Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service

Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by maga on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:18AM (#25998853)

I'm curious about how the hardware side of it all looks. Does Apple sell chips to these cloud providers or they are indeed using real/modified Mac Minis?

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by detaro on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @06:40AM (#25999830)

Using actual Macs is the only way. Apple does not care about helping cloud providers in any way (e.g. even just an exception to the 24h rental requirement would be huge for them, but not even AWS got that).

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by IceWreck on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:22AM (#25998875)

I saw a video of a mac only data center and they made customized racks to optimally fit real consumer Macs into those racks.

They had those for the trashcan/cheese-grator macs, mac minis and well as the all-in-one macs for special use cases (yes they put those all in ones in a rack)

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by teruakohatu on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:20AM (#25998869)

I believe it is Mac Minis but I would think they strip them of the case.

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by jiofih on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:38AM (#25998972)

The aluminum case is a massive heat sink, no reason to remove it.

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by JCBird1012 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @10:15AM (#26001853)

If it's already in a cooled data center, removing it could mean being able to fit more Minis in a rack with little downside to thermals. The aluminum case makes sense when you're not in a climate-controlled environment.

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Re:Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service by skw-hn on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:22AM (#25998878)

They use real retail macs. As for the modifications i don't know.

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