Apple officially unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max: 3 nanometer, Dynamic Caching GPU, more
Apple has unveiled its next generation of M series chips: M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. These new chips are...
I knew “scary fast” had to mean some sort of processor bump for hardware, but I was secretly hoping they’d kill off the remaining Lightning ports on their keyboards, trackpads, and mice.
And I was hoping they’d finally redesign that god awful mouse. I don’t know how people live with that thing.
I think they want to force trackpads. I can’t even use a mouse anymore. Feels strange.
3 nanometer
That’s a silicon lattice just six atoms thick. What a time to be alive!
Nanometers have actually been a marker of generation for quite a while. 3nm is actually 24. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process
From Wikipedia: The term "3 nanometer" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors.
I built a M3 MBP just to see how much money a mxed out unit would be.
M3 14" MBP Max chip with all the cores 128GB RAM 8TB storage
$4700
That's about the cost of my last MBP and iPhone pair, two times over. At that point, why even go for a laptop, vs. what would clearly be a high end desktop station?
*Wonders what a maxed out MBP costs.
*pics the 14”…
Maxed out 16” is $7,199.- (ex Apple care)
Maxed out 14” is $6,899.- … (I think you missed something)
Am I confused, or are you confidently asserting that desktop systems are objectively superior to laptops?
they are. (unless we're talking about Mac only, which are not as repairable or upgradable)
desktop allow for a far better modularity, and reparability, far more ports, PCIe expansions like sound cards, etc.
If my screen breaks or I'd rather use a bigger one, I just buy a monitor and plug it in. If my CPU dies or is no more enough for my use case, I'll just buy a better one while still using every other component. If I need more hard drives, I'll just buy more SATA cables. If I need better sound, I'll buy a sound card.
those features are dealbreakers. laptops will never be able to compete with a real desktop.
Not the OP but yes
In terms of performance that is.
At that point, why even go for a laptop, vs. what would clearly be a high end desktop station?
Because you can take that high-end computer with you across the room, on a plane, or anywhere else.
Skip apple entirely. The spec out and testing of the new Qualcomm ARM chip releasing in laptops next year looks to have the m3 beat across the board and will definitely end up at a lower price point.
That's what I'm waiting for, just that it gets close to Mx performance and has proper Linux support.
Did these chips have a translation in hardware like Rosetta? Or emulation that's almost just as good? Edit: Found a couple things according to Qualcomm's charts it looks interesting https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-performance-preview-a-first-look-at-whats-to-come But from what was observed along with other scores it looks a lot closer https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-x-elite-benchmarks-3380426/
Just for fun, let me buy every upsell, regardless of whether I want or need it.
And then let me compare that to the normal configuration of things I bought...
Why don't you compare apples to apples. Configure an M3 MBP like you would with fairly normal specs?
The memory maximums are a tad silly. I’d expect …
The ray tracing is awesome, but minus that I am not eager to move up from my M1 Max.
The memory maximums are going to be more and more important when it comes to local AI applications.
Take language models for an example
To run a 30b model, you need 24gb of video ram to do it fully on the video card. That's a nvidia 3090 or 4090 today. But in the grand scheme of things, 30b is small. They are going to get much bigger, especially when you want larger contexts which allow the AI to remember more about its interactions with you.
Apples memory is unified, so it can be system ram, or video ram. You'll be able to easily load a 70b model into a MacBook with 64gb of ram for example, where you'd need 2 3090s or 4090s and a hefty PSU on a current Gen non Mac PC (if you even can with just that)
For the moment, things are better optimized for windows and nvidia hardware, but Apple is encroaching on this space, and their huge amounts of video memory will begin to unlock using and training larger and larger models with each hardware generation.
Expect to see nvidia starting to offer higher video ram cards as well for this exact reason. Maybe even cards tailored to that instead of gaming with really high amounts of ram.
Doesn't the m2 max allow 196gb of ram? Seems like an odd downgrade. The value in these for me is the unified memory for large ai models, but most consumers may not notice that. Who knows.
That's the m2 ultra which is only the desktop version right now.
M2 release dates.
Damn Apple.
I would expect those machines should have launched earlier than they did: everything was pushed back as a result of supply chain issues.
I am making assumptions here but I've heard similar speculation from several places.
What is "dynamic caching"? The article mentions that iris new, but nothing more.
Based on my 60 seconds reading on it, onboard GPUs typically share the systems RAM. It is usually a fixed amount from my understanding. Dynamic caching seems to allow the GPU to only consume what it needs. Without knowing more, I'm guessing this means it frees up more RAM for the system instead of holding a fixed chunk in reserve for the GPU, or, on the other side, allows the GPU to use more RAM than some predetermined fixed amount.
According to Apple's press release, the GPUs in the new Macs are already faster and more efficient than those that came before them. But they go further thanks to their support for Dynamic Caching, a feature that "unlike traditional GPUs, allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time."
What does that mean? Apple says that "with Dynamic Caching, only the exact amount of memory needed is used for each task. This is an industry first, transparent to developers, and the cornerstone of the new GPU architecture."
Do we have a m3 air now? I can't find it. I was planning to buy m2 air but now we have m3 so probably best to wait ?
Not yet, it’s just the MacBook Pro and iMac for now
I was kinda bored for this announcement. I have a M2 Pro MBP for work and I really have no desire to get anything faster.
I was hoping for a new iPad Mini announcement
pity qualcomm has just wiped the floor with them. even with the new M3 it's not even close I believe. please correct me if I'm wrong (who am I kidding you're gunna correct me)
