Apple M1 Ultra, AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 and Future Chip Designs

Let us discuss the Apple M1 Ultra and AMD Threadripper Pro 5000 series and what we see as some trends in the high-end workstation industry. Some are great, others, not so much.

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Timestamps
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00:00 Introduction
01:05 Talking Apple M1 Ultra
10:32 Apple M1 Ultra and Traditional Workstation Platform Differences
13:28 AMD Threadripper Pro 5000 Discussion
16:14 Trends for Future Workstation and Server Chip Design
22:50 Wrap-up

[nobiggeridiot]

The current paradigm of chiplets and interconnects really reminds me of the amiga 1000, where it had chips on the mobo for various tasks; audio, video, i/o comp. The never ending pendulum swinging back and forth between specialization and generalization. Love these vids and enthusiasm !

[MourningLobster]

For memory usage on M1, it's always 90%+. I do remote management on some, and they are ALWAYS pegged at max memory usage. They run fine, but unexpected things like loading tabs don't do great. That new interconnect looks 🔥

[Aaronage]

Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is a prosumer package aimed (almost) exclusively at creators.
Mac Pro with M2 Extreme (or whatever they call it) will be the modular/expandable Mac to take on Threadripper, Xeon W etc.
Imagine what Apple could do with a Mac Pro power budget 🤤

[mamdouh-Tawadros]

Excellent video. I think if Apple put all their hardware in one single board, for financial benefits it will be the products market doom. SBC are cheap, so replacing it is not a big deal, but with high end products, clients will run away from such propositions. Even if other chip manufacturers go the same route, there will always be some smart manufacturer who can do what people want.

[Entity]

Another great video from Patrick Ultra from STH. You can just feel the enthusiasm pouring out in his videos.

[LianParma]

It would be interesting if Intel or AMD uses this Universal Chiplet Interconnect standard to make a CPU with a FPGA die so different accelerators could be programable instead of hardcoded.

[sebastianguerraty]

It would be really nice if AMD implemented a feature that would allow used PSB'd cpus to be used again.
Maybe they could have a second fuese that when active unlocks the cpu and blocks it for Motherboards with PSB enabled

[chriscalderon]

Wow, I ordered my Mac Studio right after the event and it should arrive today. M1 Ultra, 64 core GPU, 128GB RAM, 8TB SSD.

[denverag]

Speaking of RAM capacity, i have 2 systems with 128GB of ECC, they're both low powered Ryzen systems. I also have a 3950x with 128GB of 3200MT/s memory. Sure its not going to be as fast as effectively 8 sub channels of LPDDR5, but its the same capacity, and it also shares it with the on board graphics, except for the 3950X which gets all of that RAM to itself.

[RexinOridle]

I've used this Samsung notebook with ARM processor in it, Win11. For day to day regular use, I've noticed no slowdown what so ever. And all software working just fine. Intel and AMD will soon incorporate ARM cores in them. Hella cheaper than X86.

[robertharker]

Great Video. I really liked your talking about non-expanability and mandatory vendor locking creating excessive e-waste. I can see a creative department throwing a $4k Apple M1 Ultra in the dumpster because they are told they need to take it to an Apple store 50 miles away for repair. End users are often unaware of the value of their equipment or its long term repair-ability. Simpler just to buy a new one. Sad.

[vng]

The only thing great about the Mac Studio is that they managed to squeeze all that power into a small form factor. Yes, we can probably build a custom workstation in a small form factor using off the shelf parts that will outperform the Mac stuff, but it will never be as small in size. Or look as clean. Of course, all that comes at a price too... meanwhile, I will stick with my old second-hand enterprise servers for the homelab...

[MoraFermi]

Apple is using checkerboard tile rendering in Metal 2 since 2018 or 2019; they have shown off using intel built-in gpu with an external and card accelerating and raytracing a realtime scene.

[melanzystaa]

@ServeTheHome maybe you can get more info on Pine64's QuartzPro64? 16GB RAM, RK3588 Geekbench (I know it's not super index :D ) score in ranges of Xeon E3-1240L V3, and ITXish board around $300 - so like M1 Studio but for people with less money...

[forbiddenera]

Damn I guess I missed ya in Calgary :( would've been cool to go for coffee

[jaffarbh]

"modular" CPU design means we can mix and match components to meet our specific compute needs. Very effecient and less wasteful (can't imagine Apple taking this route though).

[LordApophis]

Apple devices are the longest lasting I’ve known. I have 10 year old macs still working somewhere in the family. Also their resell value is quite good, I don’t see much e-waste.

[joeyjojojr.shabadoo]

Hey Patrick, are you able to share WHERE in Calgary that you were called to and what you guys were doing ? ....unless it's a big secret of course.

[philippeastier]

By the way, the interconnect is 2.5 TBytes/s, not Tbits/s. And the memory bandwidth is 800 Gbytes/s. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is massive compared to any other CPU on the market. Also the fact it is UMA, hence shared with the GPU, means you do not need to loose time with transfers through PCI, which is why software using Metal is such faster. I know these are the "marketing figures", and real figures are less, but people could still reach above 200 GB/s per core on the M1 Max. Can't wait to see what the Ultra can deliver. That makes a difference, @ServeTheHome... Some design features start to come out (process, etc) as well.

[denverag]

I was dissapointed when i saw how much faster the Radeon Pro W6800X was when compared to the 64 GPU core M1 Ultra. Especially in the Apple Native Metal. In Geekbench, the favorite for every Mac reviewer, the Ultra scored under 11K, and the 6800W scored just under 14K. By the way Apple touted it, this would be faster than any single card.