Article: During an in-depth discussion at WWDC 2023, John Ternus, Apple’s hardware engineering chief, shed light on the absence of discrete GPUs in the Mac Pro 2023. Ternus explained that Apple’s architectural design revolves around a shared memory model that optimizes performance. Consequently, incorporating an external GPU in a manner that aligns with their system’s optimization is a challenge Apple has chosen not to pursue.
This announcement may disappoint users who had planned to leverage Nvidia cards and CUDA for ML training, as it indicates that GPU support on Apple Silicon is not on the horizon. Critics argue that this decision may signal Apple’s intention to gradually phase out the Mac Pro, echoing the path taken with the discontinued Xserve server range.
Apple’s strategic move to abandon its $2,000 accelerator card and replace it with the performance equivalent of seven Afterburner cards integrated into every Mac Pro is a testament to the company’s pursuit of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This begs the question: why invest $14,000 in additional hardware when a $3,999 workstation can deliver comparable results? It’s worth noting that the Mac Studio is expected to become one of the best workstations available.
