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Apple's M1 Ultra Chip: Everything You Need to Know
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C'mon Apple you know you want to announce the M1 Ultra Pro Max chip. Just put all the superlatives together and be done with it.
Mac Studio is a consumer device.
For Mac Pro, they can call it M1 Titan, or something similar.
Also, Xeon is not a word.
And the Macintosh II was “consumer”? Hardly.
Why didn’t they just name it “M1 Max Duo”? Then the 40 cores version can be called “M1 Max Quadra”.
One interesting aspect of the M1 is the Apple Matrix Coprocessor (AMX). Each basic M1 chip is believed to have just one AMX coprocessor shared between its eight CPU cores. This is important for numerically intensive computations as it appears to be used by the Accelerate libraries. I have found it dramatically increases various BLAS operations.
Does any one know how many AMX the M1 Ultra has? The M1 Max?
As the 20 cores are often used in parallel it would be interesting if they were Accelerated by AMX.
Does any one know how many AMX the M1 Ultra has? The M1 Max?
As the 20 cores are often used in parallel it would be interesting if they were Accelerated by AMX.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Apple consumers*?
*typed this attempt at humor on a Mac Studio Ultra**.
**was NOT drunk at the time of purchase***.
***(but) currently intoxicated at the sense of power in this little box.
I don’t think that’s what people commonly mean by “consumer”.
In this grid, the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is much closer to the Power Mac than to the iMac.
We are living in exciting times.
It was Oct 23, 2001 when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod. That is my birthday, hence why I remember. I was sitting in computer science at college and wondering "What is this thing? It's not a computer". It didn't feel like a winning strategy. I wanted to see amazing new Apple computers.
... and the rest is history. Look where the iPod brought Apple... on a trajectory of tremendous success and accomplishment that none of us could have imagined.
It was Oct 23, 2001 when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod. That is my birthday, hence why I remember. I was sitting in computer science at college and wondering "What is this thing? It's not a computer". It didn't feel like a winning strategy. I wanted to see amazing new Apple computers.
... and the rest is history. Look where the iPod brought Apple... on a trajectory of tremendous success and accomplishment that none of us could have imagined.
Almost every online YouTube review says that if you are going to buy a Max Studio desktop that you should buy the stock 32GB model and not the Ultra models, both because of the cost of the processor upgrade and the fact that the performance is either small or sometimes non-existent based upon benchmark tests.
The reviews on the base $1900 Studio unit is favorable for the unit itself, it’s needing to buy a $1600 monitor to get a 5k HDR screen that bothers a lot of reviewers.
And that the speed of the graphics in the M1 Ultra is pretty good but it’s not near the performance of a Radeon card. Except in having a lower power usage.
The reviews on the base $1900 Studio unit is favorable for the unit itself, it’s needing to buy a $1600 monitor to get a 5k HDR screen that bothers a lot of reviewers.
And that the speed of the graphics in the M1 Ultra is pretty good but it’s not near the performance of a Radeon card. Except in having a lower power usage.
Those benchmarks are valuable info but don't tell the whole story. The M1 Ultra can do twice as much CPU work as the M1 Max chip at the same time, even if it can't complete every single isolated task twice as fast.
As for memory, I don't know how the reviewers work, but I can easily saturate 32 GB of RAM and start swapping just by having lots of apps, VMs, browser tabs, everything else under the sun open, which is my preference. I could live with 32, but to say there's no benefit to going beyond that just isn't true for my use.
But will it work with the 20 MB outboard Rodime hard drive that I bought with my Mac Plus in 1990?
Trying to squeeze humanity into an Apple marketing grid meant to justify a product line consolidation at one particular moment in time has always been problematic. Even then, I’m pretty sure you’d find a consumer or two carrying around a PowerBook, for example.
The 128K and Mac IIs being discussed didn’t have a corresponding “power” or ‘i’ line, so you can’t really use this to explain why those devices were or were not consumer.
Today there’s the opposite probl‘em— we have Mini’s and Airs, and i’s and Pro’s and now Studios.
Consumer and Pro never actually described how they’re used, it described the features, price and form factor.
Once again even though Apple has shown us the M1 Ultra, it still doesn't show us what will work for a Mac Pro redesign.
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If it’s a good chip, the name will become cool (seriously Core i7 anyone).
If it’s a bad chip, a cool name won’t save it.
It’s true that the new chips are great for rendering YouTube videos, mixing tracks and Photoshop. Youtubers and DJs say that is very professional and important work. Who am I to say otherwise?
On the other hand, you need an Intel processor to run a stable full Excel, Autocad, Solidworks, Siemens NX, Bloomberg Terminal and other overwhelming number of professional programs that only work on x86.
You know, those things that people who create and run finance, companies, the government, planes, rockets, ships, cars, buildings, iphones, m1 processors and other similar unimportant things use. So as far as I’m concerned, professionals use Intel.
On the other hand, you need an Intel processor to run a stable full Excel, Autocad, Solidworks, Siemens NX, Bloomberg Terminal and other overwhelming number of professional programs that only work on x86.
You know, those things that people who create and run finance, companies, the government, planes, rockets, ships, cars, buildings, iphones, m1 processors and other similar unimportant things use. So as far as I’m concerned, professionals use Intel.
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