WWDC 2023 Thread

[theorist9]

Not a good idea IMHO to lower the fan curve tho just to lower noise. I would think it is safe to do it the other way, i.e. turn it up.

This has been under discussion at Macs Fan Control's website. Mac's Fan Control said they tested it at 1100 RPM under various conditions, and the temps stayed low. They further remark that the MBP's run, by default, at 0 RPM under low-load conditions, so it seems odd this isn't available to the Studios, which have much larger heat sinks:

Mac Studio fan control and fan noise - CrystalIDEA Blog

crystalidea.com

However, various conditions isn't all conditions (which would include not just all use cases, but also all external temperatures--e.g., suppose your room is in the 80's). Thus there was a feature request, which they're working on, to run the Studio with either no fan, or at 1100 RPM, but revert to the OS's automatic control if the temps went above specified threshold values. That would seem to be the best of both worlds; though if you did this you'd probably want to have a separate, independent program running that will sound an alarm if the temps go over-threshold, in case the algorithm on Macs Fan Control fails.

Zero-RPM Speeds (Switch to 'Automatic' Control below lower Threshold) · Issue #582 · crystalidea/macs-fan-control

My M1 Max MBP 16" when in automatic mode (I.e. MFC not controlling the fans) sets the fan speed to zero RPM. MFC sets a minimum of 1500 RPM. Can a feature be implemented that allows the zero RPM mo...

github.com

 

[theorist9]

Max Tech compared the new M2 Ultra Mac Pro against the old Intel model.

Unsurprisingly, the new model makes the previous one look like an old, noisy beast. Except for a slight uptick during a Cinebench torture test, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro didn't ramp the fans and was functionally silent. Comparatively, if you've ever been anywhere within the proximity of an Intel Mac Pro, then anything mildly stressful turns it into a jet engine. Obviously, the new model should perform better than the previous one, but it does so silently, which isn't something the Intel era was known for. My puny 2018 Mac mini with a 4-core i3 makes more noise than any of the Apple Silicon Macs. For most users, the Mac Studio is probably a better option, but if you need slots, then the new Mac Pro should fill that niche.

I didn't watch the video, but some questions/points:

1) The M2 Ultras on the Studio and MP obviously have the same number of PCIe lanes. While the M2 Ultra doesn't have enough lanes to support the max possible bandwidth from the MP's internal SSD plus all the PCIe cards you can plug into it (not even close), I recall reading that the Ultra does have more than enough lanes to support the internal SSD plus the max bandwidth of all the external ports on the Studio. If that's correct (I don't know if it is), that would mean the MP offers more external bandwidth than the Studio (the idea being that, unlike the Studio, the MP can make use of all the M2 Ultra's PCIe bandwidth). It would be nice to get some numbers on this.

2) A music producer, Neil Parfitt, made the interesting point that the audio cards he uses have very noisy fans. Thus his MP needs to be in a separate room regardless, making the inherent quietness of the new MP irrelevant for his use case.

3) One way Apple could, in a very obvious way, distinguish the MP from the Studio, is to make the MP generationally upgradeable. E.g., allow the M2 Ultra MP to be upgraded to, say, an M4 Ultra or M4 Extreme MP. Then you don't have to junk the expensive case when you upgrade, making the additional $ you spent for the case be much more justifiable. Take a look at this pic from iFixit's teardown of the 2019 MP (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+2019+Teardown/128922). Granted, the AS version is somewhat different but, based on this, it doesn't seem like you''d need to replace much more than the motherboard to upgrade from an older AS version to a new one (assuming they stay with the same case design).

 

[exoticspice1]

Has Apple really given up on the scientific professionals? Steve Jobs in his keynotes hammer the Mac Pro as the best tool for these sort of industries.

To me it's looks like Apple is just mainly focusing on AV pros and a very niche area that is large rendering models thanks to the inherant advantage of having unified memory.

3D rendering that meets or beats Nvidia GPUs, Animation, AI training is what I hope Apples tackles next because it's sorely missing on the Mac. It would nice to see some benchmarks in regards to scientific areas, not just Video editing. Maybe that's what the new Mac Pro is capable of...

That's what I don't like about Mac reviewers, no substance. Just marketing.

 

[theorist9]

Has Apple really given up on the scientific professionals? Steve Jobs in his keynotes hammer the Mac Pro as the best tool for these sort of industries...

It would nice to see some benchmarks in regards to scientific areas, not just Video editing.

Not generally, but some time ago they did abandon the subset of researchers that do GPU computing using NVIDIA/CUDA.

But the Mac remains the only platform on which you can run fully-featured versions of MS Office and Adobe CC natively, and also have access to a native Unix terminal; this makes it very appealing for those who need both.

Apple Silicon does offer a Neural Engine, which is dedicated circuitry for accelerating ML/AI. However, it first appeared several years ago on the A11, where it clearly wasn't intended for ML/AI data science research projects. I don't know if the capabilities of the Neural Engine in the M-series chips have been expanded specifically with ML/AI researchers in mind. And I'll leave it to others to comment on how effective this is vs. what NVIDIA offers for such tasks.

I did post benchmarks with Mathematica. Generally, the performance with Apple Silicon has been disappointing. Comparing the M1 series with a 2019 i9 Intel iMac, it's sometimes slower for numerical work, and only modestly faster (~10%, on average) for symbolic tasks. I don't know the reason for this.