«Піддослідна» відеокарта AMD / Tiny Corp
«You have no idea the level of engineering that went into this», — the authors of the AMD card mod write.
Support external video cards on Mac and MacBook with Apple Silico processorsn is a well-known problem among artificial intelligence and machine learning enthusiasts. Tiny Corp has managed to get an AMD graphics card to work in Tiny Grad via USB 3 — a standard that lacks any of the properties of PCIe. Since libusb is used, this functionality will work on Windows, Linux, and macOS on Apple processors.
Typically, graphics cards are connected via PCIe slots or Thunderbolt/USB4 interfaces that support PCI Express tunneling. Unlike Intel-based Macs, Apple Silicon devices do not support external graphics cards. Therefore, despite their efficiency compared to x86-based systems, users have problems running powerful AI models on them.
Here’s the worlds first AMD GPU driven over USB3. From a Mac! Linux and Windows should work too, it’s just libusb.
Available today in tinygrad master, use an ADT-UT3G to connect the GPU to your USB port. You have no idea of the level of engineering that went into this. pic.twitter.com/V6trNwcGXt
— the tiny corp (@__tinygrad__) May 9, 2025
The kit for running the video card via USB 3 includes an adapter based on the ASM2464PD. Tiny Corp used an ADT-UT3G adapter on this chip — but «out of the box» it only works with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, or USB 4 interfaces. The team probably used special firmware to enable the mode without direct connection with PCIe. The technical details are not disclosed, but it seems that the controller converts PCIe commands to USB packets and vice versa.
This solution can be called a hack, as it bypasses the kernel-level video card drivers, requires specific hardware, and uses a connector that was not originally intended for this purpose. However, there is a limit on the data transfer rate of up to 10 Gbps, so it will take much longer to launch the models than with more suitable hardware.
Due to the use of custom drivers at the user level to avoid kernel interference, the feature is limited to AMD RDNA 3 and 4 graphics cards — although there is a hint of potential support for RDNA 2 in the future. The modification is open to the public if desired — Tiny Corp is expected to provide more details as soon as they complete development.
Source: Tom`s Hardware