Comment by jmyeet

My predictions:

1. NVidia aggressively segments the market on VRAM and will continue to do so. A 5090 with 32GB of RAM, ~21k CUDA cores and 1800GB/s of memory bandwidth is $3-4k. An RTX 6000 Pro with 96GB of RAM, ~24k CUDA cores and 1800GB/s memory bandwidth is ~$11k;

2. The 5090 won't be replaced until late 2028 or even 2029. There has been no mid-cycle refresh (eg 4080 Super vs 4080) and likely won't be either at all or for at least a year. If there is in a year, it basically confirms that the 6000 series won't be until 2028/2029. Also, the x090 never got a mid-cycle refresh so the current consumer high-end is staying that way for years;

3. The 6090 whenever it comes will still have 32GB of VRAM unless the memory market drastically changes;

4. Many have anticipated an M5 Max/Ultra refresh of the Mac Studio line in Q3. Given that Apple chose to hike the prices on Studios rather than discontinue them, I now think this isn't going to happen. We may not see a Studio refresh for up to 2 years. Apple has done this before with the Mac Pro;

5. M7 Max/Ultra will probably go to a memory bandwidth of 1.2-1.8TB/s vs the current tops of M3 Ultra, M4 Max and M5 Max of 600-900GB/s. This simply needs to go up to boost inference speed;

6. You'll also see the number of GPU cores go up. All of this will add up to an M7 Max being 50-80%+ of the performance of a 5090. That's huge given the shared memory architecture;

7. We may see the return of Apple using its massive cash pile for vendor-financing of an exclusive memory supply. This was one of Tim Apple's [sic] big innovations.