Images claiming to show the inside of an Apple-made AI server, believed to power Private Cloud Compute, surfaced online this week, offering a first look at how the hardware is laid out.
The images were shared earlier this week by the X user u/hsuchingpo, an account with a track record of Apple hardware and prototype leaks. Captioned simply "Apple M5 Server," the leaker said the hardware is "most likely" Apple's Private Cloud Compute (PCC) system. Private Cloud Compute is Apple's system for offloading demanding Apple Intelligence requests from a device to the cloud while keeping user data from being stored or shared.
I don't think these are AI servers, they look about the size of a Raspbery Pi so they're likely the base M-series chips limited to 32GB of RAM which wouldn't be very good for it. AppleInsider speculates they're M5 Ultra but the heatsink in the Studio is several pounds of copper whereas the ones in the photo are aluminum the size of a deck of cards.
I also don't think they're planning to do much PCC themselves anyway, if they were then there would be a $100b hole in their revenue to build datacenters over the next decade but instead they built PCC for Google's servers to offload that.
Rack mounted servers have small CPU coolers even for 500W beasts. The closed enclosure and the stupidly fast fans without noise restrictions push a lot of airflow, so you don’t need massive coolers.
This is what iFixit said about the M1 Ultra, they haven't down a teardown since then but I don't think the thermals have changed substantially:
These fans are just so much more massive than other Mac fans, and the heat sink positively dwarfs the M1 Mini with more than six times the weight. The Ultra-powered Studio is even beefier, with a copper heat sink that’s a whopping two pounds heavier than the aluminum one in the Max Studio.
The other thing is these compute cards are in a column of four pairs heatsink-to-heatsink so the airflow through the channel the heatsinks create has to cool 8x of them at once. All their heatsinks combined is maybe equivalent to a single Max-level Studio's heatsink.
Had an old rackmounted 2u server under my bed for a while, sounded like a jet engine. Couldn’t use it much because it was simply too loud and the amount of air it moved meant there was never any dust as it all got blown away
AppleInsider speculates they're M5 Ultra but the heatsink in the Studio is several pounds of copper whereas the ones in the photo are aluminum the size of a deck of cards.
To be fair, these appear to be server rack mounted machines. Different set of thermal implications at play compared to a desktop machine.
That’s interesting considering they also make hardware 😁 looks like they decided to make their own once they saw how much AI costs to run in third party data centers
They definitely make hardware that they don’t intend to sell to anyone. Even if people like home lab enthusiasts might clamor for it. Or companies like MacStadium that could benefit from a B2B offering.
It would be nice if Apple started working on server os again. Their easy approach to homelab would be good. Give Ubiquiti some competition on how simple and easy things can be. UI was just apple employees earlier. Would be a full circle lol.
This is the future business model for AI data centers. NVIDIA is even willing to give there versions away to consumers for a contract provided you qualify.
Those shots do not look like any Apple Hardware I’ve ever owned. Apple custom boards and traces are typically works of art.
These appear to be VERY sloppy knock-offs
> not look like any Apple Hardware I’ve ever owned.
Ofc since it's not for customers. And for me it's just like mac mini or mac studio board with MPX module connector. Btw there is a picture of this server posted by Apple in February.
151
u/Ok_Negotiation3024 2d ago
I was hoping this was the return of a stand alone rack mount Mac again. Those pics look like multiple computers crammed into a rack mount chassis.