Apple's 'Minions' research turns idle Mac GPUs into a virtual GPU cloud

Apple has detailed a new system, called Minions, that uses the idle GPUs found in Apple Silicon Macs to create a virtual GPU cloud that combines untapped processing power to chew through complex AI workloads.


Described by Apple as a dynamic virtual GPU cloud that "aggregates idle Apple Silicon GPUs" across Macs, Minions can aid teams that need to work with large-scale machine learning inference workloads. Apple's researchers have been using Minions in-house already.

The theory is a simple one. Macs have powerful GPUs that spend most of their time idle, especially during everyday computing tasks.


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