Apple M5 Chip's Dual-Use Design Will Power Future Macs and AI Servers

[chucker23n1]

It has a huge impact. Higher memory bandwidth and speeds are one of the main reasons GPUs are used for scientific computing and AI calculations. The entry level NVIDIA desktop card has 272 GB/s memory bandwitdh, and everyone is complaining about how low it is, and holds back the card.

So, to make it clear again: 150 GB/s is excellent for a CPU. It becomes meh, when it also has to handle a GPU that's supposedly could perform around entry level desktop cards. What makes it terrible that it's deliberately cut back from previous generations.

I'm not sure I disagree with any of that.

Don't compare it to Intel or Qualcomm.

At the end of the day, Apple competes with other laptop/desktop brands. How fast AMD, Intel, Qualcomm iterate factors into their decision-making.

Compare it to the M2->M3 change. I won't even say compare the Maxes, because they got more P-cores. Or compare to AMD. And I'd take a machine with M2 Pro over M3 Pro in a heartbeat. The benchmark probably most relevant to me is the PassMark Physics Test, and the M2 Pro beats the M3 Pro by 60% in that test.

…and that may be relevant to your use case, but for almost any other use case, the M3 Pro is faster.

And even when you're doing physics calculations, you don't do that all day. Those 60% only help you a fraction of the time.

Because those workloads can run on a toaster. Totally pointless to benchmark them then run around happily that your new cpu has faster cores, then don't feel a damn difference while actually doing that stuff. That's why I'm totally baffled at what Geekbench is trying to do with this new direction.

What they're doing is looking at how computers are actually used. Heavily multithreaded code is rare, and when it exists, it's often just moved to the GPU or NPU.

Yeah, software dev is lightweight on the CPU, contrary to what most people believe.

Well, it depends on the toolchain. I find that AOT toolchains make far more use of the CPU, and of multithreading specifically, than JIT ones do, for obvious reasons; JIT toolchains push much of the "compilation" step to the end user.

But, yes.

In 2016 I worked at a company where we got i7s - with HDDs. The IT was totally clueless.

Yeah, in that situation, I/O was going to be the way bigger bottleneck than CPU.

 

[daabido]

For at least a couple of years, then when the $$$$$ are not pouring in, because, well, you cannot trust Apple to stick to anything, they will abandoned it again. Just like the Yoyo strategy with games.

Can't innovate my arse. Look how long we can sell this old machine at the same price point it was at launch.

Yes, Apple isn't quite in the league of abandonware as Microsoft and Google, but it's up there. There's nothing sexy in improving software, and there's no marginal benefit to Apple doing so. New features though, that's what moves rectangles.

AppleWorks, iDVD, Mobile Me, iWeb, Aperture, AirPower, Airport Express/Extreme/Time Capsule, to name a few.

Killed by Apple - Discontinued products and services

Killed by tech is a tech graveyard, a free and open source list of discontinued products and services from Apple.

killedby.tech

 

[Blackstick]

Can't innovate my arse. Look how long we can sell this old machine at the same price point it was at launch.

Yes, Apple isn't quite in the league of abandonware as Microsoft and Google, but it's up there. There's nothing sexy in improving software, and there's no marginal benefit to Apple doing so. New features though, that's what moves rectangles.

AppleWorks, iDVD, Mobile Me, iWeb, Aperture, AirPower, Airport Express/Extreme/Time Capsule, to name a few.

Killed by Apple - Discontinued products and services

Killed by tech is a tech graveyard, a free and open source list of discontinued products and services from Apple.

killedby.tech

Remind me why would anyone want an Apple Watch Series 3, in 2024?

 

[chucker23n1]

AppleWorks, iDVD, Mobile Me, iWeb, Aperture, AirPower, Airport Express/Extreme/Time Capsule, to name a few.

I get that some of those are beloved, but I don’t quite get the critique. Is Apple required to sell each product in perpetuity?

Killed by Apple - Discontinued products and services

Killed by tech is a tech graveyard, a free and open source list of discontinued products and services from Apple.

killedby.tech

And that list is just dumb. They “killed” the iPhone XR? Like 80% of the list is answered by, “yeah, because there’s a frigging successor, genius”.

 

[txscott]

AppleWorks ---> Replaced by iWork suite.
iDVD ----> Really, are you burning DVD's and printing labels?
MobileMe ---->iWeb----->iCloud. Product iteration.
Apeture---->Likely too little demand because Light Table beat them in the market. They decided not to spend the money to compete. This was discontinued.
AirPower---->Never released. You can't discontinue products you don't release.
AirPort in its many incarnations---->They truly decided to exit the home router market. Here is the one example where I believe Apple abandoned a product with real possibilities. An Apple home hub with a mesh web and all of the Apple security stuff baked in for supporting IoT devices and integration with iCloud would be excellent. And they could use it to make their services stickier. It would fly off the shelves.

 

[chucker23n1]

MobileMe ---->iWeb----->iCloud. Product iteration.

You're probably thinking of iTools → .mac → Mobile Me → iCloud.

iWeb was something different.

 

[txscott]

You're correct. I forgot that iWeb was a WYSIWYG html editor. So I'll call that abandoned for lack of a market. Killed by content management systems, web host control panels and the virtual death of personal web pages built from scratch.

 

[Manzanito]

AppleWorks ---> Replaced by iWork suite.
iDVD ----> Really, are you burning DVD's and printing labels?
MobileMe ---->iWeb----->iCloud. Product iteration.
Apeture---->Likely too little demand because Light Table beat them in the market. They decided not to spend the money to compete. This was discontinued.
AirPower---->Never released. You can't discontinue products you don't release.
AirPort in its many incarnations---->They truly decided to exit the home router market. Here is the one example where I believe Apple abandoned a product with real possibilities. An Apple home hub with a mesh web and all of the Apple security stuff baked in for supporting IoT devices and integration with iCloud would be excellent. And they could use it to make their services stickier. It would fly off the shelves.

Can’t agree with aperture. Years of stagnation and very minor and meaningless updates are what led to the drop in market share. That shows lack of interest.

Same thing happened to shake.

 

[splifingate]

Airport Express/Extreme/Time Capsule

My ATC (4TB-up) runs just fine 🤷‍♂️