Connecting via RDMA two different Mac Studio Models

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Level 1

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Connecting via RDMA two different Mac Studio Models

Connecting via RDMA two different Mac Studio Models

Can two Apple-silicon Mac Studios be connected directly over Thunderbolt5 and used as one shared-memory system for running a local LLM? Specifically, can a Mac Studio M4 Max with 128GB unified memory and another new Mac Studio ultra M5 with 256GB unified memory load a model that cannot fit in either machine individually? If not, does Apple support any Thunderbolt5, RDMA, or distributed-inference configuration that would allow this.

Posted on Sep 2, 2026 7:00 PM

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Answer 1

MrHoffman

Level 10

163,095 points

Sep 2, 2026 7:35 PM in response to berend47

For setup and communications, I don’t think RDMA particularly cares about the hardware details, past “RDMA over Thunderbolt is available starting with macOS 26.2 on Macs with Apple silicon with Thunderbolt 5.”

TN3205: Low-latency communication with RDMA over Thunderbolt | Apple Developer Documentation

I think these videos describe what you are asking about, too:

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