First eGPU drivers for Apple Silicon Macs – but only for AI
So far, Thunderbolt and USB4 expansion boxes cannot be used with graphics cards on Macs. This is now changing – with an important limitation.
eGPU on Mac with Apple Silicon: It took a long time.
(Image: Tiny Corp)
In the future, it should be possible for the first time to use external graphics cards with Macs that use an M chip. The use of such eGPU setups via expansion boxes like those from Razer or Sonnet, which were connected via PCIe using Thunderbolt or USB4, was previously not possible due to a lack of suitable drivers for Apple Silicon. Only individual video and audio cards as well as SSD modules on PCIe cards could be used.
The company Tiny Corp, based in Hong Kong and developing the neural network framework tinygrad, claims on X that Apple has approved its drivers for both AMD and Nvidia. Although the announcement came on April 1st, users were told upon inquiry that it was not an April Fools' joke. The company had already addressed AMD GPUs via USB3 from a Mac last May .
It's (only) about AI
The project is not about enabling Apple Silicon Macs to have a better gaming experience thanks to faster external graphics cards. Instead, Tiny Corp is fully focused on AI acceleration. Here, Macs currently have the disadvantage that they can only rely on internal GPUs, but not on eGPUs. This means, among other things, that video generation is not as fast as on PCs – depending on the type of model and its capabilities. In principle, Macs are considered very fast for AI applications and sometimes outperform PC workstations.
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Tiny Corp's announcement is still quite nebulous so far. For example, it is stated that the RTX 6000 Pro should work. However, there is no possibility to use alternative frameworks. The drivers only work with Tinygrad, but not with Apple's MLX, for example. Tiny Corp is currently working on using Qwen 3.5. It is said to be possible to use up to 80 percent of the RAM bandwidth of "most cards".
RDNA 3+ and Ampere+
The Tiny Corp drivers also cannot output video, as they are not intended for that. According to the instructions, the drivers, which must be downloaded from the Tinygrad GitHub repository, run under macOS 12 and higher, support AMD RDNA3 and higher or Nvidia Ampere. SiP does not need to be disabled.
Currently, only LLM applications via Tinygrad are possible; video and image generation are apparently not intended. Details about Tinygrad itself can be read in a documentation.
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