Meta and Apple Bring Muse Spark Open AI Model to Mac Studio

Meta has unveiled Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter open-weight model that runs locally on two 512GB M5 Ultra Mac Studios equipped with Apple's MLX framework. According to Meta, this model is currently the most powerful U.S. open-weight model available. MacRumors reports that Muse Spark Open boasts 816 billion total parameters, 42 billion of which are actively used, and features a 1 million-token context window.

It is designed for coding and agentic tasks, with Meta highlighting its prowess in extended tasks, multi-step reasoning, and software engineering.

The Muse model has been tailored for optimal performance on Mac Studio. Meta explains that the Mac Studio, combined with Muse Spark Open, provides the best platform for running a potent model on a personal desktop. The reason behind this is Apple's unified memory architecture, which enables each M5 Ultra's integrated GPU to utilize up to 512 GB of memory per Mac Studio.

Consequently, two Mac Studios can efficiently store the entire model. Additionally, the chip's 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth is sufficient to access the necessary data for each token. As a result, two Mac Studios function as a single supercomputer, boasting a terabyte of unified memory.

It is worth noting that Apple has not yet released the 512GB Mac Studio, but it is expected to launch later in the month. However, it should be noted that the 256GB Mac Studio is already priced over $10,000, suggesting that the 512GB model will likely come with a similarly high price tag.