t introduce it. Why purpose would be served by a delay?
 
PickUrPoison said:
I’m not convinced we’ll see a 10GbE M1 mini. I’m not against it, but Apple might have decided to wait for a 6 or 8 (performance) core mini.

The main reason for my skepticism is they didn’t introduce it. Why purpose would be served by a delay?
Click to expand...
Logistics. There Macs are a hide success, less option = better logistics and production. Here you are with the nerds but 99% of users doesn’t need 10Gbe
 
nylonsteel said:
can aapl stick a nvidia rtx 3090 ti in the m1 mm
i would buy it
intel graphics way under perform
Click to expand...
Nvidia is terrible and don’t play well with anybody. M1 Macs doesn’t have Intel graphics.
eGPU support can offer AMD GPU which nowadays are faster, less expensive, smaller than Nvidia in low-mid and now high-end market. But M1 Macs doesn’t support eGPU at least for now. You can’t put a 300W GPU there, M1 consume only 10W.
If you don’t have a clue why comment?
 
ikir said:
Logistics. There Macs are a hide success, less option = better logistics and production. Here you are with the nerds but 99% of users doesn’t need 10Gbe
Click to expand...
My point was that if Apple were still intending to offer an optional 10GbE port on this low-end mini, it would probably have been introduced on day one.

Maybe Apple has decided to only offer it on higher end minis, such as 6/8 performance cores, that might come to market next year, but not this entry level model. Just a theory 🙂 That maybe they changed their mind somewhere along the way.

PS True, the vast majority of users don’t need 10GbE, but of those who do, those are the same ones who also will be more likely to buy machines with a greater number of cores.
 
I don't see a problem really with 10G, TB3 Sonnet solo is relatively cheap, I have one it even seems to work with m1 MB air...
 
Paul F said:
I don't see a problem really with 10G, TB3 Sonnet solo is relatively cheap, I have one it even seems to work with m1 MB air...
Click to expand...
This is a workaround, that works. Similar devices are also available from QNAP, etc.
But it's also another external device attached to Mac. Power consumption may be a little higher? Without Apple Tax probably also more expensive. You lose a TB-Port.

Edit:
Alternatively USB3-Dongle with RTL8156B (2.5 GBe).
 
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k27 said:
This is a workaround, that works. Similar devices are also available from QNAP, etc.
But it's also another external device attached to Mac. Power consumption may be a little higher? Without Apple Tax probably also more expensive. You lose a TB-Port.

Edit:
Alternatively USB3-Dongle with RTL8156B (2.5 GBe).
Click to expand...
It will be a separate chip for 10GE anyway, so consumption will be marginally different vs external device. Also on mini power consumption is not a big issue I guess. In any case, It would be nice to have 10GE option built in, but in reality not a huge deal. It also possible that there is just not enough PCI-e lines for it in M1, we don't really know as Apple does not disclose that info.
 
PickUrPoison said:
My point was that if Apple were still intending to offer an optional 10GbE port on this low-end mini, it would probably have been introduced on day one.

Maybe Apple has decided to only offer it on higher end minis, such as 6/8 performance cores, that might come to market next year, but not this entry level model. Just a theory 🙂 That maybe they changed their mind somewhere along the way.

PS True, the vast majority of users don’t need 10GbE, but of those who do, those are the same ones who also will be more likely to buy machines with a greater number of cores.
Click to expand...
Anyone specifically needing 10GBe is not looking at the current Mini in the first place yet. I reckon it will come as a BTO option which was probably not on the cards from launch due to supply constraints or it simply "wasn't ready".

They know they had to get machines out to the masses before xmas / Black Friday
 
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iBluetooth said:
The max out at 850 Mb means it's equal to 1 Gb ethernet, unless the bottleneck is in the NAS or the drives or did you mean to write 850 MB? This is what I have heard that some 10 Gb equipment may not be "truly" 10 Gb, do you know if it's the NAS or the switch or ?
Click to expand...
No. My transfer speed maxes at 850 MBps means (Note the difference between MBps and Mbps)
850 x 8 = 6800 Mbps
6800 ÷ 1024 = 6.64 Gbps
So my NAS is the bottleneck here but I am still ok with 6.64 Gbps speeds.
 
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May this listing mean a more powerful Mac mini with 10gb connections is on the horizon. My 2013 iMac just stopped doing what I primarily used it for. Super grateful the M1 MBA arrived this week.
 
deevey said:
Anyone specifically needing 10GBe is not looking at the current Mini in the first place yet. I reckon it will come as a BTO option which was probably not on the cards from launch due to supply constraints or it simply "wasn't ready".

They know they had to get machines out to the masses before xmas / Black Friday
Click to expand...
Maybe. Apple rarely gets caught out parts unavailability though. I don’t think anyone expecting a $799 M1 Mac with 10GbE should be surprised if they have to wait until the next round of mid-performance Apple silicon for a more powerful mini at $1,099 or $1,199.

But who knows? All we know at this point is that it is currently unavailable, with no known introduction date.
 
DeepIn2U said:
Samsung will try to emulate the process of evolving their own Exynos chips to support more powerful laptops and desktops for Windows or Linux for consumers or professional use, partnering with Dell, Lenovo, HP ... OR ... they'll manufacture chips for Qualcomm and thus do the same thing.
Click to expand...
Samsung has already given up on custom Exynos cores and future Exynos will just be standard ARM core designs.
 
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ElectricPotato said:
How many parsecs is that?

Star Wars references are still cool, right?
Click to expand...
Sure...if only the original screenwriter knew that a Parsec is a measure of distance and not time, which in the context of the quote seems unlikely: "..made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs"

Some StarWars fans have found a different interpretation of this to correctly apply the meaning of the quote as distance, via a shorter route: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kessel_Run/Legends

FYI, "parsec"=parallax-second-of-arc, about 3.26 light years
 
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d5aqoëp said:
No. My transfer speed maxes at 850 MBps means (Note the difference between MBps and Mbps)
850 x 8 = 6800 Mbps
6800 ÷ 1024 = 6.64 Gbps
So my NAS is the bottleneck here but I am still ok with 6.64 Gbps speeds.
Click to expand...
IIRC Thunderbolt used 8b/10b encoding (same as PCIe v2), so it takes 10 bits to transfer a single 8-bit byte, to handle the protocol overheads.

So you are probably getting 8500Mbps data transmission if you are transferring 850MB/s, which is quite decent.

Also, the SI units of kilo, mega, giga etc are in fact decimal units, not base-2 numbers such as 1024, 1,048,576 etc. (https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes). Nearly all HDD/SSD manufacturers use this system because, no surprise, it is smaller and makes their product appear larger to anyone expecting a base-2 derived capacity.

The correct prefixes for the base-2 numbers are: kibi, mebi, gibi etc. ("bi" for "Binary"), with memory/storage capacities written as KiB, MiB, GiB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix . Note the "mebibyte" is abbreviated MiB, not MeB...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

RAM is still produced in binary increments, unlike storage or network speeds, so it's pretty common to see "GiB" specified, e.g. look at the spec of these AWS compute instance sizes: https://www.ec2instances.info
 
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