I’m struggling to make sense of some of the rumours surrounding this initiative. There was a report today by The Information:
https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/29/apple-ai-confidential-computing-ios-18/ (The Information link unavailable at the time of writing)
It states that Apple has a way to perform more demanding AI tasks in the cloud while maintaining privacy. That’s all great but what I am perplexed by is
A). Can they really provide enough compute for these really demanding tasks by using M2 Ultras? These are nearly beaten by an M3 Max now and certainly big iron from Nvidia will destroy these. Can really support their user base of ~1 billion users?
B) If not just M2 Ultras, then what? The article states that later in the year Apple will move to M4 chips. I assume the Ultra. Gurman has repeatedly said no M4 Ultra until mid-2025. He could certainly be wrong, but he has doubled down on it recently. The M4 Ultra has to come sooner if they are to be even remotely competitive with their own chips surely?
C) Perhaps the rumours of their own servers for AI are just wrong. That is, they are making them, but they handle only a small component, and that detail is lost in the rumour.