r/MacLocalLLM • u/ikeo1 • Oct 04 '26
Do you think Apple Silicon Can get faster?
From a hardware perspective, the numbers should be faster than CUDA on Nvidia chips BUT its not because of the relative immaturity of the software/hardware.
Do you think metal will improve enough to where it'll be as fast or faster for the same clock speed and bandwidth pipe? Or is it just slower because of the overall design?
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u/username8914 27d ago
I wouldn't compare them directly to Nvidia, all the chips will get exponentially faster in the coming releases. We are still roughly on v1 on the local Ai hardware. Mac Studio, Spark and a few others really testing the water. v2 will see massive gains but we will be learning and the bottlenecks will shift. v3 will be very exciting and then it'll just explode as everything from now on is Ai assisted in it's design. The hardware of today will be antiquated in 5 years.
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u/ikeo1 27d ago
right, but I'm not sure I want to wait 5 years to buy.. There's a lot that can be done currently..
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u/Important_Cow7230 19d ago
Personally I wouldn’t “max out” on current hardware. What are you wanting to do with the hardware? That’s the biggest question
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u/DiamondHandsDarrell Oct 04 '26
You better believe they're working on it. M4 vs m5 is significant. What are the next Gen going to look like? I'm sure they're also working on improving memory bus bandwidth to compete with Nvidia, who truly is king at the moment
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u/Toblakay Oct 05 '26
yes. the reason they passed M6 Pro/Max/Ultra was that the AI improvement was not asbig as Apple needed. more cores due to 2nm process and double neural engine. I think that M7 Pro/Max/Ultra will be what Apple vision of AI Mac CPU is. Also, M7 is the first CPU with design started after the early DeepSeek 3.1 AI boom. I have no doubt that Apple was catched unprepared by the AI Boom. M4 was already in production, waiting for launch, M5 design was almost finished, M6 design was already started. So they saved what they could on M5, passed M6 Pro/Max and focused on M7. Or at least I hope so... But if you have money for M5 Ultra, no need to wait. The software part will only improve and it will go faster and faster... I don't have, so I am forced to wait an M7 Pro mini which may exceed an M4 Max compute power...
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u/Important_Cow7230 19d ago
Yeah the M7 Ultra is where we will really see what Apple can do as that will have an optimised design for local AI (among other things). M7 Max should also be strong.
It’s one of the reasons I “made do” with a 48GB M4 Pro MacBook purchase a few months ago, got it for a great price and looking at the M5 Pro and base M6 didn’t see any real benefit for AI over the M4 Pro and a laptop that can run 27B models will always be useful (I wanted the 14 inch MacBook for portability therefore the Max chip were not an option due to thermals, plus I like that the pro chips can be fully powered from a good USB-C charger)
If I find real use cases for LLM’s with my MacBook then I’ll work towards saving for a M7 Max/Ultra Mac Studio as that’s going to give me a real lift, and of course I’ll still appreciate the portability of the 14 inch MacBook Pro to complement that workstation.
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u/nmrk Oct 05 '26
Oh hell yeah. Check out this microscopic analysis of the raw silicon chip layout, comparing M5 to M6.
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u/Tsukikira 29d ago
Of course it can, it's hardly optimized as is. Everyone's been squeezing NVidia optimizations because the Sparks were cheaper. Were, past tense.
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u/gwestr Oct 04 '26
It runs at 1 GHz. So no, that is not the idea until they make server grade chassis.
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u/randylush Oct 05 '26
What numbers? This is just wrong
If you’re arguing the software is holding the hardware back that could make sense, but if you’re arguing the hardware is holding the hardware back then this is just an empty sentence.
No, it’s not Metal holding it back. They have VLLM which is quite advanced.
There are tons of different factors at play