Apple Unveils M1 Ultra, the World's Most Powerful Chip For a Personal Computer

[Cutechri]

It's impressive but I'm not interested in bullshit over the top marketing.

 

[Aquinus]

It's impressive but I'm not interested in bullshit over the top marketing.

You say that like Apple is the only company that does this.

 

[Cutechri]

You say that like Apple is the only company that does this.

I expected this predictable response and they aren't, but those companies and their marketing can go to hell too. Not just Apple. I skip all oversensationalized press releases and only bother with reviews after the fact. However, Apple takes the cake in over the top marketing, at least in my book.

 

[lexluthermiester]

No normal person is going to buy an ultra high-end Xeon or Threadripper system so there's that.

No normal person is going to buy the M1Ultra either. While Apple hasn't stated a price, you can bet real money it's going to be high.

So ... you didn't read the entirety of my post, let alone actually look at the source? Come on, man. This is lazy. Bottom of the page:

The Ryzen 9 5950X and Core i9 11900K are decidedly non-mobile parts.

No, there are no workstation CPUs in those charts, but the comparison includes the fastest desktop CPUs at the time, and the M1 beats one outright and ties with the other. For MT performance the story is a bit different as the integer performance is mostly par for the course with 8 core competitors (5800X), but FP performance is in another league entirely, beating even the 5950X.

If this is your argument

then ... let's see:



I don't see how any of this supports this somehow being only compared to mobile chips, or otherwise not competitive in any way. ADL has been launched later, with significant IPC improvements which surpasses both AMD's best and the M1:

Source.
In MT, the M1 Max (8 P-cores) is still competitive in FP with the 16c32t 5950X and the 16c24t 12900K, but falls behind in integer operations.

It really, really isn't. You're taking people posting sources that directly contradict your arguments, claiming they say otherwise, and instead of quoting or linking just keep repeating "you're missing context, I have the facts". This is simply not true.

To be clear: nobody here is claiming that Apple's M1 SoCs are the fastest CPUs out there, bar none, period, in every use case. Nobody is saying that, or anything remotely close to that. What people seem to be arguing, and what I'm saying, is that they are highly competitive in a relatively broad range of applications (at staggering levels of efficiency) and blow the competition out of the water in a certain selection of workloads as well as in power efficiency. There are absolutely situations in which they lose outright - there's no way an 8P+2E CPU can beat, for example, a 32P (64t) competitor with even halfway decent IPC and clocks if the workload scales well in parallel. But what Apple are achieving with their chips is nonetheless highly impressive, and crucially, they aren't even comparing themselves to those chips.

It's marketing. The caveats are always there - from their perspective, it is true, as for them their benchmarks and use cases are what matters. That doesn't mean it's universally true, and it should never be treated as such, but you're going way too far in the negative here, presenting the actual, real-world performance of these chips as worse than it actually is.

That ... I guess explains a lot? Jobs might have had strokes of brilliance, but he mainly was a megalomaniacal proto-fascist who routinely abused his employees and made tons of mistakes. A lot if not most of his success rests on the cult of personality he accrued through his career, as that helped hype up the successes and minimize the failures. The most "great" thing about Jobs was luck, timing and circumstance: having a few good ideas at a time and place where he could (and with the material means to) realize them; coming back to Apple as they were about to go under and doing an okay job; seeing and seizing a few specific (but hardly unique) opportunities in the early 2000s. Few of his ideas were unique, he was first to few of his ideas, but he had the force of personality and lack of care for the people surrounding him to force his will through at the right moments. If that's "greatness" to you, then I would really suggest you reconsider some of your values. Abusers do not deserve reverence, no matter what they nominally achieve on the backs of their victims. You're buying into the absolutely worst aspect of Apple PR with this view.

The problem is: they aren't. They're being extremely selective with their wording, contextualizing everything and making sure that everythign has several variables - performance at X power; relative performance at X power, etc. Most statements include a relatively specific workload. They list extensive comparison notes, including comparison CPUs, at the bottom of the Mac Studio page. They do mix and match things, at times comparing to the 12900K, at times comparing to previous Intel Mac SKUs (Mac Pro, iMac Pro), etc. Of course they're selective too: they compare only to a 16-core Mac Pro, despite it going to 28 cores. They're also milking architectural differences to make themselves look good - their 10c comparison in their launch video is against a 6P+4E 12600K ("similar MT performance at 65% less power"). But their statements are very carefully couched to make them defensible. They say things like "M1 Ultra Provides industry leading desktop-class performance and power efficiency". Not HEDT; not workstation; not performance alone: desktop-class, and performance and efficiency. That is a defensible statement; but it borders close on not being one, and is easily misread as saying more than it does. You can absolutely critique them for their benchmarks being selective, their comparisons being selective, etc. And I mostly agree. But they aren't wrong.

Here's the issue: you're taking your knowledge of actual reality and applying it to Apple's statements while ignoring the caveats included in them. That undermines your critique, and makes your claims of them "blatantly lying" false: you're skipping over every reservation and caveat made. If someone tells you their Fiat Panda is the fastest car on their block, and nobody else on their block even owns a car, critiquing them for not comparing it to a Ferrari or for not pointing that out is missing the point. In a way, you're not wrong: you're reading what they want you to read - that this is the most powerful computer ever. But you're not reading what they're actually saying, which isn't that. Hence you're actually falling for their PR spin while being critical of it, which not only renders your critique a poor fit but ultimately helps them. What would be accurate would be to acknowledge that what they are achieving in those specific comparisons is impressive (which it is), but that the comparisons are selective and not representative of the whole truth. Instead, you're making nonsense claims like they're saying this is the most powerful CPU ever (they never do) and that they're outright lying (again, not true).

Thus you're rendering your critique ineffectual and making yourself come off as ideologically biased against Apple, entrenching dumb tech tribalism and hampering any useful discussion. This helps Apple, by painting PC users as reactionary naysayers refusing to acknowledge the qualities of their products; it helps build a perception of progressiveness and superiority on their part. Don't be a marketing tool for Apple, please.

Wow, that was a very lucid, well thought out response. You went all out today. And while that was a seemingly impressive presentation, you failed to prove my claim(that Apple is lying) wrong. Hell, in several ways you even provided points of support. Yeah, well done.

I think this sums up a lot of people's opinions who are posting here, to be honest.

To be fair, if Apple weren't such dishonest a-holes, lying and exaggerating to prop themselves up or to cover their bum, it would be easier to believe them. They've made a bold claim with little evidence to back it up.

It's just marketing speak. You need to look at it from a certain angle in a certain light at the right time of day and, (hey Presto!): "faster performance than even the highest-end PC GPU available"

They could just word it to be properly truthful and it would have the same impact.

 

[claes]

Lot of insults, no counter-arguments, and no argument demonstrating their own claims… smells like a troll to me :shrug:

 

[mama]

Lot of insults, no counter-arguments, and no argument demonstrating their own claims… smells like a troll to me :shrug:

It's hard to provide evidence when Apple puts out those absurd graphs and claims of comparison with "standard benchmarks" and the fact no independent testing has yet occurred. I guess we wait and see how it pans out.

 

[Valantar]

Wow, that was a very lucid, well thought out response. You went all out today. And while that was a seemingly impressive presentation, you failed to prove my claim(that Apple is lying) wrong. Hell, in several ways you even provided points of support. Yeah, well done.

And so far you've done nothing more than make that claim, present zero evidence, and then get (oh-so-poorly hidden) mad at people using evidence to show that your judgement is simplistic and misunderstood. Instead you just keep throwing vague, hand-wavy, poorly disguised insults at anyone and everyone. Productive debate, this.

Let me know when you've got something to back up your arguments beyond "I'm right and you're wrong!".

While Apple hasn't stated a price, you can bet real money it's going to be high.

What? The Mac Studio starts at $4000 and tops out at ~$9000. The prices were AFAIK in the presentation, were published immediately, and they updated their online storefront just after the announcement. Relatively normal workstation pricing, though of course Apple doesn't want to call it a workstation (it's just "for pros"). Definitely not "normal people" territory, but not much different from the specced-out MBPs they sell droves of.

 

[lexluthermiester]

poorly disguised insults

Evidence that context is a thing you struggle with. I wasn't disguising anything. I was being as direct as possible without running afoul of forum rules. You want to take shots at me, I'm going to shoot right back. But ya know, I'm the one defending Apples statement, which on face value appears completely false and meritless. It looks like a blatant lie. And until they prove up in a way that is completely transparent AND independently verifiable, I will not yield.

What? The Mac Studio starts at $4000 and tops out at ~$9000.

Those are the CURRENT models. They have not announced the prices for the new M1Ultra based models, yet. But really, I can build a Threadripper based system with 128GB of RAM and an RTX3090 that kicks the living crap out of the their current top-end model for half the price. But, of course, Apple is just SOOOO cool!....

 

[claes]

Those are the CURRENT models. They have not announced the prices for the new M1Ultra based models, yet. But really, I can build a Threadripper based system with 128GB of RAM and an RTX3090 that kicks the living crap out of the their current top-end model for half the price. But, of course, Apple is just SOOOO cool!....

uhh…

Buy Mac Studio

Get a new Mac Studio with M2 Max or M2 Ultra from only $166.58 per month. Select a model or customise your own. Buy now at apple.com.

www.apple.com

Just a troll trolling this is embarrassing Lex, please follow a link. Prices were announced and the ultra was up for pre-order during the presentation…

 

[Valantar]

Evidence that context is a thing you struggle with. I wasn't disguising anything. I was being as direct as possible without running afoul of forum rules.

Or maybe that exact thing was what I was referring to? Jesus, dude, you need to take a look in the mirror at some point, and consider whether your need to insult people perhaps speaks to a lack of substance in your arguments.

You want to take shots at me, I'm going to shoot right back.

I'm not taking shots at you, I'm picking apart your arguments. That you're "arguing" (yes, that needs air quotes, really) in the tone you are makes me respond in kind, but I've only ever addressed your arguments, their tone, their context and the logic behind them, as well as how they make your actions come off.

But ya know, I'm the one defending Apples statement, which on face value appears completely false and meritless.

I assume this is an attempt at a response to me telling you to not be a marketing tool for Apple? If so it just demonstrates your complete lack of reading comprehension. Your "critiques" are overblown and irrational, and any valid points you might have are ruined by how you're framing them and arguing for them. Through that, you are helping Apple by maintaining the tribalism and elitism that underpins their brand image. You act as if you're seeing through their marketing fluff, yet demonstrably the opposite is the case: you're claiming they say things they don't (but which they imply - the crucial distinction here), and thus you're playing into their hands with flailing accusations of "blatantly lying" and similar things in the face of what is relatively standards marketing BS. It's misleading, it's selective, it's extremely pointed and lacking context, but it's not lying.

Of course on top of that you're denying the actual prowess of their current CPUs despite strong evidence to the contrary, all the while refusing to show evidence - or even arguments! - of your own. This is definitely not helping you seem less irrational, to put it mildly.

It looks like a blatant lie. And until they prove up in a way that is completely transparent AND independently verifiable, I will not yield.

As I said: you're reading what they're implying, not what they're saying. But if you'reso insistent on them lying, maybe bring an argument or two, or a source to the table? Make a point or two about how their performance is sub-par (based on third party reviews), and compare that to their actual statements?

Those are the CURRENT models. They have not announced the prices for the new M1Ultra based models, yet. But really, I can build a Threadripper based system with 128GB of RAM and an RTX3090 that kicks the living crap out of the their current top-end model for half the price. But, of course, Apple is just SOOOO cool!....

Uh... Again, this is just factually untrue. Did you even look? The M1 Max models start at $2000, with the Ultra models starting at $4000. Just another demonstration that you've got some sort of reality distortion filter going on here - the one Jobs is famed for creating, maybe? I don't see anyone here falling for the "Apple is so cool" stuff either, so... Can you please stop arguing against imagined opponents and try to address some of the glaring flaws in your logic that have been pointed out?

 

[Aquinus]

Those are the CURRENT models. They have not announced the prices for the new M1Ultra based models, yet. But really, I can build a Threadripper based system with 128GB of RAM and an RTX3090 that kicks the living crap out of the their current top-end model for half the price. But, of course, Apple is just SOOOO cool!....

Of course on top of that you're denying the actual prowess of their current CPUs despite strong evidence to the contrary, all the while refusing to show evidence - or even arguments! - of your own. This is definitely not helping you seem less irrational, to put it mildly.

I think this is the point. You really need to consider what this is replacing: the Mac Pro.

Those are the CURRENT models. They have not announced the prices for the new M1Ultra based models, yet.

Yes they have. When I spec'ed out one the other day, a fully loaded Mac Studio with a 2TB drive (instead of 8TB,) was about $6,300 USD. That's a lot cheaper than the Mac Pro equivalent.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yes they have.

Oh? One moment...

This was two days ago...

This was two minutes ago.

Maybe I'm not the most astute person in the world, but I don't see any prices on that PLACEHOLDER webpage, do you? Hmmm?

Who's embarrassing themselves? And I'm the one being called the troll and bully...

 

[claes]

They literally made that change this morning, as they do with every pre-sale “event…” You just haven’t checked since Tuesday, which is telling… Gonna get awkward in 8m, strange hill to die on, maybe we’ll see some more 2p benchmarks, etc.

Yesterday:

Buy Mac Studio

Mac Studio with the game-changing M1 Max or M1 Ultra chips. Stunningly compact form. And an array of high-performance ports. Buy online now.

web.archive.org

Tuesday (day of announcement):

Buy Mac Studio

Mac Studio with the game-changing M1 Max or M1 Ultra chips. Stunningly compact form. And an array of high-performance ports. Buy online now.

web.archive.org

now:

Who am I kidding, Lex will probably never read a post from a lil old snowflake like me Props to @Valantar for their patience and hand-holding.

 

[Aquinus]

Oh? One moment...
View attachment 239436
This was two days ago...

View attachment 239437
This was two minutes ago.

Maybe I'm not the most astute person in the world, but I don't see any prices on that PLACEHOLDER webpage, do you? Hmmm?

Who's embarrassing themselves? And I'm the one being called the troll and bully...

That's because you didn't look earlier otherwise you would have seen the screens that @claes posted. You clearly didn't care enough to look until now, so that's kind of telling.

Honestly, Lex, stop being a raging dick.

Yes they have. When I spec'ed out one the other day, a fully loaded Mac Studio with a 2TB drive (instead of 8TB,) was about $6,300 USD. That's a lot cheaper than the Mac Pro equivalent.

What did I say again?

 

[Valantar]

Oh? One moment...
View attachment 239436
This was two days ago...

View attachment 239437
This was two minutes ago.

Maybe I'm not the most astute person in the world, but I don't see any prices on that PLACEHOLDER webpage, do you? Hmmm?

Who's embarrassing themselves? And I'm the one being called the troll and bully...

Hm, have you tried pressing F5 and Shift+F5? Looks to me like your browser is showing you a cached page, considering that the US store (reached through going to Apple.com->Mac->Mac Studio->picking the right, M1 Ultra version) looks like this to me.

Every option (not that there are that many: 48/64 CUs, RAM, storage, additional software) is selectable and has its price listed.

This was the case yesterday as well, and IIRC also shortly after the launch event.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Maybe you three should have taken a MUCH closer look... Once again, the ability to read and properly context is not a failure on my end. Good luck with that... I'm out...

 

[Valantar]

Once again, the ability to read and properly context is not a failure on my end.

The problem, sadly, is that that is precisely where your failure lies - reading comprehension and distinguishing between different contexts. Which is why we're going in circles with you making silly claims about relatively standard PR spin being "blatant lies" and both Apple and the rest of us here apparently claiming that this is the fastest CPU ever, bar none, despite none of us doing so. The core of the problem lies in you failing to see relevant nuances and distinctions, which makes your criticisms fall flat.

It's also rather telling that the more we demonstrate how you're wrong, the more vague and empty your claims become. "Maybe you three should have taken a MUCH closer look" - at what? The website you claimed wasn't there? The pricing you claimed wasn't public? The SKUs you claimed weren't listed? The claims you said Apple made that they never did? The highly selective and carefully worded phrasing they used to hedge their statements, that you consistently misrepresent? Sorry, but the only person needing to look more closely here is you.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Blah, blah, blah... In other news;

Some benchmarks have been posted for the M1Ultra and it performs well. However, Apple has yet to prove that it's the most powerful chip for a "personal computer".

So yeah, their marketing people deliberately lied. What. A. Shocker...

 

[Valantar]

Blah, blah, blah...

Ah, yes, the signature move of anyone with a solid argument: ridiculing the people disagreeing with them. I mean, I'm quite familiar with your predilections on these forums, but you're not doing yourself any favors here.

In other news;

Some benchmarks have been posted for the M1Ultra and it performs well. However, Apple has yet to prove that it's the most powerful chip for a "personal computer".

So yeah, their marketing people deliberately lied. What. A. Shocker...

Still no specific quotes, I see? No timestamps, no links? Also, there are tons of leeway in any such wording: what's a chip (if they used that term)? If you count the CPU and GPU together, there is no doubt whatsoever that this is the most powerful chip ever made for anything resembling a PC, including every Threadripper and HEDT CPU ever made. If you only count the CPU, or just the GPU, then it's more of a wash, but then you could always argue that workstations like what you'd find a TR 5995WX in don't really fit the "personal computer" description. You don't need to agree with that statement (I don't), but it's not a cut-and-dried distinction. But then, as far as I could tell from what I've seen of their materials, they only ever speak of the combination of performance and power efficiency, being very careful to not make those types of claims.

So, since we apparently have to do your sourcing for you: At around 30:55 in their presentation video, they say "It's the most powerful and capable chip, ever, for a personal computer." The context, which you claim to have such a good overview of: This is a summarizing statement after a discussion of its whole featureset: CPU, GPU, neural engine, encode/decode capabilities. In that context, this is a factually true statement. For it to be true does not at all require any of those constituent parts to be the most powerful, it only requires the combination of them to be more powerful than any similar combination. Which obviously has a lot of gray area - how do you weight the performance of each component in a comparison? - but which ultimately doesn't matter as they are miles ahead of everyone in this regard. They didn't say "most powerful CPU", "most powerful GPU", or anything like that. And nothing even remotely close to this combination exists in a single chip or package. The closest you might find would be something like Nvidia's automotive SoCs, though it looks to handily outperform those as well given their 12 relatively weak CPU cores (and much smaller die size). And those certainly aren't found in PCs.

So, to what you were saying about contextualizing their statements: how about you try doing that? I get that you're probably finding a lot of enjoyment in acting like this, but all you're achieving here is making yourself look incapable of formulating anything resembling an argument or discerning between the contents of a statement rather than its implications. Which ... you do you, I guess? But as I've said several times, at this point you're just helping Apple maintain their image as the cool, progressive, innovative company in contrast to the recalcitrant and conservative elitism of the PC industry. So: please don't be a PR tool for Apple. They neither need nor deserve it.

 

[Aquinus]

Ah, yes, the signature move of anyone with a solid argument: ridiculing the people disagreeing with them. I mean, I'm quite familiar with your predilections on these forums, but you're not doing yourself any favors here.

Still no specific quotes, I see? No timestamps, no links? Also, there are tons of leeway in any such wording: what's a chip (if they used that term)? If you count the CPU and GPU together, there is no doubt whatsoever that this is the most powerful chip ever made for anything resembling a PC, including every Threadripper and HEDT CPU ever made. If you only count the CPU, or just the GPU, then it's more of a wash, but then you could always argue that workstations like what you'd find a TR 5995WX in don't really fit the "personal computer" description. You don't need to agree with that statement (I don't), but it's not a cut-and-dried distinction. But then, as far as I could tell from what I've seen of their materials, they only ever speak of the combination of performance and power efficiency, being very careful to not make those types of claims.

So, since we apparently have to do your sourcing for you: At around 30:55 in their presentation video, they say "It's the most powerful and capable chip, ever, for a personal computer." The context, which you claim to have such a good overview of: This is a summarizing statement after a discussion of its whole featureset: CPU, GPU, neural engine, encode/decode capabilities. In that context, this is a factually true statement. For it to be true does not at all require any of those constituent parts to be the most powerful, it only requires the combination of them to be more powerful than any similar combination. Which obviously has a lot of gray area - how do you weight the performance of each component in a comparison? - but which ultimately doesn't matter as they are miles ahead of everyone in this regard. They didn't say "most powerful CPU", "most powerful GPU", or anything like that. And nothing even remotely close to this combination exists in a single chip or package. The closest you might find would be something like Nvidia's automotive SoCs, though it looks to handily outperform those as well given their 12 relatively weak CPU cores (and much smaller die size). And those certainly aren't found in PCs.

So, to what you were saying about contextualizing their statements: how about you try doing that? I get that you're probably finding a lot of enjoyment in acting like this, but all you're achieving here is making yourself look incapable of formulating anything resembling an argument or discerning between the contents of a statement rather than its implications. Which ... you do you, I guess? But as I've said several times, at this point you're just helping Apple maintain their image as the cool, progressive, innovative company in contrast to the recalcitrant and conservative elitism of the PC industry. So: please don't be a PR tool for Apple. They neither need nor deserve it.

I really appreciate your level headedness given Lex's attitude and responses. Given these responses in general, you'd think that Apple rebranded an existing product and made the same claim.

The bottom line is that regardless of if you agree with Apple's business practices or not, the M1 Ultra is a very interesting SoC as there really is nothing quite like it.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Horses for courses. The Apple M1 is very good if that is what you need or like, same as a high spec PC.

 

[Valantar]

The bottom line is that regardless of if you agree with Apple's business practices or not, the M1 Ultra is a very interesting SoC as there really is nothing quite like it.

Yeah, and it's a fascinating example of what can happen if an actor is able to mostly operate outside the strict limitations of free-market capitalism. They're not beholden to making a chip that anyone wants to buy, they're not beholden to the whims or anxieties of customers, and thanks to their gigantic cash reserves and solid economic backing from mostly unrelated things (the app store in particular, but also mobile hardware), they can more than afford to make massive gambles on over-the-top hardware like this.

I read yesterday (at Tom's) that their interconnect seems to be based on CoWoS-S, i.e. a full silicon interposer and not some embedded bridge like EMIB or InFO. That just underscores how expensive this chip has to be to produce - not just two massive dice on a cutting-edge node, but a full-sized >860mm2 interposer in addition to the gargantuan package with its integrated LPDDR5 traces. Really makes me wonder what an even remotely comparable solution from AMD or Intel would cost - I would honestly expect it to be in the $10 000 range, given the tech, transistor counts, and hardware on the chip. It clearly doesn't compete with their top-end server CPUs that cost around that figure, but I can bet there are quite a few datacenter operators who would love a tightly integrated SoC like this - especially at these efficiency levels. Though there's no way they would settle for 128GB of RAM, obviously.

Two thoughts from this: It'll be interesting to see how Apple moves forward with the next generation of this, whether they stick with CoWoS-S or move to InFO. And I really hope AMD starts adopting InFO packaging across their lineup in the next few generations - given that IF on a Threadripper easily consumes 60-80W, it's reasonable to expect massive efficiency and performance gains just from such a move - though of course it'll also drastically increase thermal density by packing the CCDs tighter. Still, interesting times ahead, and I hope Apple has given Intel and AMD a bit of a kick in the rear with this.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Or at the very least a a better way to do an interposer

 

[lexluthermiester]

Or at the very least a a better way to do an interposer

But at what cost? With this all-in-one design, the performance is solid, but there is no upgrade path, not room for interchangeability. This has been an ongoing problem for Apple..

 

[Deleted member 24505]

But at what cost? With this all-in-one design, the performance is solid, but there is no upgrade path, not room for interchangeability. This has been an ongoing problem for Apple..

Have Apple products ever been upgradeable. They want you to buy expensive, new rather than repair or upgrade. Imo the main reason to say fuck you to apple, with your soldered CPUs, ram and SSDs