At this point, I hope Apple will finally take action and introduce a two-year upgrade cycle for the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, especially considering the significant cost involved. The uncertainty surrounding their release cycles has been excessive for potential buyers.
Apple Silicon enables Apple to redesign the Mac Pro tower, making it more compact and efficient. A design that reduces the current Mac Pro tower’s size by at least a third would be nice. For instance, a size of (15.4 in x 3.7 in) would be suitable, and coincidentally happens to be the size of two Mac Studios turned 90° and stacked on top of each other.
In any case, hopefully the new design will be something that they can live with and iterate over the course of time. Apple has to eliminate the uncertainty of the release dates for their higher end desktop machines they simply cost too much.
I got tired of waiting for an M3 Mac Studio and now an M4 Mac Studio, so I pulled the trigger and bought a nearly fully loaded 16" M4 Max MBP, even though I didn't need or want a laptop. In conjunction with 2 Thunderbolt docks/hubs, I think I have all the functionality of the forthcoming Studio. I totally understand why Apple prioritizes the MBP over the Mac Studio or Mac Pro, but serious users should not have to wait over two years for current state-of-the-art functionality.
The move to chiplets, should allow Apple to design more specialized chips. This would allow them to make a specific AI chip for their servers, that they could possibly use in workstations for AI workflows. I would also assume this would allow them to add more video rendering cores.
I don't think a monolithic die makes sense. I am pretty sure they will be doing chiplet designs which makes economic sense and can offer impressive performance on some tasks.
Agreed. The Max chips are already crazy big and I imagine pretty expensive. There’s a good reason AMD went the chiplet route. The rumors of Apple going the chiplet route with M5 pro and above make a lot of sense to me.
I hope we get an M4 ultra but I’m also starting to think I shouldn’t count on it. I really like the idea of having an M4 ultra Mac Studio sitting on my desk but having a pair of M4 pro minis could also serve my purpose. If Apple would update the whole lineup at the same time I could pick the best computer, but with a huge delay for the ultra — and not even knowing if it will appear at all — the ultra becomes a harder option to choose
The m series max chips are actually pretty small considering they pack not only the cpu, but the GPU and ram as well. M4 max is about 100 mm. Just an Nvidia 4080 GPU is about 400 mm by itself. A 4090 is over 600 mm. Two ultra chips wouldn’t even be that big. And that’s just s GPU.
Apple can level the playing field and come out on top of literally every player with a monolithic die. The potential of the Mac Pro is seriously wasted currently. The equivalent of combining two ultra monoliths would hurt some serious feelings. The only barrier would be apathy on the part of apple.
I don't think a monolithic die makes sense. I am pretty sure they will be doing chiplet designs which makes economic sense and can offer impressive performance on some tasks.
Agreed. The Max chips are already crazy big and I imagine pretty expensive. There’s a good reason AMD went the chiplet route. The rumors of Apple going the chiplet route with M5 pro and above make a lot of sense to me.
I hope we get an M4 ultra but I’m also starting to think I shouldn’t count on it. I really like the idea of having an M4 ultra Mac Studio sitting on my desk but having a pair of M4 pro minis could also serve my purpose. If Apple would update the whole lineup at the same time I could pick the best computer, but with a huge delay for the ultra — and not even knowing if it will appear at all — the ultra becomes a harder option to choose
The m series max chips are actually pretty small considering they pack not only the cpu, but the GPU and ram as well. M4 max is about 100 mm. Just an Nvidia 4080 GPU is about 400 mm by itself. A 4090 is over 600 mm. Two ultra chips wouldn’t even be that big. And that’s just s GPU.
Apple can level the playing field and come out on top of literally every player with a monolithic die. The potential of the Mac Pro is seriously wasted currently. The equivalent of combining two ultra monoliths would hurt some serious feelings. The only barrier would be apathy on the part of apple.
You have your die sizes mixed up.
The standard Mx model is about 100 mm2. Then, you can roughly double for Pro, and double the Pro to get to the Max.
So, a Mx Pro model is roughly 200 mm2 and a Mx Max is roughly 400 mm2.
Apple is going the chiplet route for 2nm node chips, but I thought their hand was forced because reticle sizes (or max die sizes for 2nm nodes and beyond) are decreasing because of limits from the lithography machines, not designer choice.
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