To be far, Gurman has “supply chain knowledge” I’m a rando on MacRumors.
He knew, like, two days before I did.
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Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips Could Launch This Week
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He knew, like, two days before I did.
John Gruber noted this morning that Apple was briefing media under NDA about the new Studio and it's SoC configurations a few hours before Gurman posted his scoop...
And Gruber has spoken.
That there was an M3 Ultra IN WORK, on it’s way through the supplier channel, being tested, and iterated, being installed onto boards, built into machines that were then packaged, boxed and ready to be delivered and Gurman had nothing tells you that Apple’s been successful feeding bad information to potential leakers!
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If the chip is composed of TSMC N3B silicon like the rest of the M3 line up then the name makes absolute perfect sense. It is what is on the "inside" that should drive the naming. Not the year it was introduced. That is the hocus pocus game that Intel/AMD play were they release 'previous gen' architecuture dies with new generation sounding names. There iwll be a special on digit in the code that that lets you know it is older tech, but the leading digit gets bigger. 7440 versus 7340 where 'gee golly they are both 7's ' is suppose to be the dominating misdirection.
Pretty good chance this is a slightly tweaked M3 Max chip. ( slightly bigger to add a few things including the UltraFusion link but about 90% the same as the 'laptop optimized' M3 Max. ). Since the design is grounded in the M3 Max it would make lots of rational sense to label this one M3 also.
Yeah a large chip that is the M3 Ultra that the quote said wasn't going to exist.
It appears Apple made a die that is larger than the M3 Max die , but only very incrementally bigger. Bigger enough to add UltraFusion (and probably a narrow range of other features in. TBv5 and maybe some PCI-e backhaul provisioning upgrades the Studio won't surface. )
Big picture it looks like a positive step forward in that now have a 'desktop' die and a 'laptop' die. They just share lots of overlap ( somewhat like the M1 Pro and M1 Max did before those two dies started to diverge incrementally. ) Apple probably isn't on track to do radically different dies for desktops and they probably will contrinue to trail behind on the cycle releases. M3 Max+ only coming after stop producing M3 Max (laptop/plain).
Well, in his defense, Gurman did report this in April 2024. It was part of the larger Donan/Brava/Hidra leak: “For the Mac Studio, Apple is testing versions with both a still-unreleased M3-era chip and a variation of the M4 Brava processor.”And Gruber has spoken.
That there was an M3 Ultra IN WORK, on it’s way through the supplier channel, being tested, and iterated, being installed onto boards, built into machines that were then packaged, boxed and ready to be delivered and Gurman had nothing tells you that Apple’s been successful feeding bad information to potential leakers!
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He reported it then knew NOTHING else about it until AFTER Apple briefed the media. I’d say that a huge success for Apple between last April and today.
Yes; it's always pleasant to compare:contrast AAPL's offerings (and make-sense of the cost:benefit between two generations being represented in the same Product).
I think some other thread mentioned that Gurman's story broke just hours before Apple had briefed media folks on NDA. Apple was telling people themselves around the same time this came out; just was a closed external subset.
More 'insider trading' zone than useful rumor for planning material.
LOL my rumor machine was pretty lame but I can still hope that M4 Ultra will be released with MacPro.Ok. So let start my rumor machine as well
Studio will be launched with Max only and Studio Ultra will be launched alongside of MacPro on WWDC!
But I got idea now. What if Apple plans to release MacPro with M3 and M4 Ultras but no M4 Max? Next year the will just ditch M3 and add M5 or they will do it in two years.
Could M4 Ultra support even more RAM?
And last rumor mill. Apple is reportedly working on AI server chip. I can imagine they can build accelerator card for MacPro on its basis.
I really don't expect Mac Pro to get either an M4 Max or an M4 Ultra at WWDC, but there is that "M4 Hidra" chip Gurman reported on last year was being developed for the Mac Pro in the same report where he said Apple could release the Mac Studio with an M4 Max and M3 Ultra - which they did...
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" ... The Hidra chip is designed for the Mac Pro, which suggests it is an "Ultra" or "Extreme" tier chip. As for the Mac Studio, Apple is testing versions with an unreleased M3-era chip and a variation of the M4 Brava processor that would presumably be higher tier than the M4 Pro and M4 Max "Brava" chips. ..."
Macs to Get AI-Focused M4 Chips Starting in Late 2024
Apple will begin updating its Mac lineup with M4 chips in late 2024, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The M4 chip will be focused on...
www.macrumors.com
Actually kind of looks like that M4 Brava for the Studio is just the Max M4 Brava. (no 'higher tier'. )
Lots of spin has gone into the Hidra being bigger than an Ultra. This could be a M4 Max variant that just as the additional PCI-e I/O needed to decently drive the PCI-e backual to the switch. A bigger die than a Max but no where near the doubling that 'Ultra' implies.
If all the plain M4 Max has is the four x1 PCI-e v4 of the laptop version, it isn't even viable in Mac Pro.
If Apple could move the Mac Pro's starting price down to $5,999 , then that would help. $4,999 even better.
The gap shrunk between the Studio Ultra price would help price the " and more slots" into a range more folks would likely find acceptable. ( The xMac Studio enclosure is closer to $1.5K with slots. Mac Pro provides more bandwidth, but what folks are willing to pay for slots has limits. The general PC pricing anchor there is substantially lower. )
The pricing problems are not just confined to a $10,000 per SoC Extreme. The MP 2023 crept up in price $1K over he MP 2019 level in part because Ultra brings coupled baggage on a higher base RAM capacity. So it was more equipped like a MP2019 with 16 cores ( as opposed to entry) , W5700X (as opposed to entry 580X) , and more RAM.
It makes a lot more sense to make a custom Mac Pro chip that they would sell 'lots more of' than a custom Mac Pro chip that would sell a lot less.
'Hidra' could be a I/O differentiator. Not a pour on more GPU clusters like more ketchup option. ( somewhat chasing the Extreme ghost ). Monothlitic doesn't get wound up in packaging production drama.