You can imagine having a 256GB SSD blade with 16GB ReRAM connected to a fast memory interface. It would effectively give you 256GB of RAM for about $350 but it would depend on how full the storage was - minimum would be 16GB. When loading data off the SSD, it would be extremely fast and with it being non-volatile, it maintains the exact OS state during restarts.
Heterogeneous computing is really the best way forward for everything as can get rid of the memory limits. Certain kinds of processing work faster on the CPU as the earlier benchmarks showed so both need to be used in the right situation. It's good that OpenCL has taken off the way it has. I remember the days of Altivec and hardly anyone supported it.
CPUs are designed for a complex set of tasks. It reminds me of the ARM kool-aid. They're frequently compared on here to X86 without much mention of chip design or complexity. The way you word the thing about ReRAM just sounds like a type of secondary caching. CPU caches have obviously risen too to minimize distances. Parts of that SSD could already be allocated as virtual memory. What would be the difference with the proposed method? Fast wake from sleep comes to mind, as OSX stores a lot of information, but it's not really that slow with an SSD. Heterogeneous doesn't mean discrete gpus would have to disappear. Several Macs physically contain 2 today. What matters is whether it continues to make sense for NVidia to keep designing them and for oems to include them in a portion of their line. The high end would likely be the last to go. The past concern I mentioned was that the development costs of things like Teslas are essentially subsidized by the number of cheap gpus that are turned out simultaneously.
Intel said NVidia took what they wrote out of context but they didn't really. They just picked out the most favourable stat. At one point Intel says they tested 14 compute kernels and the 230W GTX 280 was on average 2.5x faster than the 130W Core i7-960. One important point they made is that developers tend to not optimise for CPUs as much as GPUs. This will partly be because they have to write the whole thing in vectorised OpenCL for it to work on a GPU.
They talk about the transcendental hardware in GPUs being used to speed up GPU acceleration. This probably led them to implement those in hardware with Sandy Bridge:
"There are other improvements within the EU. Transcendental math is handled by hardware in the EU and its performance has been sped up considerably. Intel told us that sine and cosine operations are several orders of magnitude faster now than they were in current HD Graphics."
I will read that later, but I'm curious if they're referring solely to geometric expressions. I'm not aware of what kinds of complex math can be run on bare metal. I understand a small amount of OpenGL, but not so much beyond that. I would point out that they compared against a generic gaming gpu, which especially at that time was not so heavily tuned for computation. Actually NVidia's biggest claims were in performance per watt and per dollar of hardware cost when marketing their Tesla line. I already linked to the supercomputer list on that one.
Quote:
These things all happened around the same time. Intel's push towards faster IGPs, Crystalwell being directly compared to NVidia GPUs not AMD, their Phi hardware aimed at the Tesla market and OpenCL support all seems to be motivated by a desire to compete with NVidia. Let's hope NVidia doesn't stop challenging them because as we can see with AMD without that challenge, Intel slows back down and makes very small improvements year after year.
I think this is Intel's strategy with Haswell. NVidia won over quite a few laptop manufacturers with Kepler. If Haswell matches the 650M while also offering huge power savings, it could be game over for NVidia in the low-end market because NVidia's GPUs wouldn't offer a significant enough advantage. Even the 21.5" iMac just has the 640M and 650M. I could easily see them going with the Haswell IGP.
Intel never really had a discrete gpu market to cannibalize, and they have moved toward IGPs in their mainstream lines where growth in X86 computing requirements has been somewhat logarithmic lately. I'm not sure they're aiming solely at NVidia. It's likely that they don't want to see ARM start to threaten the lower end of their market, which I suggested is likely at least important when it comes to distributing fabrication and development costs. It wouldn't surprise me to see them go from a 640M to integrated graphics, but intel makes some pretty bold claims.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Intel seems to think it will match the 650M otherwise they'd probably compare it with a lower model:
The problem with a demo like Dirt 3 is they are running at 1080p, high quality no AA, which the 650M runs at 80FPS. Even if the Haswell was running at 640M speed ~64FPS, you can't tell the difference. They did get 40FPS in Heaven vs 20FPS on the Ivy Bridge:
The Ivy Bridge laptop in the video actually looks like a Macbook Air - they taped over the name.
Unigine Heaven can be configured with different settings though and on Notebookcheck, the HD 4000 scores 10FPS with the 640M around 24FPS. Intel claims they've doubled performance so that only really puts it at 640M class as the 650M gets 30FPS.
However, their test was in an Ultrabook with a 17W test chip, which will ship at 15W. So I reckon the 15W Haswell destined for the MBA will match the 640M (around double last year's Air) and the Haswell destined for the Mini and Macbook Pro will come closer to the 650M as it has the higher power limit - the highest ones go up to 57W now but they will likely use the 47W models in the Mini and MBP.
They should only use DDR3 memory for the expanded part of the memory. The Crystalwell part has 128MB of GDDR5. It won't be as good as a 650M GT with 512MB-1GB GDDR5 but the real-world difference should be negligible and it uses less power.
Whatever it comes out to, anything between the 640M and 650M will be a good enough GPU for the entry level machines - Apple uses the 640M on the entry iMac. It should get OpenCL 1.2 support from launch as well as OpenGL 4:
"Haswell's processor graphics extends API support to DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL 4.0."
This might mean the next OS X has OpenGL 4 support as it will be supported on every machine.
I hesitate to take intel's demos as hard evidence at times. They talk things up quite a bit, but seeing how they're tested under a variety of circumstances means far more. I wouldn't think this way if it wasn't for their past record on these things. Supporting the latest OpenGL and OpenCL standards out the door is a major improvement though.
Haswell not coming out for another 5 months I heard from someone in the field.
This was posted three days ago. And Wikipedia still lists May 27 and June 2 as release dates for performance mobile and the entire desktop line, respectively.
This was posted three days ago. And Wikipedia still lists May 27 and June 2 as release dates for performance mobile and the entire desktop line, respectively.
Haswell not coming out for another 5 months I heard from someone in the field.
This was posted three days ago. And Wikipedia still lists May 27 and June 2 as release dates for performance mobile and the entire desktop line, respectively.
It might have been speculation due to the USB 3 bug but Intel's just going to ship the chipsets with it and fix it later:
I suggested before that last minute delays would not be surprising. The author there doesn't give a lot of indication why he thinks they would skip over Ivy Bridge E variants, or if he just means the i7 monicker versions as opposed to EN,EP,EX, which I find unlikely. EX/E7s which have nothing to do with the mac pro or single user workstations haven't been updated since Westmere. Those updates hit late 2010. It reads like more tech site kool-aid. If they pushed for Haswell E versions, it might not be as dramatic of an impact, and they still could be a year or more out. Intel also lacks a lot of competition in that market segment. If anything why wouldn't they scrap a version that is further out and has less time invested at this point? In that sub-group it would seem as though Haswell would make a better target if bringing mainstream and server/workstation lines back into architectural parity is a real priority.
It would be quite bad if they launched a new iMac in June when some people only got their brand new ones this month and they tend to avoid releasing the Mini before the iMac. I could see June being the 15" Macbook Pro for definite, possibly Macbook Air if the ULV chips are available but pretty much iMac, Mini, iPad, iPhone for a September event. The Mac Pro might fall into the latter too but it depends on how they decide to launch it. The audience for it will be watching WWDC with the vaseline on standby.
Intel has so many chip models now, it's hard to figure out what's going to be coming when. I don't know if that's on purpose but I can't imagine it would be good for them to have so many models with overlapping price points. Worst case, it should be low/mid/high with fast or slow IGP in each category of ULV, laptop, desktop so 18 models maximum. They are going to have 33 desktop models:
It would be quite bad if they launched a new iMac in June when some people only got their brand new ones this month
I've never understood this half assed attitude. What would be bad is Apple NOT upgrading the iMac for six months after the suitable Intel hardware comes out. The last thing Apple needs to do is sit on its behind for months again with nothing to sell.
and they tend to avoid releasing the Mini before the iMac.
That is stupid I agree! However I'm not sure I see the link here, Mini should be quad core across the board.
I could see June being the 15" Macbook Pro for definite, possibly Macbook Air if the ULV chips are available but pretty much iMac, Mini, iPad, iPhone for a September event.
That is far too much product to push off till September. Just from the standpoint of manageability product releases need to be spread out.
The Mac Pro might fall into the latter too but it depends on how they decide to launch it. The audience for it will be watching WWDC with the vaseline on standby.
The new Mac Pro is a complete mystery, I don't know if they will try for the mainstream or go the high performance route. However I'm not sure what Vaseline has to do with it, the real demanding customers have already left th e platform.
Intel has so many chip models now, it's hard to figure out what's going to be coming when. I don't know if that's on purpose but I can't imagine it would be good for them to have so many models with overlapping price points. Worst case, it should be low/mid/high with fast or slow IGP in each category of ULV, laptop, desktop so 18 models maximum. They are going to have 33 desktop models:
Actually I have to agree here, intel has lost its way. It isn't so much the specific number of chips as it is the overlap and senseless partitioning of the lineup.
However I'm not sure what Vaseline has to do with it, the real demanding customers have already left the platform.
It's a crude reference wizard and I think it's false anyway. People will watch WWDC and if no info on the Mac Pro is release, there will be severe disappointment from those still sticking around. If it does get some spotlight, people will have a reaction of "Finally!"
I've never understood this half assed attitude. What would be bad is Apple NOT upgrading the iMac for six months after the suitable Intel hardware comes out.
That is far too much product to push off till September. Just from the standpoint of manageability product releases need to be spread out.
The laptops are the high volume products, the desktop line is much less. This is what they did last year. They shouldn't have the same supply issues with the iMacs, it's just a drop-in upgrade and they've only recently cleared their iMac backlog. They can put out a new Cinema display along with the MBP in June.
the real demanding customers have already left the platform.
There are a number of high resource users with iMacs/MBPs that supplement them with server hardware. Apple still sells a powerful Mac Pro too in the US. It might have outdated hardware but it's still a powerful machine. If anything it works out better because Apple will be able to advertise the new one being up to twice as fast for the same price.
People will watch WWDC and if no info on the Mac Pro is release, there will be severe disappointment from those still sticking around.
Since they do plan to update it, I think they should give it a mention even if it's not going to get the update for a few months after. It was ok to do with the iMac, announcing in September and shipping in December. They can announce in June and ship as late as September.
I'm talking about last years long long Long LONG wait after intel released suitable hardware to ship the iMac. That was a huge unchracteristic blunder on Apples part. By the time iMac shipped in quantity it was six months. Shareholders and customers alike should have been up in arms over that nonsense.
They'd still have the current model to sell, unlike last year.
If they drag out upgrades to new Intel hardware it still sucks. Apple needs to have ship able hardware within a few weeks of an Inel release of suitable hardware not months later.
Possibly but the dual-core i5 will always allow them to hit a lower entry point. I don't think Intel will be dropping the prices on the i7s.
Which is why I wish that AMD would get on the ball. Further it is why I wold like to see Apple release hardware not based on Intels hardware. Sometimes you just have to play hardball with suppliers and at this point Intel is vulnerable. Apple should be demanding across the board price cuts from Intel.
The laptops are the high volume products, the desktop line is much less. This is what they did last year. They shouldn't have the same supply issues with the iMacs, it's just a drop-in upgrade and they've only recently cleared their iMac backlog. They can put out a new Cinema display along with the MBP in June.
A new reasonably priced Cinema Display would be very nice. Honestly though it is hard to resist some of the newer low cost screens out there, some are very nice for the price.
There are a number of high resource users with iMacs/MBPs that supplement them with server hardware. Apple still sells a powerful Mac Pro too in the US. It might have outdated hardware but it's still a powerful machine. If anything it works out better because Apple will be able to advertise the new one being up to twice as fast for the same price.
Advertising does not span a burnt out bridge.
Since they do plan to update it, I think they should give it a mention even if it's not going to get the update for a few months after
They do need to do something. Frankly I was expecting a new Mac Pro by now. I'm not currently a customer for the machine but it would do the world a lot of good if Apple where to show some intention to innovate and modernize the desktop lineup. As such a refactored Mini would do wonders.
. It was ok to do with the iMac, announcing in September and shipping in December. They can announce in June and ship as late as September.
No not really, the markets are different here. Professionals usually don't enjoy being jerked around. Apple has pretty much lost any credibility they once had on the desktop, debuting a Mac Pro and not having it ready to ship would be suicide.
It's a crude reference wizard and I think it's false anyway.
I understand the reference, I just don't think there are enough people in the audience anymore that cares. Apple has pretty much burnt a lot of bridges with their lack of effort on the desktop. As such they need to be concerned with bringing those users back into the fold.
To put it another way, there won't be a room full of people, at WWDC, the least bit concerned about the Mac Pro unless Apple makes a point to stuff the room with a few clowns. To breath new life into the machine they would have to debut something radically different. I'm not even sure they are up to it.
People will watch WWDC and if no info on the Mac Pro is release, there will be severe disappointment from those still sticking around. If it does get some spotlight, people will have a reaction of "Finally!"
Possibly. However the reaction could also be a yawn followed by the thought expressed: too little too late! I don't even think Apple realizes just how badly they have damaged the customer base for this product. A year after this new Mac Pro is released they could kill it claiming no interest. That is just a reflection of how badly damaged Apples relationship with demanding users is, they are very likely to just say "screw you". Apple has had many occasions over the last few years to significantly redefine the Mac Pro and has refused to do so while letting the current Pro stagnate, they don't have much of a future in the Pro market if they come out with a slightly redesigned machine. It would be like telling the pro users that they don't deserve the same engineering efforts everyone else gets when it comes to Apple products.
Suppose Apple went to the unibody design but stayed the same size as it was in 2009 and kept the power brick... what kind of video card could be put in there? 640M? 650M?
Suppose Apple went to the unibody design but stayed the same size as it was in 2009 and kept the power brick... what kind of video card could be put in there? 640M? 650M?
Went? Been there for a while now. I don't see any dedicated GPU in the Mac Mini.
Suppose Apple went to the unibody design but stayed the same size as it was in 2009 and kept the power brick... what kind of video card could be put in there? 640M? 650M?
GPU or not I'd rather see them go back to the power brick solution. Why? Well it makes it easy to implement the Mini for non traditional use. One example being use in RVs or boats with simple DC to DC converters. Also many embedded uses can benefit from alternative power supplies.
As it is I don't see them going back to a model with a discrete GPU. Yes I would like such a model but that is today, in two years or so I'm not expecting to have that need. In a nut shell I expect performance to get "good enough" for the average user. Further I still have this belief that the Mini cold be headed to the trash heap and as such when the Mac Pro comes we will get a new consumer desktop to go with it.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
A hybrid solution would be great though:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/14/chou-university-builds-hybrid-nand-reram-unit/
You can imagine having a 256GB SSD blade with 16GB ReRAM connected to a fast memory interface. It would effectively give you 256GB of RAM for about $350 but it would depend on how full the storage was - minimum would be 16GB. When loading data off the SSD, it would be extremely fast and with it being non-volatile, it maintains the exact OS state during restarts.
Heterogeneous computing is really the best way forward for everything as can get rid of the memory limits. Certain kinds of processing work faster on the CPU as the earlier benchmarks showed so both need to be used in the right situation. It's good that OpenCL has taken off the way it has. I remember the days of Altivec and hardly anyone supported it.
CPUs are designed for a complex set of tasks. It reminds me of the ARM kool-aid. They're frequently compared on here to X86 without much mention of chip design or complexity. The way you word the thing about ReRAM just sounds like a type of secondary caching. CPU caches have obviously risen too to minimize distances. Parts of that SSD could already be allocated as virtual memory. What would be the difference with the proposed method? Fast wake from sleep comes to mind, as OSX stores a lot of information, but it's not really that slow with an SSD. Heterogeneous doesn't mean discrete gpus would have to disappear. Several Macs physically contain 2 today. What matters is whether it continues to make sense for NVidia to keep designing them and for oems to include them in a portion of their line. The high end would likely be the last to go. The past concern I mentioned was that the development costs of things like Teslas are essentially subsidized by the number of cheap gpus that are turned out simultaneously.
Quote:
The paper they wrote is here:
http://www.hwsw.hu/kepek/hirek/2010/06/p451-lee.pdf
Intel said NVidia took what they wrote out of context but they didn't really. They just picked out the most favourable stat. At one point Intel says they tested 14 compute kernels and the 230W GTX 280 was on average 2.5x faster than the 130W Core i7-960. One important point they made is that developers tend to not optimise for CPUs as much as GPUs. This will partly be because they have to write the whole thing in vectorised OpenCL for it to work on a GPU.
They talk about the transcendental hardware in GPUs being used to speed up GPU acceleration. This probably led them to implement those in hardware with Sandy Bridge:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-bridge-architecture-exposed/5
"There are other improvements within the EU. Transcendental math is handled by hardware in the EU and its performance has been sped up considerably. Intel told us that sine and cosine operations are several orders of magnitude faster now than they were in current HD Graphics."
I will read that later, but I'm curious if they're referring solely to geometric expressions. I'm not aware of what kinds of complex math can be run on bare metal. I understand a small amount of OpenGL, but not so much beyond that. I would point out that they compared against a generic gaming gpu, which especially at that time was not so heavily tuned for computation. Actually NVidia's biggest claims were in performance per watt and per dollar of hardware cost when marketing their Tesla line. I already linked to the supercomputer list on that one.
Quote:
These things all happened around the same time. Intel's push towards faster IGPs, Crystalwell being directly compared to NVidia GPUs not AMD, their Phi hardware aimed at the Tesla market and OpenCL support all seems to be motivated by a desire to compete with NVidia. Let's hope NVidia doesn't stop challenging them because as we can see with AMD without that challenge, Intel slows back down and makes very small improvements year after year.
I think this is Intel's strategy with Haswell. NVidia won over quite a few laptop manufacturers with Kepler. If Haswell matches the 650M while also offering huge power savings, it could be game over for NVidia in the low-end market because NVidia's GPUs wouldn't offer a significant enough advantage. Even the 21.5" iMac just has the 640M and 650M. I could easily see them going with the Haswell IGP.
Intel never really had a discrete gpu market to cannibalize, and they have moved toward IGPs in their mainstream lines where growth in X86 computing requirements has been somewhat logarithmic lately. I'm not sure they're aiming solely at NVidia. It's likely that they don't want to see ARM start to threaten the lower end of their market, which I suggested is likely at least important when it comes to distributing fabrication and development costs. It wouldn't surprise me to see them go from a 640M to integrated graphics, but intel makes some pretty bold claims.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Intel seems to think it will match the 650M otherwise they'd probably compare it with a lower model:
The problem with a demo like Dirt 3 is they are running at 1080p, high quality no AA, which the 650M runs at 80FPS. Even if the Haswell was running at 640M speed ~64FPS, you can't tell the difference. They did get 40FPS in Heaven vs 20FPS on the Ivy Bridge:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Keynote-Haswell-Dragon-Assistant-Atom-and-more.81667.0.html
The Ivy Bridge laptop in the video actually looks like a Macbook Air - they taped over the name.
Unigine Heaven can be configured with different settings though and on Notebookcheck, the HD 4000 scores 10FPS with the 640M around 24FPS. Intel claims they've doubled performance so that only really puts it at 640M class as the 650M gets 30FPS.
However, their test was in an Ultrabook with a 17W test chip, which will ship at 15W. So I reckon the 15W Haswell destined for the MBA will match the 640M (around double last year's Air) and the Haswell destined for the Mini and Macbook Pro will come closer to the 650M as it has the higher power limit - the highest ones go up to 57W now but they will likely use the 47W models in the Mini and MBP.
They should only use DDR3 memory for the expanded part of the memory. The Crystalwell part has 128MB of GDDR5. It won't be as good as a 650M GT with 512MB-1GB GDDR5 but the real-world difference should be negligible and it uses less power.
Whatever it comes out to, anything between the 640M and 650M will be a good enough GPU for the entry level machines - Apple uses the 640M on the entry iMac. It should get OpenCL 1.2 support from launch as well as OpenGL 4:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/12
"Haswell's processor graphics extends API support to DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL 4.0."
This might mean the next OS X has OpenGL 4 support as it will be supported on every machine.
I hesitate to take intel's demos as hard evidence at times. They talk things up quite a bit, but seeing how they're tested under a variety of circumstances means far more. I wouldn't think this way if it wasn't for their past record on these things. Supporting the latest OpenGL and OpenCL standards out the door is a major improvement though.
By the way, the laptop I saw in Best Buy was a Samsung Series 7 17.3" and had a 650M with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.
Haswell not coming out for another 5 months I heard from someone in the field.
Originally Posted by marvfox
Haswell not coming out for another 5 months I heard from someone in the field.
This was posted three days ago. And Wikipedia still lists May 27 and June 2 as release dates for performance mobile and the entire desktop line, respectively.
That makes me even more psyched.
It might have been speculation due to the USB 3 bug but Intel's just going to ship the chipsets with it and fix it later:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20130312004932_Intel_to_Fix_USB_3_0_Issues_of_8_Series_Chipset_in_New_Revision.html
There's some info that could affect the Mac Pro too:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/will_intel_skip_over_ivy_bridge_e2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It might have been speculation due to the USB 3 bug but Intel's just going to ship the chipsets with it and fix it later:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20130312004932_Intel_to_Fix_USB_3_0_Issues_of_8_Series_Chipset_in_New_Revision.html
There's some info that could affect the Mac Pro too:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/will_intel_skip_over_ivy_bridge_e2013
I suggested before that last minute delays would not be surprising. The author there doesn't give a lot of indication why he thinks they would skip over Ivy Bridge E variants, or if he just means the i7 monicker versions as opposed to EN,EP,EX, which I find unlikely. EX/E7s which have nothing to do with the mac pro or single user workstations haven't been updated since Westmere. Those updates hit late 2010. It reads like more tech site kool-aid. If they pushed for Haswell E versions, it might not be as dramatic of an impact, and they still could be a year or more out. Intel also lacks a lot of competition in that market segment. If anything why wouldn't they scrap a version that is further out and has less time invested at this point? In that sub-group it would seem as though Haswell would make a better target if bringing mainstream and server/workstation lines back into architectural parity is a real priority.
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30859-haswell-35w-dual-cores-in-q4-2013
It would be quite bad if they launched a new iMac in June when some people only got their brand new ones this month and they tend to avoid releasing the Mini before the iMac. I could see June being the 15" Macbook Pro for definite, possibly Macbook Air if the ULV chips are available but pretty much iMac, Mini, iPad, iPhone for a September event. The Mac Pro might fall into the latter too but it depends on how they decide to launch it. The audience for it will be watching WWDC with the vaseline on standby.
Intel has so many chip models now, it's hard to figure out what's going to be coming when. I don't know if that's on purpose but I can't imagine it would be good for them to have so many models with overlapping price points. Worst case, it should be low/mid/high with fast or slow IGP in each category of ULV, laptop, desktop so 18 models maximum. They are going to have 33 desktop models:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-haswell,news-42007.html
It's a crude reference wizard and I think it's false anyway. People will watch WWDC and if no info on the Mac Pro is release, there will be severe disappointment from those still sticking around. If it does get some spotlight, people will have a reaction of "Finally!"
June-September is just 4 months.
They'd still have the current model to sell, unlike last year.
Possibly but the dual-core i5 will always allow them to hit a lower entry point. I don't think Intel will be dropping the prices on the i7s.
The laptops are the high volume products, the desktop line is much less. This is what they did last year. They shouldn't have the same supply issues with the iMacs, it's just a drop-in upgrade and they've only recently cleared their iMac backlog. They can put out a new Cinema display along with the MBP in June.
There are a number of high resource users with iMacs/MBPs that supplement them with server hardware. Apple still sells a powerful Mac Pro too in the US. It might have outdated hardware but it's still a powerful machine. If anything it works out better because Apple will be able to advertise the new one being up to twice as fast for the same price.
Since they do plan to update it, I think they should give it a mention even if it's not going to get the update for a few months after. It was ok to do with the iMac, announcing in September and shipping in December. They can announce in June and ship as late as September.
No not really, the markets are different here. Professionals usually don't enjoy being jerked around. Apple has pretty much lost any credibility they once had on the desktop, debuting a Mac Pro and not having it ready to ship would be suicide.
To put it another way, there won't be a room full of people, at WWDC, the least bit concerned about the Mac Pro unless Apple makes a point to stuff the room with a few clowns. To breath new life into the machine they would have to debut something radically different. I'm not even sure they are up to it.
Possibly. However the reaction could also be a yawn followed by the thought expressed: too little too late! I don't even think Apple realizes just how badly they have damaged the customer base for this product. A year after this new Mac Pro is released they could kill it claiming no interest. That is just a reflection of how badly damaged Apples relationship with demanding users is, they are very likely to just say "screw you". Apple has had many occasions over the last few years to significantly redefine the Mac Pro and has refused to do so while letting the current Pro stagnate, they don't have much of a future in the Pro market if they come out with a slightly redesigned machine. It would be like telling the pro users that they don't deserve the same engineering efforts everyone else gets when it comes to Apple products.
Originally Posted by Winter
Suppose Apple went to the unibody design but stayed the same size as it was in 2009 and kept the power brick... what kind of video card could be put in there? 640M? 650M?
Went? Been there for a while now. I don't see any dedicated GPU in the Mac Mini.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Went? Been there for a while now. I don't see any dedicated GPU in the Mac Mini.
They used one in the 2011 revision.
You know the larger size mini in 2009? Suppose the mini was that size in the form of a unibody and had a power brick. Which card?
GPU or not I'd rather see them go back to the power brick solution. Why? Well it makes it easy to implement the Mini for non traditional use. One example being use in RVs or boats with simple DC to DC converters. Also many embedded uses can benefit from alternative power supplies.
As it is I don't see them going back to a model with a discrete GPU. Yes I would like such a model but that is today, in two years or so I'm not expecting to have that need. In a nut shell I expect performance to get "good enough" for the average user. Further I still have this belief that the Mini cold be headed to the trash heap and as such when the Mac Pro comes we will get a new consumer desktop to go with it.