Sam G (samg.delete@this.gmail.com) on June 20, 2022 7:13 pm wrote:
> > Do you interpret Apple's lack of interest in providing an
> > AMD GPU, or a new Xeon-based Mac Pro in terms of grudges?
> > Or in terms of "Apple has a different strategic direction from supporting that type of tech"?
>
> The lack of interest in providing a new Xeon-based Mac Pro is based on Apple’s belief that they can
> meet or beat the performance of a Xeon with Apple Silicon. I’d say that is a strategic gamble.
>
> The lack of interest in providing AMD GPUs is based on Apple Silicon having good
> graphics performance and AMD’s compute-only GPU cards (eg Instinct MI210) not
> having the software support needed to make them useful for anything.
>
> I think the Mac Pro should make available to Apple app developers and others the best neural net training
> system for the Apple Neural Engine. Right now, that is from Nvidia. When the new Mac Pro is introduced later
> this year, we will have a clearer picture of what Apple expects app developers to use for neural net training.
> The maximum power consumption of a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is only 215W (support.apple.com/en-us/HT213100).
> Apple could put six M1 Ultras in a Mac Pro and still power it from a 15A wall socket.
>
> I’m impressed with what I have seen so far from Apple Silicon, especially the DRAM bandwidth, low power and
> video encode/decode accelerators. I don’t know if Apple will end up missing essential features in a Mac Pro
> such as ECC. There is no mention of ECC in the Tech Specs section of the Mac Studio page on Apple’s website.


ECC is problematic to provide with LPDDR. It may become more scarce in general with DDR5 since the bit overhead doubles - it will definitely become more expensive both due to that overhead and the fact there will be less demand for it for that reason.