Are Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers essentially rack-mounted Macs?
Are Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers essentially rack-mounted Macs?
6
1kṀ381
resolved Dec 2
Resolved
NO

At WWDC 2024, Apple announced Private Cloud Compute, a service to handle complex AI requests in a secure context. An accompanying blog post describes the server hardware in several paragraphs:

The root of trust for Private Cloud Compute is our compute node: custom-built server hardware that brings the power and security of Apple silicon to the data center, with the same hardware security technologies used in iPhone, including the Secure Enclave and Secure Boot.

We supplement the built-in protections of Apple silicon with a hardened supply chain for PCC hardware, so that performing a hardware attack at scale would be both prohibitively expensive and likely to be discovered.

Private Cloud Compute hardware security starts at manufacturing, where we inventory and perform high-resolution imaging of the components of the PCC node before each server is sealed and its tamper switch is activated. When they arrive in the data center, we perform extensive revalidation before the servers are allowed to be provisioned for PCC.

After the service launches, will this server hardware be substantially similar to any existing Mac (Pro, Studio, mini, etc.)? Modifications to the case like a tamper switch and rack-mounting bracket are still considered similar. A redesigned logic board is not.

This market will resolve N/A on Dec 1st, 2024 if no conclusive indicators are given by Apple or a "blessed" secondary source like Joanna Stern, John Gruber, MKBHD or iJustine.

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4mo

This blog post points out that the official PCC firmware manifest declares a unique hardware target:

The BuildManifest.plist file indicates that the PCC is based on an M2 Ultra chip with ComputeModule14,1 identifier.

Accordingly, this crowdsourced database labels J236cAP as the board. No other M2 Ultra device has this board—Mac Studio: J475dAP; Mac Pro: J180dAP.

Since the firmware manifest comes directly from Apple (and interpretation is unambiguous) I will be resolving this market NO.

4mo

Apple's documentation from October says that circuit boards for Private Cloud Compute nodes and Baseboard Management Controllers are photographed to ensure "every PCB matches Apple reference designs for PCC". To me this strongly suggests that the circuit boards are different designs than retail Macs. But I'm still asking around for confirmation on this.

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