Cnet announces Mac Pro EOl! - Page 2

The iMac has two Thunderbolt ports. I imagine all Macs will eventually have at least two and many will have more.

I don't expect the next Mac Pro to have fewer than four, and if Apple is serious about it, they'll have six or eight.

Inifiniband uses channel bonding for higher bandwidth like they could use with PCIe and it has over 100ns latency vs 8ns for Thunderbolt (across 7 devices no less).

I don't think the connection bandwidth of a single port would be insufficient, we're talking about 1.25GBytes/s. Most of the world's fastest supercomputers use GigE (1 Gbit/s) as an interconnect:

"Gigabit Ethernet is still the most-used internal system interconnect technology (223 systems, down from 230 systems), due to its widespread use at industrial customers, followed by InfiniBand technology with 213 systems, up from 208 systems. However, InfiniBand-based systems account for almost twice as much performance (28.7 Petaflop/s) than Gigabit Ethernet ones (14.2 Petaflop/s)."

http://www.top500.org/lists/2011/11/press-release

Consider every cluster ever built in the past. Were the connections between nodes faster or slower than Thunderbolt?

I'll give you a hint. The internodal connections within those previous clusters were slower--substantially slower--than Thunderbolt. The notion that the Thunderbolt bus will be saturated by a Thunderbolt-based cluster of Macs is ridiculous on its face.

Admittedly info is scarce but I don't think TB would do the job due to the lack of node support and other features. At least on installations of any size. Something as simple as sending a packet of info a hop or two beyond the neighbors would be interesting with TB. Unless of course you implement a simple network / hub arrangement but I'm not convinced that TB can work over a hub.

Seven devices would make a nice small cluster. With today's computing hardware you would not want to sneeze at that however how would one do a larger cluster.

Eventually bandwidth becomes an issue no matter what generation of cluster technology you use. This is one of the reasons you see so many different topologies implemented. For a small scale cluster though I think you are right in that the bandwidth is OK for today. I'm just not convinced though that TB has the support for the networking or communications for clusters of any size.

Ethernet is every where. Right now I'd have to believe it would be far easier to implement clustering over Ethernet than it would be over Thunderbolt. All the hardware is there already as is a strong software base.

Let's say though that Apples desire here is more limited in that they don't even want to support hubs or large systems. Maybe their idea of a cluster is less than six machines with direct TB to TB port interfacing. Such a small easy to administer cluster would be very useful, the question though is how well does TB support such use. This is the question in my mind as TB seems to be very I/O oriented with thin to non existent higher level protocols.

The potential for interconnect saturation is greater today than in the past. It is very possible for each node these days to have eight processors and sixteen threads running. That is from a single socket node, back in the day you had two processors in two different sockets. Beyond that if you have storage or anything else running on the same port you end up with even more congestion.

On the other hand I suspect that it would be rather economical for Apple to implement multiple TB ports That is nothing seems to prevent a Mac Pro replacement from having 4 or more TB ports.

I think the point is...given Thunderbolt and X-Grid/Open CL and in the context of the customer Apple serves

Single user with several machines, family users of Mac, small business users, small studios, solo artists etc, Mac students...

If you could daisy chain '7' (is that the magic number for Thunderbolt then?) Macs together for extra compute oomph then that seems like the Apple demographic to me.

Instead of throwing out your old dinosaur Mac Pro...just put it in chain (wirelessly?), keep your old thunderbolt iMac and have a dual monitor iMac set up with 8 cores, 16 threads hyperthreading a 3D render's asss.

7 Macs is a pretty powerful solution to a small scale operation I would have thought. eg an iMac and even 4 Mac Mini nodes via thunderbolt X-Gridded?

I'm surprised nobody has tried this with Pov-Ray or something and a modest '7 or less' Mac cluster.

Interconnect is always going to be a potential bottleneck. Computers always have a bottleneck. HD? Memory? CPU? Bandwidth? IO? GPU? The computer press have taken turns blaming one thing or the other over the years. For me the current laggard is monitor resolutions. But what do I know.

While iPad/iPhone is making massive inroads into the Enterprise and Macs are popular amongst 'bring your own machine to work' types...the return of the 'X-Serve' maybe premature for now. Maybe localised clusters of 'working group' Macs could serve that need rather than a ward drobe rack of X-Serves.

Skynet on the rise, eh? *(sticks tongue out.)

Lemon Bon Bon.

The 7 limit might not apply to the grid. That's for dummy slaves. Each active computer has an active controller so it should allow unlimited chaining. They can also run an arbitrary protocol over it like TCP/IP so it would behave much the same way as 10Gbps ethernet.


They'd need to write a PCI driver/kernel extension. That takes a special type of developer. I'm sure someone will try it eventually though. They're already building external GPUs so this sort of thing can't be too far off.

Any Mac Pro replacement technology that relies on Thunderbolt, which is just generally flaky, would not inspire any confidence in me....

In what way?

Six or eight thunderbolt ports? Hell, the mac pro only has five USB ports.

You will never see an Apple computer with more than two thunderbolt ports.

Honestly, I doubt that.

That's a workaround, and not a terribly flexible one, either. It would make more sense for Apple to try to sell two Thunderbolt displays to those who need them. Some users want two like displays, and some prefer one large one and one smaller one for pallets, so using an old iMac as a display doesn't work. And what about those who need to run a wide color gamut display but do not need a Xeon workstation? Should they just "buy from someone else" as you put it? That's a winning business model!


Flogging this one again, eh? I'll file this is in the "Apple is profitable so their hardware and business model are perfect" file.



If I wasn't an Apple fan I wouldn't own a Mac Pro, two Minis, and two Power Mac G4s, with a MacBook on the way as soon as the news ones go on sale.

Interestingly, I bought both my Power Macs new from Apple. I bought my Mac Pro used and upgraded the processor myself. Why? Because I'll pay a little extra for an Apple tower, but not crazy stupid extra. Apple lost a sale to me because of their inability or unwillingness to offer a desktop solution that fits my needs.

In any event, I'd venture to guess that Apple doesn't sell many desktops because of their cool designs. People buy Mac desktops because Mac OS X is a superior OS. I'd also hazard to guess that what bugs people about "PCs" is Windows, not the hardware. Some of the hardware one the other side is brilliant, far better than Apple's hardware IMO, and not just because it's cheaper. But I must say that I love the Mac Pro's design, both functional and cosmetic, that tower is is work of art. It could use a little tweaking so it can use SSDs without modifications, but that's nitpicking. In fact I'm now modding my Mac Pro's optical bay for SSDs based on a design I saw on eBay; the guy gutted an optical drive, riveted a couple aluminum rails on it, and it looks sweet! I can't wait to get a couple of SSDs to try it out.

iMac Pro, please

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/17/h...ation-pricing/

I think HP and the Z1 deserve some credit for this.

Return serve, Apple?

Lemon Bon Bon.

Lemon Bon Bon.

I'm willing to say Mac Pros replacement will have more than two TB ports. Almost seems like a given.

Yeah, the Mac Pro has 2x x16 + 2x x4 = 40 PCI lanes. Say they run an internal GPU over 16 lanes, that leaves 24 lanes with 4 per port = 6 Thunderbolt ports. Some GPUs ship with 6 Mini-DP connectors so it seems like a good number of display outputs to have. A single GPU likely couldn't run more than 6 displays on its own anyway.

I loved the way it can be open for user access to internal parts but I'm not seeing Apple doing something like this

I can't see Apple doing a more accessible iMac.  (They once made a song and dance about it's access...)  Now it seems 'lockdown' to help the churn.

 

Mind you, apart from the HD failure...I had little reason to get into one other than that.

 

Lemon Bon Bon. :)

I've never seen that Cnet video. Is the host wearing a skunk on his head? Or is that some kind of Gen-Y geek chic mohawk?

I'm not sure what makes you say that. The new Mini was an improvement over the old, it is still far from perfect but no where as near as bad as the old. Same thing for Apples Laptops, servicing the new MBPs is far easier today than say with a 2007 model.

As to tablets and the AIRs it is the nature of the beast. Is that not reason enough? Seriously why make a machine where a high service rate device is hard to get to?

I will say one thing here for people to contemplate, iMacs very design keeps it out of many businesses.

Just out of curiosity, can you upgrade the Mac Mini's HD through the new 'easy access' black slot twist on the bottom?

 

Can't think of easy access to upgrade the gpu or cpu on the laptops or the min or the iMac.  But hey, the ram is upgradeable, right?

 

You can't upgrade the GPU in the Pro either, mind. ;)  Despite it's 2k entry price for 'easy access' to all parts...

 

'Churn.'

 

You know, Wizard...I'm sure I remember Steve Jobs doing a key note where he demonstrated how easy it was to access and service the chin iMac...*scratches head.

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

 

Yep, you can get to it.

 

Notice how carefully I worded that. Granted, it's not hard; you're not going to break anything, but it's basically the same difficulty as getting to the hard drive in a pre-unibody aluminum MacBook Pro.

 

 

 

It's a laptop. Name me any laptop to which you can do that.

I suppose on the Air a ram and HD access is fair enough.

 

But I would have liked the iMac to have the Z's access and be able to swap in better MXM GPUs (is that the 'portable' gpu standard for laptops and AIOs?) as time goes by.  

 

Are we just entering a commodity era of 'closed' access computing devices with nominal access for ram and HD on 'some' Macs?  The universal access of the old Blue and White tower, the Pro tower seems to be creeping into Mac history books.  (The latter's universal access comes with quite the price tag...)

 

Access to the Mac's internals seems sporadic.  Depends on the Mac.  Depends on what you're trying to upgrade.

 

Still, it's not something that's overly bothered me.  I didn't even access the internals of my Power Mac in all the time I had it.  So I was pretty brave to replace the HD in my iMac.  (An almight faff with soft metalled torque short arse screws needed 'special' screw drivers...  Apple retailer wanted to charge me £200 to do the work and another £200 for a HD...  £400!  Screw that.  It took an hour-ish to take the iMac apart and back together...in fact, the longest amount of time was the chasing down the 'special' screw driver or nipping to PC World for the 7200rpm HD instead of the crappy 5400rpm thing Apple had put in a 'top end' iMac...)

 

:)

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

 

 

Yeah.  I heard the HD was tricky to get to.  Which was kind of what I was alluding to. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure the Pro isn't a laptop... ;)

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

 

Okay, so then you're just outright wrong and I'm confused.

 

It's silly isn't it? Making it that expensive to replace a drive just irritates me. 

 

 

 

Here's a picture of a group of sea otters.

The most expensive version of that Z1 only has 4 cores.  This might work for some people, but this is not "power" without the tower.  A powerful tower these days has at least 8 cores, but 16 is the new standard for high end work stations.  

Power is different things to different people. While I have to agree that 4 cores should be a minimal configuration these days for a desktop, it isn't always the number of cores that count. Some would rather have vast quanities of RAM, massive secondary storage or high clock rate cores.

Some people look in the mirror and see a power user and then demand that every power user look like them. The problem with that is the infinite possibility with which a computer can be put to use. Not everybody needs those sixteen cores to do valuable work. In a nut shell this is why Apples desktop line sucks so much and is a sales failure in light of the laptops. Apple has very niche desktop hardware, that unfortunately leaves many a professional user cold.

 

Are you saying there aren't niche laptop users and/or that Apple IS catering to a wide variety of laptop users? I wouldn't say either is the case.

 

 

My thoughts exactly, Dave.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/HP-Z1-Teardown/8840/1

 

 

I disagree. It's not certain that iChat will die. At least not totally. They seem to be moving it into one program with Messages and eventually also FaceTime. 

 

I mean what we used to call "iChat", the AIM protocol, through which people would get an "iChat" account. They've been basically synonymous since its release in aught four, but if AIM is shut down, all we'll have left is iMessage and Jabber support, among the few others.

 

That means no file transfers, no 2-10 person audio chats, no 2-4 person video chats…  Not unless Apple buys up the AIM patents and fleshes out iMessage into an actual replacement for it.

 

And seriously, FaceTime. Why is it still a separate application in Mountain Lion? I'm rather worried that they're not planning on combining the two. I already know that they'll never give me the option to list my iMessage contacts visibly in Messages… 

Apple with its riches, should buy AIM.  Heck, they wouldn't even need to change the acronym!  But that's not why they should buy it.  The multi-person video conferencing still can't be beaten, and when you have a really good Internet connection, the quality is incredible.  The file sharing aspect is killer.  I would hate to see it go away!