All the tidbits we’ve gleaned about the Mac Studio, Studio Display, and M1 Ultra

We've rounded up a bunch of details that Apple didn't mention onstage.

Read the whole story

 

[jackmactamas]

I am actually really pleasantly surprised by the Mac Studio. It is a lot of power in a small and comparatively inexpensive package. I think a lot of people will be buying these.

Obviously it would be better if it had upgradable RAM and SSD, but still, a powerful little package at a not crazy price.

 

[scooternva]

Everything in that squat cube has been positioned and right-sized to a fair thee well not only for volumetric size but also for optimum heat dissipation. It’s actually not at all surprising that there are no user-serviceable parts inside.

 

[Architect_of_Insanity]

I am actually really pleasantly surprised by the Mac Studio. It is a lot of power in a small and comparatively inexpensive package. I think a lot of people will be buying these.

Obviously it would be better if it had upgradable RAM and SSD, but still, a powerful little package at a not crazy price.

When I first saw the case, I was expecting expansion capabilities - and disappointed when the top half of the unit was cooling fans. Sure, TB4 is stupid fast and external devices can provide everything necessary... it was just a hope that a few NVMe slots or something would be there.

 

[Ralf The Dog]

All I know is, I can't wait for my Studio Ultra to arrive.

 

[scooternva]

To me, the fact that the top half is the cooling apparatus gives me a reason to hope that this thing won’t throttle itself when it is under load.

 

[Architect_of_Insanity]

All I know is, I can't wait for my Studio Ultra to arrive.

What do you plan on using it for? Love seeing these workhorses being used to their fullest extent.

 

[OrangeCream]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

What I'll want to know regarding the Studio Display is if there are any compatible HDMI to USB-C (or HDMI to DisplayPort, then a passive cable to USB-C) solutions that can do 4K@60Hz, so that the monitor can also be used with current game consoles.

This should work fine, but only assuming the following:
- That it doesn't require a Thunderbolt input signal, and can just take a "naked" DisplayPort signal by itself
- That it can properly upscale a 4K signal
- That it supports HDCP 2.0 (though maybe some adapters will take care of it)

Hopefully your review can look up that particular scenario!

 

[The Crunchy Frog]

If the Mac Studio performs well in reviews, it looks like Steve will have finally gotten his wish for a viable Mac cube.

 

[gravage]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

 

[OptimusP83]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

Well just take the Ultra results and cut them in half, performance wise. Otherwise the Ultra and Max Macs are functionally very similar. I'm sure some outlet with more money than sense (LTT maybe?) will buy one of each and test them all...

 

[SraCet]

Looking forward to a teardown of the Studio.

From the pictures, I don't understand how the air is supposed to flow in from the bottom, seems like it's blocked by the motherboard.

It also seems like the ventilated area is much bigger for the exhaust than it is for the intake.

 

[BlameOmar]

What I'll want to know regarding the Studio Display is if there are any compatible HDMI to USB-C (or HDMI to DisplayPort, then a passive cable to USB-C) solutions that can do 4K@60Hz, so that the monitor can also be used with current game consoles.

This should work fine, but only assuming the following:
- That it doesn't require a Thunderbolt input signal, and can just take a "naked" DisplayPort signal by itself
- That it can properly upscale a 4K signal
- That it supports HDCP 2.0 (though maybe some adapters will take care of it)

Hopefully your review can look up that particular scenario!

It supports USB-C only iPads, so it almost definitely can accept a standard DisplayPort signal.

 

[KChat]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

If that’s a real question, I would assume the info came from Apple directly.

From the first paragraph:

“…but there are always more details to explore as people dig through the spec sheets and Apple responds to questions from the press.

(emphasis mine)

 

[Klive Aleksaander]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

Max for me, too.
My local Apple Store business team have already contacted me to gauge my interest...

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

What I'll want to know regarding the Studio Display is if there are any compatible HDMI to USB-C (or HDMI to DisplayPort, then a passive cable to USB-C) solutions that can do 4K@60Hz, so that the monitor can also be used with current game consoles.

This should work fine, but only assuming the following:
- That it doesn't require a Thunderbolt input signal, and can just take a "naked" DisplayPort signal by itself
- That it can properly upscale a 4K signal
- That it supports HDCP 2.0 (though maybe some adapters will take care of it)

Hopefully your review can look up that particular scenario!

It supports USB-C only iPads, so it almost definitely can accept a standard DisplayPort signal.

Good point! I guess that only leaves 2 and 3.

 

[OrangeCream]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

If that’s a real question, I would assume the info came from Apple directly.

From the first paragraph:

“…but there are always more details to explore as people dig through the spec sheets and Apple responds to questions from the press.

(emphasis mine)

Assuming the response can be taken at 100% face value, I digged around to find the original Unified Memory graphic and it shows a 'fabric' that connects all the cores and cache to the memory.

So I'm guessing but I think the interposer, and it's 10k connections, are actually to wire together the 4 memory controllers on each of the M1P chips to act as a single memory controller in the M1U.

 

[ant1pathy]

I am actually really pleasantly surprised by the Mac Studio. It is a lot of power in a small and comparatively inexpensive package. I think a lot of people will be buying these.

Obviously it would be better if it had upgradable RAM and SSD, but still, a powerful little package at a not crazy price.

While user serviceable SSD wouldn't really change the power equation, the RAM being on package is part of how these chips are so potent. User addressable RAM slots would significantly constrict the machine performance.

And if you need to add bulk storage, TB4 is exactly what you want. Get a Pegasus or similar for an array of SSDs and connect to one cable. TB4 has more than enough bandwidth to soak all the SSD speeds you could care about.

 

[David Hovis]

I am actually really pleasantly surprised by the Mac Studio. It is a lot of power in a small and comparatively inexpensive package. I think a lot of people will be buying these.

Obviously it would be better if it had upgradable RAM and SSD, but still, a powerful little package at a not crazy price.

I'm not sure I've got the numbers exactly right, but the 800GB/s of memory bandwidth that the M1 Ultra has would require 20 DDR5 DIMM slots.

There are benefits to integration, after all.

YMMV, of course, and not all use cases require that level of memory bandwidth.

 

[cryptonym]

The "ultra" modifier has been used on products of all kinds for decades, but I think this is the first time it's been quantified precisely. At long last we know: 1 Ultra = 2 x Max.

 

[OptimusP83]

Looking forward to a teardown of the Studio.

From the pictures, I don't understand how the air is supposed to flow in from the bottom, seems like it's blocked by the motherboard.

It also seems like the ventilated area is much bigger for the exhaust than it is for the intake.

Seems like a negative pressure design, and I thought I recalled seeing a "void" on the front to act as a flow path for the air into the blowers and then out the back. I'd assume that, depending on the model the fans might only run at certain loads anyway, and that even full tilt it'll just be a light breeze out the back.

 

[thomsirveaux]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

Added a bit more here - Computerworld is saying there is a silicon-based interposer, but also describes the Ultra as one large die rather than two visibly separate chiplets (like you'd see if you delidded a Ryzen chip). https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... esign.html

 

[thomsirveaux]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

We'll be looking at both.

 

[fleeno]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

I'd assume it would be very similar to the 16" MBP, which is already available with the same M1 Max chip. I ended up ordering a Studio with the Max, should be a nice upgrade for me!

 

[Fabermetrics]

Curious what the benchmarks on the Ultra end up being compared to the Mac Pro. Obviously the Pro supports non-arm workloads natively, but Id think otherwise the Studio Ultra is getting close to fully replacing it?

 

[dmsilev]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

Added a bit more here - Computerworld is saying there is a silicon-based interposer, but also describes the Ultra as one large die rather than two visibly separate chiplets (like you'd see if you delidded a Ryzen chip). https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... esign.html

I think that's a misread of what Computerworld is saying. That article is very clear that it's two separate dies plus the interposer, but it _appears_ to act like a single die (from the POV of software). From the CW article, "A silicon interposer is basically an in-package interconnect that bridges the two dies used in M1 Ultra."

 

[Static and Noise]

Where did you get the information that the Ultra is a single piece of silicon? That's wild if they don't have an interposer at all!

Added a bit more here - Computerworld is saying there is a silicon-based interposer, but also describes the Ultra as one large die rather than two visibly separate chiplets (like you'd see if you delidded a Ryzen chip). https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... esign.html

The fact the interconnect is in every M1 Max makes it sound like they're... gluing them together with some silicone interposer to create one big piece of silicone.

Of course, this tech is quite a bit over my head.

 

[dmsilev]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

We'll be looking at both.

For benchmarking the thing, could you do something that's GPU-compute based? Maybe the latest release of Blender, since that now supports Metal acceleration on M-series chips.

 

[hexer]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

It shouldn't perform any different than the MacBook Pros.

 

[Adreaver]

Does anyone know whether BlackMagic eGPU enclosures and similar work with M1 Macs? 64 GPU cores is nice, but the ability to upgrade the GPU independently is nicer.

 

[janhec]

Looking forward to a teardown of the Studio.

From the pictures, I don't understand how the air is supposed to flow in from the bottom, seems like it's blocked by the motherboard.

It also seems like the ventilated area is much bigger for the exhaust than it is for the intake.

Seems like a negative pressure design, and I thought I recalled seeing a "void" on the front to act as a flow path for the air into the blowers and then out the back. I'd assume that, depending on the model the fans might only run at certain loads anyway, and that even full tilt it'll just be a light breeze out the back.

noise abatement then?

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

As usual, all anyone is going to talk about is the Ultra and all I’m interested in is the Max version.

It shouldn't perform any different than the MacBook Pros.

The larger cooling might allow it to run warmer though?

 

[KingStudMuffin]

That turns out not to be true—the M1 Ultra is apparently one big piece of silicon, just as it appears in Apple's render shots.

The main risk with creating such a huge chip is that manufacturing yields will be low, as more surface area increases the likelihood that there will be a defect somewhere in the chip. But TSMC has been making M1-based chips on its 5 nm process for well over a year now, giving it plenty of time to optimize yields. And Apple is able to do some binning with the M1 Ultra (i.e., selling some chips with defects as lower-end models with the defective parts turned off), since there are versions with both 48 and 64 GPU cores.

In the render shots, the M1 Ultra appears to be 2 M1 Max dies rotated 180 degrees with respect to each other. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if the manufacturing strategy were to just use the good half of an M1 Ultra as an M1 Max if the other half has a defect (and, of course, disable the part that manages the interconnect fabric). I don't know if you just make all the M1 Maxes with the Ultra design but it seems like you could probably just cut an Ultra in half to get 2 Maxes if need be.

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

...
While user serviceable SSD wouldn't really change the power equation, the RAM being on package is part of how these chips are so potent. User addressable RAM slots would significantly constrict the machine performance. ...

There's nothing preventing Apple from having some on-package RAM and also providing expansion slots for more RAM.

If the RAM in the slots is slower, that's fine. NUMA systems are already well-understood.

You say this as if it would be trivial for them to completely redesign their memory model to support multiple tiers of RAM. OK...

 

[ERIFNOMI]

I am actually really pleasantly surprised by the Mac Studio. It is a lot of power in a small and comparatively inexpensive package. I think a lot of people will be buying these.

Obviously it would be better if it had upgradable RAM and SSD, but still, a powerful little package at a not crazy price.

I'm not sure I've got the numbers exactly right, but the 800GB/s of memory bandwidth that the M1 Ultra has would require 20 DDR5 DIMM slots.

There are benefits to integration, after all.

YMMV, of course, and not all use cases require that level of memory bandwidth.

The M1 Ultra should have a 1024b memory bus (the M1 Max is 512b, Ultra is two Maxes). If you could get DIMMs of LPDDR5, that would be 16 channels running at 6400MT/s.

 

[Adreaver]

...
While user serviceable SSD wouldn't really change the power equation, the RAM being on package is part of how these chips are so potent. User addressable RAM slots would significantly constrict the machine performance. ...

There's nothing preventing Apple from having some on-package RAM and also providing expansion slots for more RAM.

If the RAM in the slots is slower, that's fine. NUMA systems are already well-understood.

You say this as if it would be trivial for them to completely redesign their memory model to support multiple tiers of RAM. OK...

You can install RAM via PCIe, and TB4 uses PCIe lanes.

Slower than native DIMMs on x86/64 systems, but it could definitely be done.