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 the untapped processing power to chew through complex AI workloads.
Mac Studio and Mac mini can become part of a Minion system
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.