Apple Developed Chip Equivalent To Four M2 Ultras For Apple Car Project (9to5mac.com) 61
After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insights about the project and how involved the Apple Silicon team was before it was shut down. According to Gurman, Apple was planning to power the "AI brain" of the car with a custom Apple Silicon chip that would have the equivalent power of four M2 Ultra chips (the most powerful Apple has to date) combined. 9to5Mac reports: A single M2 Ultra chip consists of 134 billion transistors and features a 24-core CPU, a GPU with up to 76 cores, and a dedicated 32-core Neural Engine. M2 Ultra powers the current generation of Mac Studio and Mac Pro. Interestingly, Gurman says that the development of this new chip for the car was "nearly finished" before the project was discontinued. As some of the engineers working on the car project were reassigned to other teams at Apple, the company could reuse the engineering of this new chip for future projects.
Apple of All People.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple of All People.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's kind of been Apple's business model for the past 25 years, though. They did that with the iPod, the iPhone, iPad, the Apple Watch, and when they switched wholesale from PPC to Intel. Then again when they did their own ARM chips, doing what people said was impossible (ARM that performs well) and doing it on a tight power budget to boot - which run x86 code better than it ran originally on x86, sometimes (eg. Ashes of the Singularity runs better on Silicon than on PC, and sips power while doing so).
They all just worked, without so much as a rough edge that a casual user would see, effectively creating entirely new markets that didn't exist previously. (And I say this as someone who's constantly frustrated by the rough edges that never get fixed on things like Apple Music, and who generally hates the company.)
Sure, there were tablets before the iPad, and music players before the iPod, but they sucked comparably. They have, fairly consistently, "done it in one" - every single time they come out with something new. Short of the disaster which was the 90s for them, they've done it pretty much their entire existence, honestly.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely, I don't think many people, including myself were doubting Apple could build a car but you have to admit it's a pretty big paradigm shift from those other devices, revolutionary as they were. They are still just electronics and the engineers designing all of them can share a fair amount of knowledge of discipline. They also have companies like Foxconn who they can reliably work with to actually build the things their engineers come up with and also leverage the fact these companies already have
Re: (Score:2)
It would have been nice if Apple could build a car. Preferably something that doesn't look like the same like most crossovers out there, and is designed for being able to handle metro areas. The push for "performance" is laughable, since most vehicles just sit in traffic anyway, so might as well focus on creature comforts, safety, and work on autonomous driving to make commutes, especially as cities narrow roads and make once were easy paths something worthy of GTA levels, much less stressful.
Maybe even o
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could just buy a Toyota Prius and stick one of those Apple decals on the back. Just sayin'.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, I am kinda sad to see this whole thing never materialize, it was just interesting to see what a behemoth like Apple could do to the car industry but at the same time if you don't actually have "Full Self Driving" where people can not pay attention driving there's nowhere else to really go with the automobile as a concept, we've gotten all the operational concepts nailed down pretty well, everything is just refinement now, I think Apple put a ton of money into trying to redefine that experience and
Re: (Score:2)
music players before the iPod
The original iPod was an overpriced Mac-only accessory, and if it had remained as such it probably would've been among Apple's list of flops. What made it successful was that Apple did a very un-Apple-like thing and opened it up to Windows users, which represented the bulk of the market for such a product. That was the turning point where their business shifted from being a computer company to a mobile device company that also happens to sell computers.
The iPhone also has evolved significantly since the f
Re: Apple of All People.... (Score:1)
The original iPod was an overpriced Mac-only accessory...
It wasn't overpriced, it was a luxury item. The not-overpriced mp3 player I had had a fraction of the storage, consumable batteries, and connected via a stupidly slow parallel port and of course could not be mounted as a hard drive. Oh and Apple made finding music to purchase easy.
Monster cables are over-priced. The iPod's features weren't for you. (or me, frankly, which is why I never had one.)
Re: (Score:2)
The original iPod was an overpriced Mac-only accessory...
It wasn't overpriced, it was a luxury item.
It had a UI that was easy to use. But let's not kind ourselves. It really was overpriced, and pretty much every news outlet said so, including Apple-friendly media. The reason it was so expensive was because the hard drives were hard to produce, and as a result, relatively expensive. As the price of parts came down (and, subsequently as flash got cheap enough to replace those hard drives), the iPod's price came down, making it a much better buy for normal people, and its popularity soared.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the ''expensive hard drives' included a firewire connection. The competition did not come close to the xfer speeds Apple was offering their others.
The "expensive hard drives" were parallel ATA with a bridge to FireWire. More to the point, they were tiny 1.8" drives with relatively low read and write speeds compared with pretty much any other drives on the market except perhaps for IBM Microdrives and other flash-card-sized drives. Any external FireWire drive from the same era (laptop or desktop) would absolutely smoke it both in terms of performance and capacity. Recall that 2001 was the year when the first drives that required LBA48 started appear
Re: Apple of All People.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I remember right, the first ipod was $399 and contained a Toshiba 5 GB micro hard drive that retailed for $399. And some photographers bought iPods just to remove the hard drive and add it to their camera.
No, the original iPod had a 1.8" drive [ifixit.com], which is considerably larger than a Microdrive, and has an ATA interface, not a CompactFlash interface.
It was the iPod Mini [wikipedia.org] that contained a Microdrive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, how's Tesla managed without a truck, and for years with 1-2 models to pick from? They've managed. Rivian, same sort of thing.
Re: (Score:2)
That's kind of been Apple's business model for the past 25 years, though. They did that with the iPod, the iPhone, iPad, the Apple Watch, and when they switched wholesale from PPC to Intel. Then again when they did their own ARM chips, doing what people said was impossible (ARM that performs well) and doing it on a tight power budget to boot - which run x86 code better than it ran originally on x86, sometimes (eg. Ashes of the Singularity runs better on Silicon than on PC, and sips power while doing so).
That seems a bit like revisionist history to me.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, very few companies can do this, regardless of the industry.
Re: (Score:2)
The 1st gen iPod was a deceptively simple device, though. It was basically a portable Firewire harddrive with a battery and an audio decoder. It really wasn't much more advanced than the other MP3 players at the time, which explains why Slashdot though it was "lame".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But you CAN aggregate observations from multiple perspectives to get an idea.
I had just today, by complete and utter coincidence, been watching past episodes of "The Problem with Jon Stewart" and started wondering "hold up, why DID they axe his show"?
U.S. lawmakers were concerned Apple were axing stuff critical of China. Jon Stewart had said he was planning pieces on both China and *Artificial Intelligence*... and now he's back on Comedy Central.
Re: (Score:2)
This is like a new hardware company going to straight to making server-class motherboards right out of the gate.
Errr many server class motherboard vendors started as server class motherboard designers. But this point aside, your post begs the question. You don't know what Apple was building because it was never public. This fancy M2 chip despite all its hype would likely put it quite far behind what Telsa has in their vehicles, and Tesla's first vehicle had a ludicrously powerful computer in it too.
Also we don't know why the car "failed". Maybe it didn't fail, maybe the strategic direction just turned out not to be c
Re: (Score:2)
$10-20K just for the cpu in the c will sell really (Score:2)
$10-20K just for the cpu in the car will sell really well.
and then you the apple only service lock in.
Apple iMiner 2049er (Score:4, Funny)
$10-20K just for the cpu in the car will sell really well. and then you the apple only service lock in.
For that kind of money, my car CPU better be mining its own car payment from the driveway at night.
Re: $10-20K just for the cpu in the c will sell re (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
apples pricing based what the mac pro costs.
Fools (Score:2)
Forget a car, they could have sold it as a portable Mac ..an iTrailer. You'd have to tow it with a Cybertruck. Think of how cool you'd look to all the nerds in your whole neighborhood. You might even make it to the front page of Incel Quarterly.
Re: (Score:3)
You'd have to tow it with a Cybertruck.
I realize you're trying to be funny, but Tesla pretty much already is the Apple of the automotive industry. Among other similarities, up until very recently they even both preferred to eschew industry standards in favor of their own proprietary charging connectors.
Re: (Score:2)
Tesla pretty much already is the Apple of the automotive industry.
I only partially agree. In the sense that both companies have products that are considered to be highly desirable by affluent consumers, yes. But the two companies differ a lot in their business practices. For example, Apple is usually very secretive about not-yet-released products, while Tesla is known to pre-announce new products by several years. Also, although a few decades ago Apple tried licensing its computer operating system to other hardware manufacturers (which gave rise to Apple clone computers),
Re: (Score:2)
> Tesla pretty much already is the Apple of the automotive industry
Tesla is the *craphouse* try-hard Apple of the automotive industry. I direct you to the demonstrations of a baseball shattering the window or idiots with guns testing the "bulletproof" stainless steel body and then crying on ex-Twitter about "Elon bro I ain't asking for a refund, it's not your fault, ya gotta send me a new Cybertruck". ... and on the one hand, here on the other side of the world, I never would've believed anybody would be
Re: (Score:2)
> [Tesla cars are] considered to be highly desirable by affluent consumers
ITYM "by overly rich idiots who don't deserve their money".
The Tesla Model Y car became the best-selling car (not the best-selling electric car, but the best-selling car of any kind) worldwide in 2023, despite its purchase price being significantly higher than the second-best-selling car. And within the electric car subset of the market, Tesla cars have been outselling most other brands of electric car by a very significant margin (I vaguely recall a chart showing Tesla outselling the next 10 or so rival electric car brands combined in the USA). So, yes, I stand by
Re: (Score:2)
I assume you are referring to the Tesla-proprietary connector being recently standardized as the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector. Tesla had ignored the American CCS1 standard since it was significantly inferior (it supported much lower charging rates than Tesla's own connector). In Europe, Tesla has been supporting the standardized CCS2 charging connector (which is much better than the American CCS2 standard) for some years.
Tesla uses CCS2 in Europe because they were forced to do so by law.
CCS2 isn't superior to CCS1. The only real difference between the two connectors is that CCS2 has an extra pin to support three-phase AC charging on the legacy AC part of the connector. The DC parts of the connector are identical, to the best of my knowledge.
And from a purely amperage perspective, if all else is equal (similar cooling designs on the cable, etc.), I think the CCS connector is actually theoretically superior to Tesla's conne
The statement behind the story (Score:2)
I ain't got a source on this, but I bet someone said.
Well if Tesla can't pull it off then we aren't going to, are we?
And I'm not referring to the car. I'm referring to the AI-centric full self driving software/hardware suite.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry what were you saying? I wasn't paying attention because I was looking at a Waymo taxi driving past autonomously without anyone behind the wheel?
You have my attention now. Why did you write "I'm butthurt" in such a weird font?
Waymo than we bargained for. (Score:2)
When Apple started their effort, lots of parties had self-driving research efforts. It was not yet apparent that only Waymo would pull it off.
If the Waymo self-driving record is what you define as “pull it off”, then I’m assuming the next Waymo self-driving model will be called the T-800.
(Pay no attention to the Waymo filings for their new subsidy known as “Cyberdyne”. Merely a coincidence.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If the Waymo self-driving record is what you define as “pull it off”
You can get in one right now and it will autonomously take you to your destination.
pull off
phrasal verb of pull
1.
INFORMAL
succeed in achieving or winning something difficult.
I don't see the word "perfect" or "flawless" in the definition. So yeah everyone should be defining Waymo's self-driving efforts as "pulled it off".
Re: (Score:2)
That's the real question, though. Is it really autonomous or is it being helped out remotely? Cruise admitted to remote help every few miles only after one of their cars was involved in a horrific crash.
How do we know the car companies are not doing a Theranos? Fake it till you make it and all that bull.
Re: (Score:2)
If I had to guess, I'd say the realization finally hit Apple that the only real problem with modern cars which needs addressing is that most of them still run on gas. Unless Apple has some fancy new battery technology they've been hiding from the world, there's not much they can bring to the table by selling yet another EV that's really only differentiated from its competitors by the crap they've crammed into the infotainment center.
This isn't like with the iPhone where the selection of smartphones on the
Re: (Score:3)
Because what is usually a big advantage for Tesla -- a Silicon Valley startup culture with a high tolerance for risk and a fail faster mentality -- isn't necessarily an advantage *here*. Of course Apple is also a tech company, but it has a different corporate culture. Possibly still the wrong corporate culture, but who knows?
There probably isn't a company in the world who couldn't somehow screw up a program as complex as developing a fully autonomous self-driving car. But a company helmed by a charismati
Re: (Score:2)
a company helmed by a charismatic, mercurial leader who makes unrealistic promises and then cracks the whip on the employees to deliver has got special concerns.
You are aware that Steve Jobs passed away in 2011? Tim Cook is an altogether different person.
Dumb Project (Score:4, Insightful)
Even as a fairly hard core Apple user, I have no interest in an Apple Car, nor ANY car that uses or needs that much processing power. I mean, my god, talk about adding unnecessary complication to, what is at the end of the day, a utilitarian, mechanical device.
I don't know how much processing power my 2007 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited has, but it seems more than sufficient for anything I need a car for.
Re: (Score:3)
I just find myself becoming more frustrated with Apple lately. They discontinued the iPhone mini, which pretty much killed the main advantage they had in a marketplace full of phablets. The other Apple device I use with any sort of regularity is a 5th gen iPad mini, and while they haven't given that product line the axe yet, it did get a price increase and the current generation has a display bug that Apple claims is normal. [macrumors.com]
Waiting for Apple MK Ultra chip: a real clean chip (Score:1)
For those that are interested, here is the link to the design goal for the Apple MK Ultra line;
Apple MK Ultra line [wikipedia.org]
Hope we see it soon!
Bring it on Apple!
Re: (Score:2)
MK3 Ultra cpu!
Wasn't a good idea any way (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you imagine getting a flat tire and then realizing that the tire was glued to the rim, or worse yet, the rim was welded to the axle, (or both!) and required you to have the car shipped back to Apple for authorized repairs by Genius mechanics? We dodged a bullet people.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine the stuck keys problem, but with unintended acceleration. the fix is to get a bluetooth accelerator control and disable the internal unit.
So why not salvage it as a server? (Score:2)
is that a lot? (Score:2)
That doesn't seem a lot of computing power to accurately identify, track and predict the course of hundreds of real-world objects in 3d in real time continuously for hours.
How does it compare to current desktop/gpu setups which run AI chatbots/text-to image whose crappy hallucination-riddled output is measured in seconds or minutes?
Develop (Score:1)