defaultluserExciting DoA Mac shit.

The only planned Apple Silicon systems that will support external GPUs are Mac Pro , and Apple can easily supply that tiny amount of demand themselves (I'm sure each server will come with minimal IGP, to cover cloud computers / webservers )

www.extremetech.com/computing/312486-apple-is-planning-to-build-its-own-gpus-too-but-playing-quiet-for-now

Sorry AMD, you (and all of your external Thunderbolt docks) are out of a job.

AnarchoPrimitiv"All of your external Thunderbolt docks"? What?

SteevoMaybe English isn’t the native language of that person.

If Intel can’t make a GPU yet I highly doubt Apple will be able to magically pull one off, and their “CPUs” are slightly better than copy and paste ARM designs, (look at the cache on the M1, and remember it’s power use and actual ability) they get the benefit in tuning their hardware and software together due to a walled garden approach. It’s like saying the APU in the Xbox or PS5 is lightning fast when really it’s the low overhead and closed environment and software tuned for that specific hardware.

Maybe Raja will make something great for them after the smoke gets let out of Intels efforts.

dragontamer5788Intel is having issues as a company right now. Hopefully they figure things out, but... I don't think Intel having issues necessarily means that Apple will have issues.

SteevoIf Intel can’t make a GPU yet I highly doubt Apple will be able to magically pull one off

SteevoMaybe English isn’t the native language of that person.

If Intel can’t make a GPU yet I highly doubt Apple will be able to magically pull one off, and their “CPUs” are slightly better than copy and paste ARM designs, (look at the cache on the M1, and remember it’s power use and actual ability) they get the benefit in tuning their hardware and software together due to a walled garden approach. It’s like saying the APU in the Xbox or PS5 is lightning fast when really it’s the low overhead and closed environment and software tuned for that specific hardware.

Maybe Raja will make something great for them after the smoke gets let out of Intels efforts.

defaultluserExciting DoA Mac shit.

The only planned Apple Silicon systems that will support external GPUs are Mac Pro , and Apple can easily supply that tiny amount of demand themselves (I'm sure each server will come with minimal IGP, to cover cloud computers / webservers )

ValantarKind of surprised to see these using RDNA tbh. Would have expected CDNA to be a better fit - though maybe that lacks parts of the graphics pipeline that this needs?


... but this is for the Mac Pro. Specifically. It literally only fits in the Mac Pro. And it definitely won't work as an eGPU unless Apple makes a bespoke chassis with its weird extended PCIe slot. And the Apple Silicon MP isn't likely to arrive for another year (and who knows what expansion card support it might have?).

But even without that, this is likely to perform well, and do its job nicely for the couple of years until the people needing/wanting something like this are likely to upgrade anyway. And it'll live on just fine when they sell their systems afterwards.

defaultluserHow long do you expect Apple to continue offering AMD GPUs when they can make their own (for much higher margin?)

They already killed off external gpus on m1 (so, 1/3 of the use case for Thunderbolt 3 is already gone), so how much further do you expect they will take things with these M2 Mac Pros?

Will they kill off eGPU universally? or Will apple take it even further (with an Apple-exclusive discrete GPU)? The initial outlook from m1 doesn't make it look good for either one of these features surviving the ARM transition.

FouquinThe TBDR GPU in M1 is an in-house design. It uses some fundamentals of PowerVR AXT but is otherwise unique.

SteevoVega is twice as fast as the “new” Intel on die graphics which were supposed to be great, but aged really quick, just like Apple hardware will when placed next to actual high power hardware.

General compute will always be slower at some tasks, but at least you don’t have to buy a new machine for new features to work.

ValantarKind of surprised to see these using RDNA tbh. Would have expected CDNA to be a better fit - though maybe that lacks parts of the graphics pipeline that this needs?

AquinusApple already has drivers for RDNA based chips and is fully supported with Metal on x86. I suspect that when CDNA comes around, that'll be when we'll start seeing drivers for these GPUs on Apple's ARM-based chips. Honestly the 5600M in my MBP works pretty well for a 50w mobile part.

ValantarApple's implementations of AMD GPUs have been pretty good - that HBM-equipped Vega 12 they had was really cool. And they're good at tuning them for efficiency, unlike what AMD has been doing on the desktop in recent years (guess that's what comes from a non-competitive market, higher margins, and only selling 'premium' products). CDNA has come around though - the Instinct MI100 launched late last year. But that's a pure HPC/accelerator card with a gargantuan die, and it doesn't have a real graphics pipeline at all, so it might be as simple as there not being any CDNA designs suitable for applications like this. Though I guess if they wanted to they could support those as accelerators with a separate GPU. Can't really imagine the market for that is huge though.

AquinusI suspect that Apple would prefer to keep everything in house if they can. If we see movement on this, it would probably be with an ARM-based Mac Pro. If the support is there, I'd expect there to be eGPU support to come shortly after for certain GPUs. If Apple doesn't support that level of upgradability with the Mac Pro lineup, then I doubt we'll ever see support for it. The real question is if Apple is up to the task with regard to making really powerful GPUs. Clearly they're not bad at making iGPUs. I'd still take the Radeon Pro 5600m in my MBP over the GPU in the M1 chip any day though.

Personally, I'd like to see Apple continue to work with AMD on GPU support. I just don't know if the market is there for Apple to continue pursuing it.

ValantarMakes me wonder how much support is actually needed though. I mean, they can't lock down third party driver development entirely - that would tank peripheral sales - and they can't really control implementations of APIs like OpenCL (which they explicitly support AFAIK). So while they might never support these cards as GPUs, i.e. allow them to render real-time 3D graphics and the like (which would require Metal API access), I don't quite see how they could realistically stop them from working as accelerators in various applications. Still, I guess we won't know until the Apple Silicon Mac Pro arrives.

AquinusYeah, they can't stop them, but it tends to help when Apple supports your efforts. I believe the main issue right now is the architecture differences between x86 and ARM, so it's not as simple as just recompiling the driver for ARM. At least in the Linux kernel, there tends to be preprocessor directives for things that use something architecture specific. I don't know how much AMD has tuned their drivers for x86, it could be a lot, or that the current state is just incredibly underperforming compared to where it needs to be.

Darmok N JaladIf I remember right, PowerPC also required specific Apple-only GPUs. It wasn't until Intel-Macs that you could start using off-the-shelf GPUs, but they had to be GPU architectures supported by MacOS drivers, and the card had to have a standard EFI implementation. For example, most RX560s would work just fine in the MacPro, but there were certain manufacturer cards that wouldn't work at all. I bet a lot of work needs to be done to get GPUs working on ARM-Macs, as evident by the Mac Pro and 16" MBP not switching to AS yet. Both products have upgraded graphics, better than what's in the M1. We'll either get dGPU support, or whatever Apple has planned next is going to have a much faster Apple GPU. I wonder if Apple will actually make separate cards of their own for this market. With the state of the GPU market, it would actually be a great time to do it. They could charge Apple-like prices for upgrades, and it would probably still look like a relative bargain.