Apple's Minions: A virtual GPU cloud built from idle Apple Silicon Macs

Researchers at Apple have developed Minions, a distributed virtual GPU cloud system that harnesses idle GPU capacity from Apple Silicon Macs to handle machine learning inference workloads. This approach addresses limitations of centralized GPU infrastructure—such as high costs and resource constraints—by aggregating underutilized hardware already present in macOS devices. The system enables practical, cost-effective GPU computing without requiring additional hardware investment.