Confirmed: Mac Pro is history, succeeded by Jobs' final project

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
I've just returned from a west coast visit to an old college buddy, who is a worker bee at a colossal fx studio that buys hundreds of Mac Pro's each year. Occasionally this studio is graced with an Apple test mule, which normally is nothing exciting, just the same old tower with a new logic board and Xeons. Added to that, my buddy doesn't work in "the cage" where only a select few use the test mules. But he does occasionally collaborate with those lucky few who do!



So last month he's in the cage, and there's a big freakin' cube in there. At first glance, he didn't think it was a Mac, but upon further study it sure seemed like an Ives design. Another guy noticed him studying it and said, "that's Steve's baby, right there! It's not a Mac, either. It's an Apple Pro!"



Yes, Jobs wanted one last go at the Cube before he finally logged out. We all know how much Jobs hates tower computers, and the Mac Pro was no exception. My buddy says he really nailed it with this one, it's flat-out the most perfect desktop design he's ever used.



As far design, the Apple Pro is a direct descendant of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_cube">; NeXTcube.</a> 12", cubed. Aluminum, anodized black (or maybe gunmetal grey, hard to say with the lighting). Vents ring the top of the cube's sides, so it's stackable. The cube was stacked on another half cube, only six inches high. How to easily stack it? Handles slide out from the bottom. Slick.



Components are accessed by removing either the left or right side panels. Left side for RAM, CPU, and HDs. Right side for PCIe sockets. One 3.5 GHz Ivy Bridge processor. Only two tiny HD bays, this sucker runs SSDs off the PCIe bus, and in this test mule, there was built-in hardware RAID support, no extra PCIe card needed. Three PCIe slots, two of which were used by video cards, with one remaining. No extra-long PCIe card support, unfortunately. It wouldn't be a true Apple product if it wasn't gimped in some way. Optical drives? What, and ruin the perfection of the cube's faces? Looks like it's external optical drives for any professional who, God forbid, want to burn a project onto Blu-ray.



The half cube was styled exactly like the cube. It's a six drive Thunderbolt RAID enclosure. A proprietary connector links the RAID half cube to the cube, so it powers on and off with the cube. There's also means to manually power it on and off so it can be used with any computer. Slick.



Now for the coolest part: the guys says to my buddy, what we're really testing is the new Apple Galaxy system. Huh? He points across the room. On a desk are two four foot stacks of cubes. The anodized aluminum and cube designs conspire to make the towering stacks into works of art. The guy says, one stack of four cubes will costs us about the same as a high-end Mac Pro, and we can add cubes and half cubes one at a time as we need more power. Galaxy is incredible, he says. They've been working on beta versions of Galaxy for years, but now with the cubes it finally makes sense. My buddy says, "The Apple Pro with Galaxy will enable Apple to finally conquer the creative studio market" They're more powerful than Mac Pros, more expandable, cheaper, and damn sexy.



The chatter is that Steve had a hell of a time getting this project authorized. Mac Pro sales are "in the thousands" and Steve was the only one at Apple who wanted to have another go at the desktop market. It's widely believed that this cube was only given the final go upon Steve's death, as it was his last wish.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 48
    We really need a "Fiction" section on these boards!
  • Reply 2 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post


    I've just returned from a west coast visit to an old college buddy, who is a worker bee at a colossal fx studio that buys hundreds of Mac Pro's each year. Occasionally this studio is graced with an Apple test mule, which normally is nothing exciting, just the same old tower with a new logic board and Xeons. Added to that, my buddy doesn't work in "the cage" where only a select few use the test mules. But he does occasionally collaborate with those lucky few who do!



    So last month he's in the cage, and there's a big freakin' cube in there. At first glance, he didn't think it was a Mac, but upon further study it sure seemed like an Ives design. Another guy noticed him studying it and said, "that's Steve's baby, right there! It's not a Mac, either. It's an Apple Pro!"



    Yes, Jobs wanted one last go at the Cube before he finally logged out. We all know how much Jobs hates tower computers, and the Mac Pro was no exception. My buddy says he really nailed it with this one, it's flat-out the most perfect desktop design he's ever used.



    As far design, the Apple Pro is a direct descendant of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_cube">; NeXTcube.</a> 12", cubed. Aluminum, anodized black (or maybe gunmetal grey, hard to say with the lighting). Vents ring the top of the cube's sides, so it's stackable. The cube was stacked on another half cube, only six inches high. How to easily stack it? Handles slide out from the bottom. Slick.



    Components are accessed by removing either the left or right side panels. Left side for RAM, CPU, and HDs. Right side for PCIe sockets. One 3.5 GHz Ivy Bridge processor. Only two tiny HD bays, this sucker runs SSDs off the PCIe bus, and in this test mule, there was built-in hardware RAID support, no extra PCIe card needed. Three PCIe slots, two of which were used by video cards, with one remaining. No extra-long PCIe card support, unfortunately. It wouldn't be a true Apple product if it wasn't gimped in some way. Optical drives? What, and ruin the perfection of the cube's faces? Looks like it's external optical drives for any professional who, God forbid, want to burn a project onto Blu-ray.



    The half cube was styled exactly like the cube. It's a six drive Thunderbolt RAID enclosure. A proprietary connector links the RAID half cube to the cube, so it powers on and off with the cube. There's also means to manually power it on and off so it can be used with any computer. Slick.



    Now for the coolest part: the guys says to my buddy, what we're really testing is the new Apple Galaxy system. Huh? He points across the room. On a desk are two four foot stacks of cubes. The anodized aluminum and cube designs conspire to make the towering stacks into works of art. The guy says, one stack of four cubes will costs us about the same as a high-end Mac Pro, and we can add cubes and half cubes one at a time as we need more power. Galaxy is incredible, he says. They've been working on beta versions of Galaxy for years, but now with the cubes it finally makes sense. My buddy says, "The Apple Pro with Galaxy will enable Apple to finally conquer the creative studio market" They're more powerful than Mac Pros, more expandable, cheaper, and damn sexy.



    The chatter is that Steve had a hell of a time getting this project authorized. Mac Pro sales are "in the thousands" and Steve was the only one at Apple who wanted to have another go at the desktop market. It's widely believed that this cube was only given the final go upon Steve's death, as it was his last wish.



    You tease me, Sir!



    *Drool.



    *There will be a pandemic of masturbation outside Apple stores world wide if this thing hits.



    Cubes... Please let it be so...



    *Snaps back to reality. I'd take this fantasy over the Pro which needs a major over 'big ass' overhaul to remove it's big ass.



    Lemon Bon Bon.
  • Reply 3 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. View Post


    You tease me, Sir!



    *Drool.



    *There will be a pandemic of masturbation outside Apple stores world wide if this thing hits.





    Lemon Bon Bon.



    LMAO.



    No need for a fiction forum, this is for real. The only thing up in the air is the intro date, but my buddy says these were production Apple Pros, not prototypes. They still had a few Apple Pro boxes in the corner.



    As for the dimensions, he actually said "about a foot", so I suspect they're actually a bit smaller than the original NeXT cube.



    I'm not supposed to be posting this, but this buddy shagged my girlfriend back in college, so I don't really care if he gets canned.
  • Reply 4 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post


    Confirmed: Mac Pro is history



    Hoaxes are an instantly bannable offense on MacRumors. That's about the only thing I miss from there.



    Quote:

    Occasionally this studio is graced with an Apple test mule



    Mmm, no.



    Quote:

    Yes, Jobs wanted one last go at the Cube before he finally logged out.



    Mmm, no.



    Quote:

    Optical drives? What, and ruin the perfection of the cube's faces? Looks like it's external optical drives for any professional who, God forbid, want to burn a project onto Blu-ray.



    This is the only thing I believe about any of this. Discs are dead; get over it.



    Quote:

    Now for the coolest part: the guys says to my buddy, what we're really testing is the new Apple Galaxy system. Huh? He points across the room. On a desk are two four foot stacks of cubes. The anodized aluminum and cube designs conspire to make the towering stacks into works of art. The guy says, one stack of four cubes will costs us about the same as a high-end Mac Pro, and we can add cubes and half cubes one at a time as we need more power. Galaxy is incredible, he says. They've been working on beta versions of Galaxy for years, but now with the cubes it finally makes sense. My buddy says, "The Apple Pro with Galaxy will enable Apple to finally conquer the creative studio market" They're more powerful than Mac Pros, more expandable, cheaper, and damn sexy.



    … I'm bothered by this. Your name for it falls directly in line with what I would imagine the name would be…



    Quote:

    The chatter is that Steve had a hell of a time getting this project authorized. Mac Pro sales are "in the thousands" and Steve was the only one at Apple who wanted to have another go at the desktop market. It's widely believed that this cube was only given the final go upon Steve's death, as it was his last wish.



  • Reply 5 of 48
    this poster either has an incredible memory or a very wild imagination.



    chances are, its just a wild imagination... I think Steve Jobs was most concerned with the iPhone 4S successor as he worked on it up until the day he passed.



    Cubes are cool but the 27" iMac is the future. There isn't a huge market for Apple Super Computers.



    And what is Galaxy exactly? A new OS? Gimme something good here... I wanna see some GOOD science fiction writing on this site.



    jk jk jk... It would be pretty rad if it were to happen, but I honestly don't believe you when you say Steve was obsessing over this project. Someone needs to obsess over getting the damn chin off the iMac.... and charging wireless keyboards through the iMacs themselves. Speaking of science fiction... here it goes.



    I was in this 50 year old dudes basement. He still lives with his mom to take care of her and stuff... and he's totally awesome. He knows like 13 different types of martial arts but doesn't show anyone because he's afraid he might kill them. Anyways... he totally has a tunnel directly to the corporate boardroom at Apple. He tests all their stuff out in his perfectly square basement (Steve loves squares). He's known Steve since he was 6mo. Steve has been programming his mind for super duper reviews on every award winning design ever. And last night... while his mom was getting him meatloaf, I came down and you won't believe what I saw.



    Wireless keyboards that were screens. I kid you not. They could change whatever was on them... Contextual keyboards. like that optimus prime keyboard... only way cooler. It was a "touchscreen" but it had haptics too. Unreal. The pixels popped up and down like little pegs according to the magnetic charge underneath them. So if you wanted QWERTY keyboard the correlating pixels would pop up and it would look AND feel like a QWERTY keyboard. There was also a periodic table mode and scientific calculator with Calculus symbols. I hang out with this guy because I wanna learn fighting and I got so excited I totally almost Karate Chopped a brick wall. It was the raddest of rad.



    Thats not all. There were proximity sensors along the bottom of the keyboard so it knew how many hands you had over it. If you had two hands, it was a keyboard. If you had one hand over it, it was a monster trackpad! It was like more amazing than the World Series, World Cup and ... World War Two COMBINED. I started jumpin around and roundhouse kicking stuff in his basement. I was going completely nuts down there.



    Also. No batteries. The keyboard was charging wirelessly from some new iMac. Oh yeah... and the iMac? It was completely black and almost invisible. I think they're working on some cloaking ability to reduce clutter or something. Minimalism to the extreme. I couldn't even see the computer from the angle I was at and the boner I was poppin almost knocked it off the table! Wow! I was so amped it felt like I drank 11 mountain dews (if that even possible!)



    Anyways... I wanted to stay for like ever. Maybe even sleep over. But my mom was calling me on my cellphone telling me dinner was ready so I totally had to leave. I only have a single speed bike (my friend billy has a 10 speed) so it takes me a little longer to get home. Anyways. I'm gonna go back and check it out next time my mom says I can. I think its code named Apple51 or something.
  • Reply 6 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    And what is Galaxy exactly? A new OS? Gimme something good here... I wanna see some GOOD science fiction writing on this site.



    According to him, Apple Galaxy is Final Cut Server, but for computers. They're all nodes (stars) that you just daisy chain with Thunderbolt to get more processing power.



    Neat idea, really.



    Quote:

    Someone needs to obsess over getting the damn chin off the iMac



    Leave it. It's a differentiating feature.



    Quote:

    and charging wireless keyboards through the iMacs themselves



    Just put a MagSafe port on the Wireless Keyboard and give it a lithium ion battery. That way it serves as two in one. As long as they brought back the numpad size, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.



    WHAT THE HECK. STOP IT, YOU STUPID ASTERISKS. I think there might be juice under my eight key. For heaven's sake…
  • Reply 7 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Just put a MagSafe port on the Wireless Keyboard and give it a lithium ion battery. That way it serves as two in one. As long as they brought back the numpad size, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.




    Are you proposing a wired keyboard with a detachable wire that just hangs? That sounds god awful.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    WHAT THE HECK. STOP IT, YOU STUPID ASTERISKS. I think there might be juice under my eight key. For heaven's sake?



    what are you trying to convey here exactly?
  • Reply 8 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    Are you proposing a wired keyboard with a detachable wire that just hangs? That sounds god awful.



    It hangs no more or less than any other cable you're not using at any point in time.



    Quote:

    what are you trying to convey here exactly?



    That there might be juice under my 8 key, as asterisks sometimes replace spaces in my typing.
  • Reply 9 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    It hangs no more or less than any other cable you're not using at any point in time.



    What is this? 1995? Lets make a plan. We'll ditch as many cables as possible and call this the modern age.
  • Reply 10 of 48
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    this poster either has an incredible memory or a very wild imagination.



    JYD has a long and distinguished record. But this story doesn't have anything about bars and late night interpersonal relations so he seems to be a bit more real here.



    I have no idea on the actual realness, because I don't know.



    But what I do know is all that is very possible and a reasonably logical end result of a number of Apple techs that have been in the works for a very long time. LLVM is the glue gents, distributed processing is the future of everything that won't fit directly on a smartphone or tablet. Including supporting those devices (Siri is barely the beginning of offboard processing).
  • Reply 11 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    What is this? 1995? Lets make a plan. We'll ditch as many cables as possible and call this the modern age.



    I'd much rather have a cable OPTION and lithium ion battery than no cable and be forced to deal with AA batteries. Archaic tech if I've ever seen it?
  • Reply 12 of 48
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    What is this? 1995? Lets make a plan. We'll ditch as many cables as possible and call this the modern age.



    Many of these wires don't really make much of a difference, but dealing with the battery issue is annoying as hell.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    I'd much rather have a cable OPTION and lithium ion battery than no cable and be forced to deal with AA batteries. Archaic tech if I've ever seen it…



    Same... I hate batteries.





    Also what is with all of the troll threads lately? It was obviously a silly title, and if they had announced such a cancellation, we would have seen an article with a less silly name.
  • Reply 13 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    I'd much rather have a cable OPTION and lithium ion battery than no cable and be forced to deal with AA batteries. Archaic tech if I've ever seen it?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmm View Post


    Many of these wires don't really make much of a difference, but dealing with the battery issue is annoying as hell.



    I'm against batteries too. First of all. That post was satirical. So I don't even really know how to argue that. But I was talking more along the lines of wireless charging. No removable batteries. When your keyboard and magic trackpad are under or near your iMac they get charged. A low battery indicator lets you know you need to return to the computer soon. Its actually kind of surprising no one has implemented anything like this.



    For short range <6" and low voltage (3.0V on the new keyboard and 3.0V on the magic trackpad), this wouldn't be hard to work out.



    However, if I were in the hardware division, I would skip wireless charging on keyboards all together. I would much rather explore RFID technology for passive keyboards, by having each key engage a different frequency within the device itself. RFID has come a LONG way... they've been taking people's tolls at 55mph for quite some time now. A well orchestrated R&D effort can make RFID work in a keyboard. And for people that are about to jump on this and say RFID IS PASSIVE! ... yeah, I know. The keys in the keyboard just engage different signals. Thats the beauty.



    Then of course we can make the magic trackpad work through static discharge (of course...) //sarcasm.
  • Reply 14 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HyteProsector View Post


    I was talking more along the lines of wireless charging. No removable batteries. When your keyboard and magic trackpad are under or near your iMac they get charged. A low battery indicator lets you know you need to return to the computer soon. Its actually kind of surprising no one has implemented anything like this.



    Also... I'm pretty convinced that a wired version will always need to exist for keyboards for security purposes. But that doesn't mean we can't make the wireless ones even better...
  • Reply 15 of 48
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Seriously when I talk about XMac it is due to the desire to see somebody, preferably Apple, move desktop technology forward. SSD's on a PCI - Express bus is one example three slots are just about right, as ong as one or two can be had with an advanced GPU. The one worry about this description though is how they would meld the video signals with the TB signals, I'm really not expecting GPU's in slots.



    The only other thing is that I'd be surprised if they went IB instead of Xeon. Many of the tasks that the Pro excels at really needs cores, IB comes up a little short in that regard, plus you waste heat powering the GPU logic.



    Now if only Apple would price the damn thing right. That is a stretch, but it will determine success or failure.
  • Reply 16 of 48
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post


    Now for the coolest part: the guys says to my buddy, what we're really testing is the new Apple Galaxy system.



    Seems more likely that it was something like:



    http://galaxy.psu.edu/



    running on e.g a new black metal Shuttle Pro cube:



    http://us.shuttle.com/barebone/Models/SX58H7Pro.html



    While Apple has removed the word 'Mac' from the OS, they would have trouble doing that for the computer lineup.



    If the Mac Pro has another incarnation, I believe it will be redesigned but not as described.
  • Reply 17 of 48
    Yeah, I'm going to need a fuzzy pic, preferably taken in an elevator, before I buy into this. It would be best if the device was inside a G3 tower at the time.
  • Reply 18 of 48
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    Seriously when I talk about XMac it is due to the desire to see somebody, preferably Apple, move desktop technology forward. SSD's on a PCI - Express bus is one example three slots are just about right, as ong as one or two can be had with an advanced GPU. The one worry about this description though is how they would meld the video signals with the TB signals, I'm really not expecting GPU's in slots.



    The only other thing is that I'd be surprised if they went IB instead of Xeon. Many of the tasks that the Pro excels at really needs cores, IB comes up a little short in that regard, plus you waste heat powering the GPU logic.



    Now if only Apple would price the damn thing right. That is a stretch, but it will determine success or failure.



    A couple other companies (lenovo for one) have been building scaled down rackable workstations that fir your criteria only with heavier hardware. The Lenovo C20 is the one that comes most to mind. It's still quite expensive, but I haven't seen the inside of one, so I don't know what was needed to cram that level of hardware in. Such a case might work for a highly scalable machine, but I don't know how it would fit on the consumer end given Apple's marketing kool aid that everything should be as small as possible even at the cost of functionality. Whether or not Apple EOLs them, workstations will still be produced. They're just in kind of a slump right now given the lack of real hardware progression. Nothing interesting has come out in workstation gpus outside of extreme price points in a while. The last generation there wasn't a huge boost. No one is shipping anything with Sandy Bridge E yet that I've seen. I imagine we also won't see the Ivy Bridge E variant until next year looking at Intel's plans.
  • Reply 19 of 48
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    It is something that the US auto makers learned the hard way.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmm View Post


    A couple other companies (lenovo for one) have been building scaled down rackable workstations that fir your criteria only with heavier hardware. The Lenovo C20 is the one that comes most to mind. It's still quite expensive, but I haven't seen the inside of one, so I don't know what was needed to cram that level of hardware in.



    This is the first I've heard of such a machine. It is notable that US based manufactures are doing nothing here. At least nothing new has come on the market to move the desktop forward.

    Quote:

    Such a case might work for a highly scalable machine, but I don't know how it would fit on the consumer end given Apple's marketing kool aid that everything should be as small as possible even at the cost of functionality.



    I'm not sure where that koolaid you speak of comes from. In many cases Apple went counter to popular thinking, for example iPhone was rather big and reversed a trend that had phones shrinking.

    Quote:

    Whether or not Apple EOLs them, workstations will still be produced. They're just in kind of a slump right now given the lack of real hardware progression.



    They are in a slump for many reasons not the least of which is the advent of ultra mobile devices. However I still see things turning around, especially once people realize that they don't need the expense of a laptop.

    Quote:

    Nothing interesting has come out in workstation gpus outside of extreme price points in a while.



    Baloney! AMD and NVidia are working very hard on long term goals here. The goal is to refactor how the GPU is used on a modern PC platform and to do that they are overhauling GPU architecture extensively. I'd have to say the next three years will be some of the most interesting in GPU hardware in years.

    Quote:

    The last generation there wasn't a huge boost. No one is shipping anything with Sandy Bridge E yet that I've seen. I imagine we also won't see the Ivy Bridge E variant until next year looking at Intel's plans.



    I do wish that Sandy Bridge E systems where shipping. It is an excellent play for an XMac type machine. Ivy Bridge looks to be hung up on some sort of technology sandbar, which I'm sure has AMD feeling slightly better.



    The interesting thing with Intel and the long drawn out arrival of Ivy Bridge is the tremendous amount of slack Intel is allowed. Compare this to AMDs Fusion effort and the negative remarks thrown at AMD over that. Like AMD I expect Intel to resolve whatever the issue is and then start to ramp up shipments. The same applies to Sandy Bridge E which is very long in coming - intel gets a lot of slack in the press whereas AMD gets bloodied even if they have technically better offerings. The Fusion line up plays very well against Intels offerings but Intel gets the glory - explain that one.



    Unfortunately the IB delay could very well push the new AIRs out to past July. It is too bad AMD doesn't have a chip to slap in the AIRs, intel needs a whack upside the head.
  • Reply 20 of 48
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    It is something that the US auto makers learned the hard way.





    This is the first I've heard of such a machine. It is notable that US based manufactures are doing nothing here. At least nothing new has come on the market to move the desktop forward.



    I'm not sure where that koolaid you speak of comes from. In many cases Apple went counter to popular thinking, for example iPhone was rather big and reversed a trend that had phones shrinking.



    Smartphones weren't really shrinking. The shrinking thing was a trend that ended long ago. They started getting bigger again as blackberries became popular. It was scary how fast people dropped them when the iphone came out. I'm not just saying that. Practically everyone I know here is a mac person in that they own a ton of Apple stuff (including mac pros). When the original iphone came out, on every one of them, the footer that used to say sent from my blackberry whatever now said sent from my iphone. The consistency was creepy. We're talking about at least dozens of people here.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    They are in a slump for many reasons not the least of which is the advent of ultra mobile devices. However I still see things turning around, especially once people realize that they don't need the expense of a laptop.



    It's fully possible that we may see tablet devices take over in a lot of ways. I'm not sure where that will leave laptops. They may reach a point pretty quickly where they don't have the usability of a tablet in that you can comfortably use it while standing or sitting without a resting surface, and they lack the power available to a stationary form factor. The general attitude is that Apple is unconvinced that they need to maintain anything stationary. I still find the imac awkward where I'm not sure it would help me that much over a laptop. It seems like an awkward stop gap to me. Personally I'd enjoy an ipad with comparable functionality to what a macbook pro has today. That might motivate me to buy one.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    Baloney! AMD and NVidia are working very hard on long term goals here. The goal is to refactor how the GPU is used on a modern PC platform and to do that they are overhauling GPU architecture extensively. I'd have to say the next three years will be some of the most interesting in GPU hardware in years.



    I did not say long term. I said outside of the top end, we haven't seen much of anything interesting since early 2010 or so. 2011 didn't really bring out anything interesting in desktop/workstation gpus that I can remember. I didn't say their research wasn't interesting. I said things that make it to market haven't changed much in two years.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    I do wish that Sandy Bridge E systems where shipping. It is an excellent play for an XMac type machine. Ivy Bridge looks to be hung up on some sort of technology sandbar, which I'm sure has AMD feeling slightly better.



    Didn't you previously mention that other manufacturers were also having trouble with 22nm fabrication?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    The interesting thing with Intel and the long drawn out arrival of Ivy Bridge is the tremendous amount of slack Intel is allowed. Compare this to AMDs Fusion effort and the negative remarks thrown at AMD over that. Like AMD I expect Intel to resolve whatever the issue is and then start to ramp up shipments. The same applies to Sandy Bridge E which is very long in coming - intel gets a lot of slack in the press whereas AMD gets bloodied even if they have technically better offerings. The Fusion line up plays very well against Intels offerings but Intel gets the glory - explain that one.



    Unfortunately the IB delay could very well push the new AIRs out to past July. It is too bad AMD doesn't have a chip to slap in the AIRs, intel needs a whack upside the head.



    Some of the initial dates that pegged Ivy Bridge as the 4th quarter of last year seemed unlikely anyway.
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