Apple (and the ARM ecosystem as a whole) has never really needed massive GPU compute before, it’s always been about power efficiency and just enough GPU oomph to make UI fluid. Even historic Mac Pro workloads never really needed tons of GPU prowess, the heaviest power users were primarily taxing video encode/decode and 2D raster effects (Adobe Suite etc) so that’s what they focused on. By contrast NVIDIA’s entire game has been raw GPU power for decades. M1 Max was really prescient in hindsight and has set the stage for, all things considered, Apple to be not as far behind as it could have been today.

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eigenspace 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess I just don't really buy your argument, because if their CPUs had turned out poorly, you could have applied the same argument to their CPUs instead of the GPUs.

Another user though pointed out that they didn't actually design the GPU until the A11, so perhaps it really is just a lack of in house experience.

	▲	fvwqcecvq 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No. It's always been about power efficiency. Apple's GPU are very good in that area just like the CPU. https://arxiv.org/html/2502.05317v1 Apple vs. Oranges: Evaluating the Apple Silicon M-Series SoCs for HPC Performance and Efficiency "Apple's M-series GPUs offer massive performance-per-watt, scaling efficiently from roughly 5W in base chips to around 40-50W in top-tier Max chips. This efficiency generally sits between 200 and 250 GFLOPS per Watt." Sure. nVidia GPUs have higher performance. But they do it with 450W+ a.k.a. 10x the power
	▲	wtallis 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> I guess I just don't really buy your argument, because if their CPUs had turned out poorly, you could have applied the same argument to their CPUs instead of the GPUs. Doesn't the argument work fine on the CPU side? Apple doesn't seem to be hurting for lack of a Threadripper competitor.