It's a downgrade because a spec bump Mac Pro is either equal or superior.
CPU would be the same. Updated to the same Xeon CPUs.
PCIe would be the same. The spec bump would include the extra lanes and all three slots could be configured as x16 slots and had lanes left over for 4 TB2 slots.
GPU would be as good or better. Why? Because you can choose which GPUs you wanted including the ones provided here. More importantly there are some jobs that will require nVidia instead of ATI. Better CUDA support vs OpenGL on the apps you use. Or the drivers are broken for certain apps.
Memory would have been better. 8 slots vs 4. It means memory is cheaper if you don't max or you can max higher. Same memory bandwidth speeds.
Storage would have been better. Remove the optical and replace with 2 PCIe SSD blade slots that are just as fast. Still have 4 bays for HDDs and SSDs.
Expansion would have been better. 3 slots + 4 TB2. Each slot is worth 2 TB2 ports. And if you don't need dual GPUs but do want a Rocket and some other high speed card (say a Xeon Phi) then you can have that running twice as fast as with TB2.
Longevity would have been much better. What are the two common things you can do to make a computer last longer? Add RAM and replace the GPU. You can only add half the RAM and can't update the GPUs at all. 64GB or even 128GB sounds like a lot today but 3 years from now it won't. Being capped at 4 slots will suck. My 3 year old MBP CPU and GPU wise is okay, especially since I stuck a SSD in. Being capped at 8GB is what makes the machine obsolete for me. I NNED 16GB so I have to refresh this year. For a user that is memory starved 64GB is merely okay today and 128GB optimal. Three years from now being stuck at 4 slots and 128GB is likely going to suck.
In what ways are the new Mac Pro superior?
Size.
Cool Thermal strategy.
Looks.
It's simple. If you don't like it, don't buy one.
Apple has decided that pro users don't want the internal expansion as much as external - and there's probably some truth to that. For example, let's say you've got a big rendering project or scientific computing with massive RAID storage. Even with the current MacPro, you're limited in storage. In addition, if there's a computer failure or you want to upgrade your computer, getting all the data transferred can be a lot of work. WIth the new one, you can swap in a newer computer (or replacement for hardware that has to go to the shop) without losing data - all you need to do is restore your apps and OS from your Time Machine backup.
They're essentially separating the storage from computing - which makes a lot of sense at the high end. As for the rest, I think you'll find that most Mac Pros do not have much (if anything) in the way of internal expansion cards that can't be simply replaced with a TB solution. For the very tiny number of people who have specific PCI cards that can't be replaced with TB, there are expansion boxes. But why make ALL customers pay for an expensive, massive system in order to satisfy the desire of a tiny number to avoid using an expansion box.
Added to that are cooling issues. The Mac Pro was pulled off the shelves in Europe due to cooling fan issues. That problem goes away with this new design.
Whether you like it or not is completely irrelevant - unless you can show us why your expertise is greater than Apple's.
It is 6 thunderbolt, however in this market there is about a 98% to 2% ratio on accessories for the ports so 8 USB and 4 thunderbolt would may have been better.
I'm 100% certain the Phil simply flubbed his lines when he said "Firewire 2" instead of "Thunderbolt 2". And why would you want fewer Thunderbolt ports on a "Pro" machine? As for USB, I don't see any reason to add more of them. You can turn them into as many as you need with hubs.
There is a large market for workstations that go under desks. Think financial traders. This will enable Apple to go after that market. I think I'd prefer the old case. I guess I'll wait for DDR4 and hopefully 2.5" SAS drives. (is that too much to hope for?)
You know one thing I just thought of, is now days with everything shrinking, like mother boards, SSDs shrinking, processors, etc, if they would have used the old mac pro case, they would have done crazy things. Things like 16 SSDs, 4 processors, and what not. I mean if they would use the exact same case but taken everything out. Child please, how many mac minis could you stack inside of a carved out Mac Pro case? hey thats not a bad idea Probably like 24? That case was huge compared to todays shrunk down technology.
You know one thing I just thought of, is now days with everything shrinking, like mother boards, SSDs shrinking, processors, etc, if they would have used the old mac pro case, they would have done crazy things. Things like 16 SSDs, 4 processors, and what not. I mean if they would use the exact same case but taken everything out. Child please, how many mac minis could you stack inside of a carved out Mac Pro case? hey thats not a bad idea Probably like 24? That case was huge compared to todays shrunk down technology.
Technology get's smaller no matter what you do...
Actually, I thought the better size comparison between the new and old MacPro would have been to show a couple of stacked rows inside the case of the old behemoth - not sure of the exact size, but probably 4x4 would have fit and driven the point home even more than putting it aside the old case.
I wonder if this will lead to 'one size fits all'. This case is small enough that with different 'innards', it could replace the Mini and iMac ( - connected to an ACD or a 4K monitor.) Maybe this is the xMac / MacPro Mini we've been looking for.
That would reduce Apple's cost of manufacturing. Since this may be built in the US, maybe all Macs (using this configuration) will eventually be built in the US.
Where will future monitors be assembled (probably not built)?
Of course it's not. We don't anthropomorphize machines. It's just one of the most powerful PCs on the planet, and the only one that built to run OS X for Pro USERS.
I think you really called it on this one. A couple of your predictions were true. One was the use of single parts only in a 12 core configuration, although you suggested it would be only one configuration (not sure that part was terribly serious in conviction though).
I didn't expect the PCIe storage, which Wizard69 was quite keen on. I figured they might have issues with disk management tools but they must have it working ok, presumably under Bootcamp too. They even beat the 8" cube in size, which is amazing considering what's inside it. 8" ^ 3 = 512 cubic inches. The Mac Pro cylinder is ? x 3.3 ^2 x 9.9 = 339 cubic inches - just 2/3 the volume of the cube and a smaller footprint than the Mini. I bet it's relatively light too with no heavy 3.5" drives inside.
The other portion was the thunderbolt ports. As I previously mentioned, they're not trying to export gpus over thunderbolt connections. That is still a silly concept when comparing the cost of initial engineering (including thunderbolt certification requirements) and manufacturing to potential performance levels.
I still think Thunderbolt GPUs are a perfectly viable option but not for computer manufacturers. Nvidia might get no sales from Apple this year but could make up for it a little by allowing their GPUs to work over TB for CUDA apps. The performance is fine - there's very little performance hit for a GPU on x4 vs x16.
I have no idea what the overall motivation was here, as I don't know what the cost and performance of a single 12 core looks like relative to the cost of implementing a dual solution.
The top CPUs that Apple uses are $1440 each - that tends to be the limit so $2880 total of a $6200 Mac Pro goes to Intel. One of the fastest single CPU options is the E5-2687W, which is an 8-core Sandy Bridge CPU and costs $1885. I reckon the new Mac Pro will offer the Ivy Bridge equivalent of that. Two of them score 25 in Cinebench:
[VIDEO]
so one would be 12.5 vs 16 for the current top-end 12-core Mac Pro. So if you add another 4 cores, that takes the score to 18.7 and then add on the boost from the Ivy Bridge architecture, let's say 30% for the Xeons as it's not being allocated to an IGP (presumably, though it's not clear yet how they are getting the video out over Thunderbolt) and you end up just over 24 and the price of that chip could easily be $2000-2200 ($600-800 less than the dual CPU option) and of course they only need a single-socket motherboard, which is cheaper.
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
I'm actually quite interested in this if they get real GPGPU support from software developers and get their OpenGL implementation to where it should be.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
That's what Pixar uses for Monsters U, which is likely why they are both demoing today. I think software developers are seeing the benefits of using OpenCL or at least GPU performance. OpenCL isn't GPU-exclusive either, it helps on the CPU side too just like Alti-Vec did. There's enough support already to justify it IMO with Apple's FCP apps and Adobe apps. Other computationally expensive apps will get there:
[VIDEO]
Even when you look at real-time game graphics now like in the game Remember Me released this month, some of the visuals look like concept art:
One day we will use 128 core or 256 core chip blocks, that have 4-8 thunderbolt3 ports, as small as an iPhone and that will be PRO. This Mac is a... pretty PRO and for REAL even... It's ultra future forward thinking and abandons tons of OLD technology, embracing as much of the LATEST and greatest Tech possible.
Steve Jobs would be proud, because of how much DITCHING of the old tech it is doing. And at the heart this is Apple and how Apple has always been. If you're not used to that then you're supporting the wrong company. I mean every time they drop things like floppies, adb, scsi to ata, and no optical, and PCI to PCIe, etc it's TECH!!!!! gees
There is a large market for workstations that go under desks. Think financial traders. This will enable Apple to go after that market. I think I'd prefer the old case. I guess I'll wait for DDR4 and hopefully 2.5" SAS drives. (is that too much to hope for?)
Yea, I can guarantee you will never see one of these in a brokerage firm used for trading. Our traders all have Sun/HP workstations with Matrox cards running 6 or more monitors and I have visited over 80 other firms with same configuration. CPU performance isn't the most important factor as most of our trading GUI's are remotely displayed from servers, so these would be a complete overkill.
Yea, I can guarantee you will never see one of these in a brokerage firm used for trading. Our traders all have Sun/HP workstations with Matrox cards running 6 or more monitors and I have visited over 80 other firms with same configuration. CPU performance isn't the most important factor as most of our trading GUI's are remotely displayed from servers, so these would be a complete overkill.
The other part might be incumbent software that might not run on a Mac without adjustment?
I'd think that the MP has plenty of display IO for that job.
I didn't expect the PCIe storage, which Wizard69 was quite keen on. I figured they might have issues with disk management tools but they must have it working ok, presumably under Bootcamp too.
From my perspective they had no choice no matter what the ultimate design of the new Mac Pro was or is. Flash on PCI Express would do more for a Pro workstation these days than extra cores. I could however see professionals literally wearing out the flash storage much faster than the average consumer. Thankfully the flash is on a plug in module. Apple should have offered two slots though as it looks like the machine can easily handle it.
As far as flash on PCI Express goes, what I wasn't expecting is this technology in the Mac Book Airs. That is a bold move on Apples part and makes for a very impressive Air upgrade.
They even beat the 8" cube in size, which is amazing considering what's inside it. 8" ^ 3 = 512 cubic inches. The Mac Pro cylinder is ? x 3.3 ^2 x 9.9 = 339 cubic inches - just 2/3 the volume of the cube and a smaller footprint than the Mini. I bet it's relatively light too with no heavy 3.5" drives inside.
Weight wise it might surprise you large extruded aluminum heat sinks can be surprisingly heavy. There is a lot of metal in this machine, it is a wonder of engineering.
I still think Thunderbolt GPUs are a perfectly viable option but not for computer manufacturers. Nvidia might get no sales from Apple this year but could make up for it a little by allowing their GPUs to work over TB for CUDA apps. The performance is fine - there's very little performance hit for a GPU on x4 vs x16.
I'm not sure why you continue to believe this. Apps take a big hit from the bandwidth limitations of PCI Express in many cases so going TB is a huge step backwards. In many cases the bandwidth issues of PCI Express coupled with data movement overhead leads to the realization that sometimes it is faster just to use the CPU.
Of course the exact nature of the computations impact this, in some cases you could trickle the data over to the GPU with no problem. Given that I think it is very informative that Apple built this machine to support two GPUs and one CPU. It says a lot about what they think is Important and where it is important to keep that hardware.
In other words it is no accident that Apple put two high performance GPUs inside this tube.
The top CPUs that Apple uses are $1440 each - that tends to be the limit so $2880 total of a $6200 Mac Pro goes to Intel. One of the fastest single CPU options is the E5-2687W, which is an 8-core Sandy Bridge CPU and costs $1885. I reckon the new Mac Pro will offer the Ivy Bridge equivalent of that. Two of them score 25 in Cinebench:
I'm hoping that before we get to the "up to" model we will have a more modest processor option. Also the 12 core model I believe is a dual chip in package implementation. That will likely cost big time.
That's what Pixar uses for Monsters U, which is likely why they are both demoing today. I think software developers are seeing the benefits of using OpenCL or at least GPU performance. OpenCL isn't GPU-exclusive either, it helps on the CPU side too just like Alti-Vec did. There's enough support already to justify it IMO with Apple's FCP apps and Adobe apps. Other computationally expensive apps will get there:
OpenCL has had very strong industry acceptance. Of course some people seem to think that means instant software. It is interesting that more and more pro apps are coming to the Mac. I can actually see this new Mac Pro as encouraging even more software developers to the platform. It will be a well known performance computing platform.
Even when you look at real-time game graphics now like in the game Remember Me released this month, some of the visuals look like concept art:
These are just high res screenshots done in-game. Apple isn't just designing the Mac Pro for today but for where things are going in a few years.
I think many of the detractors just don't get this. If you look towards the past then sure this Mac Pro has limitations. If you look forward though this is a platform with staying power. Consider what this platform will be capable of with the next Process shrink, faster RAM and more internal storage.
Currently though I'm just hoping that the low end option is affordable. This is a big unknown. If Apple can't deliver a machine with this architecture, at a reasonable price, they should seriously think about a Haswell desktop variant. Maybe one of those Haswell 85 watt chips paired with one of AMDs Southern Islands GPUs. I just have this fear that this machine will be priced high and effectively out of reach.
Comments
It's simple. If you don't like it, don't buy one.
Apple has decided that pro users don't want the internal expansion as much as external - and there's probably some truth to that. For example, let's say you've got a big rendering project or scientific computing with massive RAID storage. Even with the current MacPro, you're limited in storage. In addition, if there's a computer failure or you want to upgrade your computer, getting all the data transferred can be a lot of work. WIth the new one, you can swap in a newer computer (or replacement for hardware that has to go to the shop) without losing data - all you need to do is restore your apps and OS from your Time Machine backup.
They're essentially separating the storage from computing - which makes a lot of sense at the high end. As for the rest, I think you'll find that most Mac Pros do not have much (if anything) in the way of internal expansion cards that can't be simply replaced with a TB solution. For the very tiny number of people who have specific PCI cards that can't be replaced with TB, there are expansion boxes. But why make ALL customers pay for an expensive, massive system in order to satisfy the desire of a tiny number to avoid using an expansion box.
Added to that are cooling issues. The Mac Pro was pulled off the shelves in Europe due to cooling fan issues. That problem goes away with this new design.
Whether you like it or not is completely irrelevant - unless you can show us why your expertise is greater than Apple's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curtis Hannah
It is 6 thunderbolt, however in this market there is about a 98% to 2% ratio on accessories for the ports so 8 USB and 4 thunderbolt would may have been better.
I'm 100% certain the Phil simply flubbed his lines when he said "Firewire 2" instead of "Thunderbolt 2". And why would you want fewer Thunderbolt ports on a "Pro" machine? As for USB, I don't see any reason to add more of them. You can turn them into as many as you need with hubs.
And you can spruce up your desk by sticking a silk flower arrangement inside your Mac Pro.
You know, you just know, that someone, somewhere is going to do something like this.
You know one thing I just thought of, is now days with everything shrinking, like mother boards, SSDs shrinking, processors, etc, if they would have used the old mac pro case, they would have done crazy things. Things like 16 SSDs, 4 processors, and what not. I mean if they would use the exact same case but taken everything out. Child please, how many mac minis could you stack inside of a carved out Mac Pro case? hey thats not a bad idea
Technology get's smaller no matter what you do...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rezwits
You know one thing I just thought of, is now days with everything shrinking, like mother boards, SSDs shrinking, processors, etc, if they would have used the old mac pro case, they would have done crazy things. Things like 16 SSDs, 4 processors, and what not. I mean if they would use the exact same case but taken everything out. Child please, how many mac minis could you stack inside of a carved out Mac Pro case? hey thats not a bad idea
Technology get's smaller no matter what you do...
Actually, I thought the better size comparison between the new and old MacPro would have been to show a couple of stacked rows inside the case of the old behemoth - not sure of the exact size, but probably 4x4 would have fit and driven the point home even more than putting it aside the old case.
Originally Posted by nht
In what ways are the new Mac Pro superior?
Size.
Cool Thermal strategy.
Looks.
And every single effing specification of the machine.
Are you just pretending to be this blind?
I wonder if this will lead to 'one size fits all'. This case is small enough that with different 'innards', it could replace the Mini and iMac ( - connected to an ACD or a 4K monitor.) Maybe this is the xMac / MacPro Mini we've been looking for.
That would reduce Apple's cost of manufacturing. Since this may be built in the US, maybe all Macs (using this configuration) will eventually be built in the US.
Where will future monitors be assembled (probably not built)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucaseve
Nice machine but it is not a Pro...
Of course it's not ...if you have a ridiculously narrow definition of "Pro"
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucaseve
Nice machine but it is not a Pro...
Seriously…?!?
The amount of compute power this tiny package has blows away ANY previous pro machine from Apple.
The main thing most folks are having problems with are the requirements of external units for any expansion. Get over it…
Originally Posted by lucaseve
Nice machine but it is not a Pro...
When launched, it will be the most powerful single computer on the market. Just shut up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucaseve
Nice machine but it is not a Pro...
Of course it's not. We don't anthropomorphize machines. It's just one of the most powerful PCs on the planet, and the only one that built to run OS X for Pro USERS.
I didn't expect the PCIe storage, which Wizard69 was quite keen on. I figured they might have issues with disk management tools but they must have it working ok, presumably under Bootcamp too. They even beat the 8" cube in size, which is amazing considering what's inside it. 8" ^ 3 = 512 cubic inches. The Mac Pro cylinder is ? x 3.3 ^2 x 9.9 = 339 cubic inches - just 2/3 the volume of the cube and a smaller footprint than the Mini. I bet it's relatively light too with no heavy 3.5" drives inside.
I still think Thunderbolt GPUs are a perfectly viable option but not for computer manufacturers. Nvidia might get no sales from Apple this year but could make up for it a little by allowing their GPUs to work over TB for CUDA apps. The performance is fine - there's very little performance hit for a GPU on x4 vs x16.
The top CPUs that Apple uses are $1440 each - that tends to be the limit so $2880 total of a $6200 Mac Pro goes to Intel. One of the fastest single CPU options is the E5-2687W, which is an 8-core Sandy Bridge CPU and costs $1885. I reckon the new Mac Pro will offer the Ivy Bridge equivalent of that. Two of them score 25 in Cinebench:
[VIDEO]
so one would be 12.5 vs 16 for the current top-end 12-core Mac Pro. So if you add another 4 cores, that takes the score to 18.7 and then add on the boost from the Ivy Bridge architecture, let's say 30% for the Xeons as it's not being allocated to an IGP (presumably, though it's not clear yet how they are getting the video out over Thunderbolt) and you end up just over 24 and the price of that chip could easily be $2000-2200 ($600-800 less than the dual CPU option) and of course they only need a single-socket motherboard, which is cheaper.
Some people would point out that getting a score of 48 by using two of the chips is better but Apple wouldn't use two $1885 CPUs, it would likely be 2 x 8-core vs single 12-core. The Mac Pro scores 16 so assuming the same 30% boost and 8c vs 6c, that would mean 8-score x 8c/6c x 1.3 Ivy Bridge x 2 processors = 27-28 vs 24. Not that big of a deal IMO for the price difference.
One of the announcements today is that The Foundry's Mari is coming to the Mac, the following video shows it used on the dinosaur in Peter Jackson's King Kong:
[VIDEO]
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/articles/2013/06/10/536/mari-is-coming-to-the-mac/
That's what Pixar uses for Monsters U, which is likely why they are both demoing today. I think software developers are seeing the benefits of using OpenCL or at least GPU performance. OpenCL isn't GPU-exclusive either, it helps on the CPU side too just like Alti-Vec did. There's enough support already to justify it IMO with Apple's FCP apps and Adobe apps. Other computationally expensive apps will get there:
[VIDEO]
Even when you look at real-time game graphics now like in the game Remember Me released this month, some of the visuals look like concept art:
http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/rememberme/2560/cellinahell.jpg
http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/rememberme/2560/nonsmoking.jpg
http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/rememberme/2560/historyofthefarright.jpg
http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/rememberme/2560/blacklake.jpg
http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/rememberme/2560/cranekick.jpg
http://deadendthrills.com
These are just high res screenshots done in-game. Apple isn't just designing the Mac Pro for today but for where things are going in a few years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucaseve
Nice machine but it is not a Pro...
If you think so, and there are some here who don't agree (and others who do), for the sake of a discussion would you care to say why?
One day we will use 128 core or 256 core chip blocks, that have 4-8 thunderbolt3 ports, as small as an iPhone and that will be PRO. This Mac is a... pretty PRO and for REAL even... It's ultra future forward thinking and abandons tons of OLD technology, embracing as much of the LATEST and greatest Tech possible.
Steve Jobs would be proud, because of how much DITCHING of the old tech it is doing. And at the heart this is Apple and how Apple has always been. If you're not used to that then you're supporting the wrong company. I mean every time they drop things like floppies, adb, scsi to ata, and no optical, and PCI to PCIe, etc it's TECH!!!!! gees
Quote:
Originally Posted by go4d1
There is a large market for workstations that go under desks. Think financial traders. This will enable Apple to go after that market. I think I'd prefer the old case. I guess I'll wait for DDR4 and hopefully 2.5" SAS drives. (is that too much to hope for?)
Yea, I can guarantee you will never see one of these in a brokerage firm used for trading. Our traders all have Sun/HP workstations with Matrox cards running 6 or more monitors and I have visited over 80 other firms with same configuration. CPU performance isn't the most important factor as most of our trading GUI's are remotely displayed from servers, so these would be a complete overkill.
The other part might be incumbent software that might not run on a Mac without adjustment?
I'd think that the MP has plenty of display IO for that job.
As far as flash on PCI Express goes, what I wasn't expecting is this technology in the Mac Book Airs. That is a bold move on Apples part and makes for a very impressive Air upgrade. Weight wise it might surprise you large extruded aluminum heat sinks can be surprisingly heavy. There is a lot of metal in this machine, it is a wonder of engineering. I'm not sure why you continue to believe this. Apps take a big hit from the bandwidth limitations of PCI Express in many cases so going TB is a huge step backwards. In many cases the bandwidth issues of PCI Express coupled with data movement overhead leads to the realization that sometimes it is faster just to use the CPU.
Of course the exact nature of the computations impact this, in some cases you could trickle the data over to the GPU with no problem. Given that I think it is very informative that Apple built this machine to support two GPUs and one CPU. It says a lot about what they think is Important and where it is important to keep that hardware.
In other words it is no accident that Apple put two high performance GPUs inside this tube. I'm hoping that before we get to the "up to" model we will have a more modest processor option. Also the 12 core model I believe is a dual chip in package implementation. That will likely cost big time. OpenCL has had very strong industry acceptance. Of course some people seem to think that means instant software. It is interesting that more and more pro apps are coming to the Mac. I can actually see this new Mac Pro as encouraging even more software developers to the platform. It will be a well known performance computing platform.
I think many of the detractors just don't get this. If you look towards the past then sure this Mac Pro has limitations. If you look forward though this is a platform with staying power. Consider what this platform will be capable of with the next Process shrink, faster RAM and more internal storage.
Currently though I'm just hoping that the low end option is affordable. This is a big unknown. If Apple can't deliver a machine with this architecture, at a reasonable price, they should seriously think about a Haswell desktop variant. Maybe one of those Haswell 85 watt chips paired with one of AMDs Southern Islands GPUs. I just have this fear that this machine will be priced high and effectively out of reach.