Mysterious New 'Compute Module' Found in Apple Beta Code

[andrewxgx]

IMO I don't think there is a market for the MAC PRO any Longer, unless they can get the Mac Pro aimed at a new market other than content creators, Mac Studio Ultra is plenty for 99.9% of content creators

yes and no
yes there is still a market for higher performing devices
its just nowhere near being big enough to justify building custom chip just for it (xeon mac pro was doable because it used the same CPU that Intel was selling to the HEDT crowd and they probably used the same silicon for their server CPUs)
now if they can repackage M2 Max (which is basically a mass market product) into M2 Ultra, then put it on an expansion board, there might be customers who gonna use it, and developments costs won't be nowhere near creating a custom silicon just for a niche product, so if its a flop, then there wont be a M3 Mac Pro and thats all.

 

[CWallace]

As others have noted, Apple Silicon is a very different architecture than Intel+AMD and that is likely causing headaches for Apple in transitioning the Mac Pro from the Intel+AMD model to the Apple Silicon model and this is pushing back the launch of the model and restricting the scope of the design.

It does appear Apple did create at least engineering samples of an M1 SoC that is the functional equivalent of 2 M1 Ultra / 4 M1 Max, but the production costs were so high that the base MSRP would be closer to a mid-range 2019 Mac Pro configuration (so probably double what the base 2019 model goes for). Hence the latest rumors that Apple will now only offer a single M2 Ultra option.

 

[appleCakes]

It could be the companion device for their upcoming VR headsets -- performing all the processing and graphics heavy lifting and linked wired or wirelessly to the headset.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

IMO I don't think there is a market for the MAC PRO any Longer, unless they can get the Mac Pro aimed at a new market other than content creators, Mac Studio Ultra is plenty for 99.9% of content creators

Yeah as much as I know the hardcore Mac Pro users aren't gonna be happy to hear that, I think the Mac Studio is gonna get rebranded as the new Mac Pro. The Studio is pretty much a Mac Pro in everything except name, expandability, high ram count, and absurd price tag.

You should stop with the kool-aid.

I agree. Gatorade is better.

Apple has the best design, yes. However, Apple has been stagnant for a while. The M1 was a great start but it slowly faded.

Well yeah the M1 has been succeeded by the M2 lmao.

But M1 is still useful and sees use as cheap Macbooks.

Transition is still not complete and Apple can't compete with high end GPU cards. HW Raytracing is still missing among other things. Sure, for video editing etc. their dedicated encoders help massively but overall they didn't overtake the market nor do they have the most powerful silicon. What they do have is the best performance per watt but thats not enough when you need to get the job done and the hardware&software combo is basically not working as good.
There is a reason why any serious 3D/VFX artist can't use Macs for work as its designed for it nor there is support.

They don't use Macs because their software isn't on macOS. That's a software issue, not a hardware one. A lot of pro apps didn't get ARM versions until just last year, like CLO 3D.

Apple always boasts about great relationship with this vendor or that vendor but they are not pushing anything. Maya is industry standard for 3D and yet most VFX houses use Linux and PC as the support is lacking heavily.

Again, software issue. Apple has no control over how fast Autodesk can create an ARM version of Maya.

Nvidia smokes Apple out of the water on pretty much everything related to 3D. Just look how Apple killed Shake which at one point was industry standard.

Shake was being phased out at the time for alternative software and being integrated into Final Cut's Motion. Many things are industry standard, until they aren't. Times change, and Shake was a product of the time, just like XServe was until it got replaced with better blade. The iPod used to be the industry standard dedicated music player and it's gone now despite DAPs making a comeback

Don't get me wrong, I love my Apple computer and Apple stuff but I'm also being realistic and critical.
M transition was a great start but thats about it. Apple is stagnant - just look how they updated one product with M2 chip and left iMac for example without anything.

The Mac Mini was left without anything when M2 debuted for a while until last month when it finally got updated, as well as the high end Mac Mini also getting transitioned to Apple Silicon.

We were in a chip shortage for two-three years and some companies are still recovering. There's clearly some development struggles right now due to supply and Apple's probably trying to make the most of it, which is why the new M2 iPads and Mac Mini and Macbook Pros didn't get an Apple Event and were delayed a couple months. Rumors are the Mac Pro had a similar delay which is why the Studio was made as a temporary solution until the actual Mac Pro arrived.

Stuff happens

Some of their upgrades (like ram/ssd) are insanely expensive compared to alternatives and because they switched away from Intel we have to fork out money to Apple as we can't upgrade it ourselves cheaper. (27" iMac was awesome for ram upgrades!)

RAM is built into the SSD which is why it's so blazing fast. Because of that RAM upgrade costs are more since that M series chip would have to be custom ordered.

They charge $400 just so you have height adjustable stand for your monitor - that is not innovation, that is pure insult.

You're right about that, but I'd argue the StudiNo display in it's entirety is an insult, from the absurd price tag, to the nonremovable power cord, to the fact it has an iPhone's A13 in it's entirety in it and the only thing that SoC does is process Siri and the webcam.

But this thread is about the Mac Pro, and if we got into a discussion about the StudiNo display we'd go off topic, and draw the ire of a couple people on this forum who bought the display and constantly thumbs down anyone who trashes it (you know who you are)

So, Apple does few things well but overall they are stagnant. Lets be more critical as Apple needs to know that they can't get away with anything

We are. I'm critical about their apathy towards the game industry and their refusal to give developers what they want. I'm critical about the fact only now with the iPhone 15 are we getting USB-C and sideloading, two things that should've been added years ago, and only now are they doing it not to make the iPhone a better product, but because they were literally forced to by the European Union. I'm critical about the AirPods Max not having an aux mode or a power button despite costing $550. I'm critical about the Studio Display having a nonremovable power cord despite costing $1600.

But I'm also realistic, and calling them stagnant is laughable especially with the jump the M2 Pro and Max just made, and the fact the Mac and iPhone's market share only keeps growing, with the ARM Macs being the best selling laptop every quarter.

We get it, you're not happy with the direction they took and are most likely going to take with the ARM Mac Pro. But this is the direction the company went.

 

[GMShadow]

Based on every computer made to date, it would appear the Mac Studio is just an outlier. Every other machine identifier has been based on iteration, not processor. The M1 iMac, for instance, is iMac21,2. I wouldn't read into that too much.

13" M2 MBP is Mac14,7
13" M2 MBA is Mac14,2
14" M2 MBP is Mac14,5 or Mac14,9
16" M2 MBP is Mac14,6 or Mac14,10

It's not an outlier.

 

[patent10021]

pro macs ready for machine learning specific hardware

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

pro macs ready for machine learning specific hardware

Uhh, they already were lmao. Every ARM Mac has a neural engine built into the chip for machine learning. I got AIs working on my 14 inch MacBook Pro

 

[CarlJ]

We already have a replacement to the afterburner card: The Media Engine in all M Series SoCs since the M1 Pro

And the Max chips got 2 of these, the Ultra chips having 4.

So this compute module is something else entirely.

My wild guess: Mac Pro is going to emerge in the form of a stackable set of boxes - a front-end unit, which could be basically a Mac Studio, and then a series of “compute modules” - you stack up however many you need, connect them with cables (maybe daisy chain like old school SCSI), and it’s more of a Mac Cluster than a Mac Pro.

 

[bradman83]

The fact that the module has a model identifier of "ComputeModule13,x" suggests that it is likely based on M1-generation silicon.

I can tell this because, among other things, the iPhone 12 (with A14, the same generation as M1) is iPhone13,x, and the Mac Studio (M1 Max/M1 Ultra) is Mac13,1 and Mac13,2.

It appears that the Mac Studio was the first Mac to have the enigmatic MacX,Y model identifier; the previous M1 MacBook Air, for example, is MacBookAir10,1.

That wouldn’t be unheard of for workstation class chips. The upcoming Sapphire Rapids line of Xeon chips is based on the Golden Cove microarchitecture that powers the performance cores of Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake processor family from 2021. The value proposition of Xeon chips in these types of computers is the core count for heavily parallelized workflows, they rarely challenge the high end i9 desktop chips in single-threaded performance (the i9 Intel iMac regularly outperformed the Mac Pro in apps like Photoshop that don’t scale as well to higher core counts). If Apple sticks to the 5nm Firestorm microarchitecture - which is still an incredibly fast CPU core - it could deliver a boatload of cores in a fairly economic manner. I would imagine though that if they went this route they might rebrand the chip to something like the “P1” or “X1” to distinguish it from the M-series.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

My wild guess: Mac Pro is going to emerge in the form of a stackable set of boxes - a front-end unit, which could be basically a Mac Studio, and then a series of “compute modules” - you stack up however many you need, connect them with cables (maybe daisy chain like old school SCSI), and it’s more of a Mac Cluster than a Mac Pro.

...you know that sounds like a cool idea actually. Rename the Mac Studio the Mac Pro, and have separate compute modules. The Mac Studio can already be rack mounted so you could make the others mountable too.

Of course the question is, will the hardcore Mac Pro users accept that? They got PTSD from the Trash Can after all.

 

[miguel cortez]

Based on every computer made to date, it would appear the Mac Studio is just an outlier. Every other machine identifier has been based on iteration, not processor. The M1 iMac, for instance, is iMac21,2. I wouldn't read into that too much.

Well then my M2 Mini Pro is an outlier as well... It's listed as Mac14,12.

 

[Mago]

It does appear Apple did create at least engineering samples of an M1 SoC that is the functional equivalent of 2 M1 Ultra / 4 M1 Max, but the production costs were so high that the base MSRP would be closer to a mid-range 2019 Mac Pro configuration (so probably double what the base 2019 model goes for). Hence the latest rumors that Apple will now only offer a single M2 Ultra option.

People here unlikely meet Intel xeon-phi compute accelerators cards, days ago I commented an crazy theory on how would apple address the Mac Pro 8,2 (theoretical numbering, its settled it should begin either with 14, or 15,..) lack of competitive compute power as a single M2 Max tops at 13 TFlop pf32 a theoretical M2 extreme should top optimistically at 52 TFlop that's halfway ab AMD mi200 or an Nvidia RTX 4090 (4090ti likely should debut before the new Mac Pro).

An solution could be an xeon-phi like compute module, let me introduce the xeon-phi, it was an multi core 24+ compute accelerator card based on Xeon architecture, actually was an xeon CPU with some GB ram, running an stripped down Linux kernel known as uOS, basically it was an surrogate PC running on a card, said uOS even allowed run all code in kernel mode which improved it's performance notoriously.

Drawing an analogy, Apple likely has lots of semi-defective m1-max and M2-max CPU which could recycle and resurrect with one or two cores disabled (the defective ones) and running some firmware which allows tether it's compute capabilities to an master system, said slave ahem surrogate m1-utra or M2-Ultra cards would be capable to assist the main SOC (either m2 ultra or m2 extreme) the same way xeon-phi did, while xeon-phi where just x86 cores, that 13,1 13,2 compute modules to provide it's full compute capabilities: arm cores, tensors, GPU, hexagon, transcoding, crypto etc.

Now imagine an barebones m2 extreme Mac pro, you insert 3 said compute modules and you may get UpTo 200 TFlop fp32 compute capability available.

Why running iOS?, likely an striped down iOS, as the compute module don't need lots of features neither iOS applications, it intended only to manage that SOC resources and exposed it to the main SOC running macOS, as iOS already support same aarch64 and metal binaries the API update required by apps to support it is minimal and most of it already included (multiple remote GPU was demonstrate recently thru thunderbolt).

Another concept maybe the Mac pro being just an empty case with 5 PCIe5 slots some of them having likely some proprietary extension, the first compute card installed to assume Master role would install full macOS, and the added (maybe exactly the same card) assuming slave (or surrogate for those upset by slave-master analogy) role, said slave cards loading said striped down iOS to bring it's compute power to the master one,. Next year when m3-extrmme Mac Pro MPX+ module is available you replace your master module and move the older to slave role, this every year you are enable to stay on top performance without breaking the bank.

Interesting, let's see what comes from apple.

 

[Quicksilver867]

Power Mac G3 and G4 vibes

I love it.

But I doubt this is anything like a swappable G3/G4 processor board. Maybe terminology for a data center/server variant of the Apple silicon Pro.

 

[mannyvel]

Now imagine an barebones m2 extreme Mac pro, you insert 3 said compute modules and you may get UpTo 200 TFlop fp32 compute capability available.

Exactly what I was thinking. MacOS is designed to keep the UI on priority threads. It's not hard to imagine having X numbers of SOC-on-a-card, with one being primary. UI is kept on primary while other processing threads get sent to card 2-X.

Each card has 128GB (or 256GB) of RAM, or if you want to think about it another way, each graphics engine has 128/256GB of RAM with a CPU attached to it that may or may not do any actual work.

Basically an M1 Ultra becomes a fancy graphics card with a CPU attached, and you an plug X number of them in.

 

[skiguy45]

Been pushing for this idea since last year ....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-silicon-mac-pro-configurations-everything-we-know.2355024/page-3?post=31345168#post-31345168

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Dedicated upgradable compute card.

Like the accelerator FPGA they had already but for Metal compute and Neural Engines.

 

[4nNtt]

Let’s hope these modules have more in common with the Apollo 13 Command Module than the Death Star’s vulnerability.

View attachment 2163253

No worries, the new Mac Pro will be machined from a solid block of Beskar alloy.

 

[prime17569]

Based on every computer made to date, it would appear the Mac Studio is just an outlier. Every other machine identifier has been based on iteration, not processor. The M1 iMac, for instance, is iMac21,2. I wouldn't read into that too much.

Hmm. I don't think so. All Macs with M2-generation silicon have Mac14,x identifiers:

Lookup Mac Specs By Serial Number, Order, Model & EMC Number, Model ID @ EveryMac.com

EveryMac.com's Ultimate Mac Lookup - lookup Apple Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad specs by serial number, order number, model number, model ID, EMC number and more.

everymac.com

 

[ponzicoinbro]

No worries, the new Mac Pro will be machined from a solid block of Beskar alloy.

The case is made from Unobtainium.

 

[4nNtt]

The RAM as it stands is part of the SoC yes, however the Mac Studio's SSD was modular, however software locked so it couldn't be replaced with something else. I've theorized in order for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro to succeed they would need to create a modular custom ARM Mac where you had proprietary upgrade modules you would swap out. That way instead of having to refresh the Mac Pro, they could just refresh the module parts, so it could get upgrades more often and stay ahead of the curve while satisfying the highest end user.

The Mac Studio's SSD isn't locked. You just need to do a low-level DFU reset of the firmware from another Mac running Apple Configurator. Anybody with 2 Macs and a non-thunderbolt USB-C cable could do this. It also only supports certain combinations between the two slots. For example, it doesn't support putting a 1 TB chip in both slots, but you could put a 2 TB chip in both slots. Despite there being 2 slots, they are for the same drive. They need to be matching chips of 2TB or higher capacity. Only the 4TB+ configurations use both slots.

The major issue is just that there isn't anywhere to buy the raw SSDs with the right connector to use in it. You also need to completely wipe the drive and operating system, so not super user friendly.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

The Mac Studio's SSD isn't locked. You just need to do a low-level DFU reset of the firmware from another Mac running Apple Configurator 2. It also only supports certain combinations between the two slots. For example, it doesn't support putting a 1 TB chip in both slots, but you could put a 2 TB chip in both slots.

The major issue is just that there isn't anywhere to buy the raw SSDs with the right connector to use in it.

Hence why I think when the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is introduced, I think it's going to be introduced with a set of proprietary Apple Silicon upgrade modules.

Here's an example: Microsoft's game console the Xbox Series X/S uses proprietary PCIE expansion cards to upgrade the SSD.

These expansion cards are the only way to upgrade the SSD in the Xbox, unlike the PS5 where you can use pretty much any M.2 SSD. While massively limiting in options (especially since the 2TB expansion card costs as much as a new Xbox Series S) it's a lot simpler and very easy that even the tech illiterate will have no issues with it, since you just slot the expansion card in.

I can see Apple doing this for the Mac Pro, since they're in full control of Apple Silicon, they can design future upgrade modules, which would also allow for the Mac Pro to get refreshes faster since instead of having to buy a brand new Mac Pro you can just buy the upgrade modules.

 

[4nNtt]

The fact that the module has a model identifier of "ComputeModule13,x" suggests that it is likely based on M1-generation silicon.

I can tell this because, among other things, the iPhone 12 (with A14, the same generation as M1) is iPhone13,x, and the Mac Studio (M1 Max/M1 Ultra) is Mac13,1 and Mac13,2.

It appears that the Mac Studio was the first Mac to have the enigmatic MacX,Y model identifier; the previous M1 MacBook Air, for example, is MacBookAir10,1.

Apple isn't consistent with those numbers. They just make up whatever they want. The MacBook Pro for instance doesn't follow that numbering. It is odd that they started with 13, but that might have more to do with it coming out in the macOS 13 cycle.

However it could be that they binned from M1 Ultras. Maybe they binned chips with fewer working CPU cores. This could allow them to keep the cost down and sell them for less then a Mac Studio. They might be trying to hit a $2000 price point or maybe even lower to be competitive with Nvidia for instance. Although it is hard to make an Apples-to-Apples comparison, since these would probably really compete with something like the A100 which is like $13,000. However, Apple will probably be trying to also hit the market for Nvidia 4080 cards. I'm not sure they can really be competitive with M1-series hardware for raytracing (unless there is a secret, there is some unknown silicon in the M1 ultra), but maybe a future compute card will cater to that better and they will just target areas the A100 is used for first.

 

[daylight28]

So if they use the same Case that the Mac Pro uses now I wonder if there’s a chance to upgrade it while having to buy a whole new case? Probably not.

 

[patent10021]

Uhh, they already were lmao. Every ARM Mac has a neural engine built into the chip for machine learning. I got AIs working on my 14 inch MacBook Pro

Do you know what you're talking about? Apple's neural engine is only useful if you happen to be converting/deploying models on Apple devices aka CoreML. NE doesn't actually help ML engineers train on datasets etc. For that we want GPU compute.

 

[docbop]

An all-new "compute module" device has been spotted in Apple beta code, hinting that new hardware may soon be on the way.

The new "ComputeModule" device class was spotted in Apple's iOS 16.4 developer disk image from the Xcode 16.4 beta by 9to5Mac, indicating that it runs iOS or a variant of it. The code suggests that Apple has at least two different compute modules in development with the identifiers "ComputeModule13,1" and "ComputeModule13,3."

The modules' purpose is unclear, but speculation argues that they are designed for the Apple silicon Mac Pro – potentially serving as a solution to enable a modular interface for swappable hardware components or add additional compute power via technologies like Swift Distributed Actors. There is also a chance that the compute modules could be designed for Apple's upcoming mixed-reality headset or something else entirely.

Yesterday, recent Apple Bluetooth 5.3 filings were uncovered, a move that often precedes the launch of new products, so the compute module finding could be the latest indication that new Apple hardware is likely on the horizon.

Article Link: Mysterious New 'Compute Module' Found in Apple Beta Code

From other articles seems like Apple is working on expansion slots that are needed by the traditional Workstation customer but looks like still in early design phase. So I think are real next gen Mac Pro is still a long way off and Apple would be best to just say so. Apple came up with a excellent computer for real professial creators with the Mac Studio, they should hype the Mac Studio as the "Pro" Mac for todays creators and update the Mac Studio. I think the Mac Studio is a great form factor for environments today.