Apple has signed the first controllers for external graphicswhich will allow them to combine their power with the GPUs present in the Apple Silicon SoCs in the execution of AI models.
External graphics cards (eGPU) are ideal for improving the performance of laptops (or other equipment such as Mini-PCs) that do not have dedicated graphics cards. This allows you to expand the capabilities of the computers when working at the computer desk and avoids having to purchase and maintain a second computer. If until now its use was limited to playing video games or professional editing, artificial intelligence is a new scenario to explore.
Tiny Corp, the company behind the high-end tinybox AI accelerators, has announced the certification of drivers for use on Macs: «If you have a Thunderbolt or USB4 eGPU and a Mac, today is the day you’ve been waiting for! Apple finally approved our driver for AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards ».
Approval of the software will allow users combine external graphics with Macs for processing AI language models. With Apple’s support, users will no longer have to resort to workarounds for supported hardware or disable System Integrity Protection to function.
This custom driver does not come from the GPU manufacturers, but from Tiny Corp itself. Therefore, this means that the driver is designed for run machine learning logic models (LLM) of AI. Although we do not know if Apple will certify drivers for other suppliers in general, it represents a significant advance for those who work with artificial intelligence, since they could now perform training or inference (with some limitations) without the need for a dedicated AI supercomputer, solutions that are arriving at a good pace given the push for local AI development.
More AI at Apple
Apple’s AI improvement has become a matter of state at the Cupertino headquarters. The company has been criticized for its slowness in implementing artificial intelligence features, with a failed launch in the version that should have powered its assistant Siri, which has confirmed its difficulties. Apple has significantly increased its investments in artificial intelligence technologies and has partnered with Google to use Gemini in the creation of its new AI assistant.
The certification of drivers for executing AI models using external graphics is another detail of Apple’s interest in catching up and using an installed base of Mac computers that continues to grow without stopping.
