Nvidia

In a blog post today, Apple engineers have shared new details on a collaboration with NVIDIA to implement faster text generation performance with large language models.

Apple published and open sourced its Recurrent Drafter (ReDrafter) technique earlier this year. It represents a new method for generating text with LLMs that is significantly faster and “achieves state of the art performance.” It combines two techniques: beam search (to explore multiple possibilities) and dynamic tree attention (to efficiently handle choices).

Nvidia has overtaken AAPL in the market cap stakes, as its valuation exceeded $3T. The company’s rise in value has been truly spectacular, increasing from $2T back in February to more than $3T just four months later.

The company is now challenging Microsoft for the title of most valuable company in the world, and for the same reason …

Nvidia revealed in 2020 its intentions to buy Arm, a chip designer company owned by Japanese multinational SoftBank. While rumors already suggested that Nvidia might pull out of the acquisition, a new report from the Financial Times (via Axios) says that negotiations “collapsed” on Monday.

Back in 2020, Nvidia declared its intention to purchase chip designer Arm from its owner Softbank for $40 billion. Nearly a year and a half later, Nvidia is reportedly backing out of the deal due to regulatory obstacles.

Apple relies on Arm’s instruction set to fabricate custom processors used in iPhones, iPads, and Macs, although the deal likely wouldn’t have affected this arrangement.

Last year we learned that Nvidia was set to move forward with its plans to acquire chip designer Arm for an estimated $40 billion. However, after the FTC investigated competition concerns around the deal this year, it has filed a lawsuit to block the acquisition.

NVIDIA on Wednesday announced the next edition of its annual GTC conference, where the company brings together industry professionals to introduce and discuss new technologies. This year, NVIDIA GTC will have Apple’s senior director of AI and ML research Samy Bengio as one of the speakers.

Nvidia announced last fall that it was officially starting the process of acquiring Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion. In the months since we’ve seen concerns from competitors and the deal hasn’t yet been approved or shut down by regulators. Now Qualcomm has shared that if the sale to Nvidia is blocked, it and others would invest in Arm.

Back in September, Nvidia confirmed that it was going to move forward with the process of acquiring Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion. However, with regulators around the world looking into the deal, it’s surfaced that Qualcomm has been vocal with authorities about its objection to the acquisition.

Playing Fortnite on an iPhone will soon be possible once more, despite Apple removing it from the App Store and later terminating Epic’s developer account.

It’s being made possible by a move that will interest more than just Fortnite players: GPU maker Nvidia has developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs in Safari on iOS …

On its own, the 2018 MacBook Air is a downright terrible gaming machine. Connected to my LG UltraWide 5K2K Display, the MacBook Air averages around 1-2 frames per second in Rocket League, and similarly abysmal scores in Unigine Heaven and Valley benchmarks. That’s no fault of the MacBook Air, as it’s a thin and light portable laptop built around maximizing battery life. In other words, it was never intended to be a gaming machine.

But if you own a MacBook Air and are looking for ways to get more out of your laptop, then an eGPU setup within a Windows Boot Camp environment can go a long way towards making that a reality. Watch our hands-on video walkthrough for the step-by-step details.
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NVIDIA is having a strong CES. After announcing powerful new RTX 2000 series GPUs last year, the company took to Las Vegas this week to show off an array of new laptops featuring the accompanying mobile RTX series.

Powerful gaming laptops are getting thinner and increasingly more capable, and these new chips are certainly the best on the market. The only question left is, will we ever see these featured in a Mac?

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In a previous video, I showcased a 2018 Mac mini gaming setup using an AMD RX Vega 64 eGPU running Windows 10 via Boot Camp. Would a similar setup work for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU from EVGA? Watch our hands-on video walkthrough for the answer.
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Unofficial NVIDIA eGPU support is now a reality for Mac users. It’s all thanks to the developers and researchers that congregate over at eGPU.io, a community for eGPU coverage and support across Mac, Windows, and other platforms.

While not perfect, the results of my testing look very promising. Let me preface this post by saying that NVIDIA eGPU support for macOS is still not officially supported by Apple, and the workaround script used to provide support is still in its alpha stages. Even so, I’ve been impressed by the script’s ease of use, and the performance that I’ve seen thus far.

It means that macOS users can now enjoy eGPU setups with cards from Nvidia’s Pascal lineup, including the GTX 1070, 1080, and venerable 1080 Ti. And it’s not just for Thunderbolt 3 Mac users, either. The script allows Mac owners to work around restrictions that eliminated support for Thunderbolt 2 eGPUs as well, allowing more users to join in on the graphics-accelerated fun. Watch our video for a hands-on look.
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If you’re looking to build a Hackintosh that can serve as a competent Windows gaming rig on the side, then a build powered by an Nvidia GPU is a good choice. In our most recent Hackintosh build, we paired an Intel i7 6700k with Nvidia’s fastest gaming GPU, the 1080 Ti.

The results weren’t all that surprising. Performance was good in a macOS environment even when using Nvidia’s beta web drivers. Performance was a lot better, though, in a Windows environment, where Pascal GPUs can really thrive.

If you’re interested in building a Hackintosh solely for video editing, however, then an Nvidia-powered GPU option might not be the best choice. Sure, Nvidia GPUs with their CUDA cores are generally superior for editing in an Adobe workflow, but if you’re building a Hackintosh machine solely for video editing, chances are you’re interested in running Final Cut Pro X.

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Mantiz’s Venus is an upcoming eGPU box and docking station for Thunderbolt 3-enabled laptops like the 2016 MacBook Pro. The Taiwanese-based company is working on bringing two eGPU boxes to market — the eccentric-looking Saturn, and the more subdued-looking Venus.

The friendly folks at Mantiz agreed to send over a Venus eGPU/docking station, allowing me to take it for a quick test drive when paired together with my 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro. Featuring an all-aluminum outer shell with classic Mac Pro cheese grater-inspired perforated design, the Venus is one of the more attractive eGPU solutions that I’ve seen thus far. Have a look at our hands on video walkthrough inside for more details.
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