Amazon Ec2 M4 and M4 Pro MAC Instances

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

HieronymusBosch

12 points

4 comments

aws.amazon.comTechstory

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Amazon Ec2Apple SiliconCloud Computing

Key topics

Amazon Ec2

Apple Silicon

Cloud Computing

Amazon announces EC2 M4 and M4 Pro Mac Instances, sparking interest in the technical implementation and potential alternatives, such as using rack-mount Mac Pros.

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01Story posted
Sep 12, 2025 at 1:38 PM EDT
4 months ago
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02First comment
Sep 12, 2025 at 4:13 PM EDT
3h after posting
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2 comments in 3-6h
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Sep 14, 2025 at 4:23 AM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (4 comments)

Showing 4 comments

jauntywundrkind

4 months ago

1 reply

I'm so so so interested to know how AWS Nitro interfaces with these systems, provides control and fabric. All I can guess is that it's an external thunderbolt based implementation?

There's some kind of photo in this m2 blog post, but not super clear. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-ec2-m2-pro-mac-i...

sebsto

4 months ago

You’re correct. We are connecting the nitro card to the Mac minis through their thunderbolt interface. All disk I/O (for EBS) and network interface are using that port. The Mac mini boots from EBS

asimovDev

4 months ago

1 reply

I wonder, if rack mount Mac Pros weren't so stupidly expensive, would AWS go with those instead? (assuming they wouldn't be able to get a good offer on those). I can't imagine it was all too pleasant to have to develop these rack mounting solutions for these minis (unless they used a preexisting one). Although if they can fit multiple of those minis in the space one Mac Pro would've took, it could be more efficient and therefore worth it?

All of this is ignoring the fact that current M2 Ultra Mac Pro is just barely better than M4 Pro mini (unless thermals are an issue on those, haven't delved into the reviews and/or benchmarks)

icedchai

4 months ago

Yep, Mac Pros really don't seem very space efficient. Unless you populate it with cards (unnecessary for this use case) it's mostly an empty box. You could put dozens of Mac Minis in that space.

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ID: 45224568Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 8:47:02 PM

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