Apple M1 Ultra With 20 CPU Cores, 64 Core GPU, 32 Core Neural Engine, Up To 128GB Memory

[Slartifartblast]

All the credit goes to ARM for their core processor design and TSMC for their excellent 5nm process node. Lastly an honourable mention to Apple for adding a bit of tinsel on top.

[Slartifartblast]

*) Currently not available in Russia.

WTF does that say ?

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[coder]

...

"start at" is the key phrase. When they launched the last Pro, the starting price was high ($5k?), but the fully-configured price was astronomical! They went up to something like $45k!

Now, with these machines, it looks like there's probably not too much you can configure, but I get the sense that things like RAM and core-count will be artificially limited, on entry-level models.

[coder]

All the credit goes to ARM for their core processor design

These chips are 100% Apple-designed. Only the instruction set (and some software porting) is from ARM.

Actually, the GPU portion probably still has some strong heritage from Imagination Technologies.

TSMC for their excellent 5nm process node.

Yeah, but TSMC does actually collaborate with their partners, particularly on things like packaging and inter-die interconnects.

Lastly an honourable mention to Apple for adding a bit of tinsel on top.

* sigh *

Say what you want about Apple as a company, its walled gardens, the markup on its products, its hype machine, or its cult-like fanbase... but one thing that's undeniable is their actual lead, in the hardware race. Even if you go back and compare other mobile SoC's on the same process node as an Apple chip that used it, Apple was still ahead on microarchitectural sophistication, alone.

[amxfonseca]

All the credit goes to ARM for their core processor design and TSMC for their excellent 5nm process node. Lastly an honourable mention to Apple for adding a bit of tinsel on top.

ARM had nothing to do with the core design. You could at least do some basic research before posting something you don’t really seem to know about.

This is like giving all the credit to Intel and TSMC for all Ryzen CPUs. AMD just added some tinsel. Sure. Those pesky AMD guys, always stealing other people credits. Who would have guessed.

[brad0]

ARM had nothing to do with the core design. You could at least do some basic research before posting something you don’t really seem to know about.

That wouldn't fit in with the usual crowd in the Phoronix forums.

[kozman]

...

One only needs to follow the urine trail as Apple pisses themselves laughing all the way to the bank.

[GruenSein]

One only needs to follow the urine trail as Apple pisses themselves laughing all the way to the bank.

You guys here might not be willing to pay prices like this for one reason or another - some of which I understand and some are just as retarded as mindless Apple fandom - but the fact of the matter is that these machines will sell well. And for good reason since the Mac Studio is a pretty good deal if you actually need this kind of performance. I dare you to build an equally powerful machine (if the claimed performance can be reproduced in independent testing) to the base model with the M1 Ultra for $4000 and some change. The RTX 3090 alone will eat half your budget. If you think that the price of this machine is too high it only means that you are a hobbyist. This product is not meant to address your needs. The only real problem I see is the memory capacity. The upcoming Mac Pro will address this for sure.

[Markopolo]

The only disappointing thing for me to is the relatively low core counts. Judging by their annotated die shots something like 10% of the die is cores. I would have preferred a different balance of cores and cache vs media/gpu/npu that increased it to 30 or 40% and cut back the others.

of course, I don’t think I’m their target audience. Maybe they’ll do a CPU focused IC for the Mac pro that uses discrete GPU and socketed ddr5 ram

[kozman]

The only disappointing thing for me to is the relatively low core counts. Judging by their annotated die shots something like 10% of the die is cores. I would have preferred a different balance of cores and cache vs media/gpu/npu that increased it to 30 or 40% and cut back the others.

of course, I don’t think I’m their target audience. Maybe they’ll do a CPU focused IC for the Mac pro that uses discrete GPU and socketed ddr5 ram

Probably a low core count due to it being such a new arch. Intel and AMD have had the multi-core thing down for a while now. I gave Apple a few more years before we see 32 and 64-core models. Of course, as a CPU design, it could already be pretty efficient with just the 20 cores. Maybe they're saving 32 / 64 cores for 4 or 3nm process where it'll yield the most benefit?