macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

Re:macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunde... by ChrisMarshallNY on Saturday December 13, 2025 @04:26AM (#46253270)

I’m not particularly interested in training models, but it would be nice to have eGPUs again. When Apple Silicon came out, support for them dried up. I sold my old BlackMagic eGPU.

That said, the need for them also faded. The new chips have performance every bit as good as the eGPU-enhanced Intel chips.

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Re:macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunde... by andy_ppp on Saturday December 13, 2025 @09:36AM (#46254802)

eGPU with an Apple accelerator with a bunch or RAM and GPU cores could be really interesting honestly. I’m pretty sure they are capable of designing something very competitive especially in terms of performance per watt.

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Re:macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunde... by sroussey on Saturday December 13, 2025 @06:36PM (#46259310)

Really, that’s a place for the MacPro: slide in SoC with ram modules / blades. Put 4, 8, 16 Ultra chips in one machine.

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Re:macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunde... by andy_ppp on Sunday December 14, 2025 @06:39AM (#46262370)

You honestly don’t need extra CPUs in this system at some point do you?

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Re:macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunde... by sroussey on Sunday December 14, 2025 @11:10AM (#46264077)

They are inseparable for Apple. CPUS/GPUs/memory. They can use chipsets to tweak ratios, but I doubt they will change the underlying module format—everything together.

My suggestion is to accept that format and just provide a way to network them at a low level via pci or better.

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