Yeah Phil slipped up a bit, he sounded pretty excited to be unveiling this but they're all on good form today.
I agree everybody looked like they where in good form. I think Phil had a good reason to be excited too, this looks like a very innovative machine.
6x Thunderbolt 2 ports 20Gbps each - I think he said 3 controllers. 4x USB. Dual ethernet.
A nice number of ports but a bit thing on USB.
If this is going to be black anodised aluminium like the iPhone, it's going to look really nice. Good choice with AMD for OpenCL - as Phil said, developers should be using OpenCL.
I'm actually surprised at the GPU selection, though it will lead to one expensive machine. lets hope that there is a base model available. AMD chips really rock doing double precision which means the new Mac Pro will be able to support a very wide range of professional users.
The Pixar and Foundry demos are a nice touch, I wonder if they'll have OpenCL optimized versions of Renderman and Nuke.
It depends how you look at it. PCIe storage was a bit of a surprise but it means people don't make the poor decision of using HDDs as boot drives and it might even help keep the internals cooler. Having 6 TB ports makes up for that big time because people who need it can get a Pegasus or whatever.
PCI Express based storage is almost a requirement for anything that wants to call itself a workstation over the next few years. SATA simply isn't fast enough What will be interesting is the size of these flash arrays. I see Apple has a flash up grade option that puts another 256GB of flash into the new 13" air for $300. That is not as bad as it could be for 256 GB of extra storage. So I could see an entry level machine coming in with a 512 GB SSD or possibly 1TB. They should be able to offer up to 2TB relatively cheaply. So the machines will have very nice boot/app drive capability plus a significant amount of scratch space.
This makes me wonder if the PCI-Express interface will be rocking the fruits of their Anobit purchase. As for the internals I can't wait for a tear down. I expect an architecture that will be good for close to a decade. It is notable that the pics left a lot to be desired and they where very short on specifics but I see a lot of potential here.
Granted, SSDs are amazing fast. But if you need bulk storage (and you want it inside the box), this will be disappointing.
I can understand lack of optical drive on "non-Pro" machines, but for those who produce video having to attach an external drive is just a bit of fugliness that is not needed here. Given that people who typically use Mac Pros tend to work with large data files (and may need to mail them to clients in some form other than electronic), the lack of a built-in optical drive should raise some eyebrows.
No slots? Gee, one thing that has kept Mac Pro units working as long as they have in the past has been the ability to swap in new graphic cards. TB2 may help a little, but it's not quite the same as a 16x PCIe slot. Further, there are other devices people might want to add to a new Mac Pro (or, more likely, pull out of an existing Mac Pro and stick in the new one) that the lack of slots will be problematic.
Cylindrical? Crap! A device that could have been easily rack-mounted would have been much more practical. Even if that wasn't in the cards, cylindrical is going to create space problems on desktops and other rectangular areas where Mac Pros currently set. Someone in Apple's industrial design department should have made this a little more "industrial". Granted, the Mac Pro user is *far* from Apple's demographic (which seems to like "thin is in") but you think they would have done a better job of designing something for the Pro users. Heck, I'd much rather they stuck with the old case. Pro users don't need something that would look good in a museum -- they need something practical. Cylindrical fails that. If this is an example of "can't innovate my ass", I'd prefer less innovation, thank you.
OTOH, the performance does look pretty damn good. Mac Pro users will be forced to upgrade on that point alone.
The lighted ports are a hint: this goes under the worksurface to free up space for those 4K monitors, tablets etc. Another reason not to put drives in the thing, so they can be (if needed at all) placed on the worksurface where they are accessible. Thtis isn't our grandfathers "desktop".... or, for myself lol, MY desktop.
I want one. Really excited about this. It has everything I wanted: good CPU, good GPU, standard SSD, and looks to be silent, it seems there're few fans there. Hopefully it won't get high temps at full load.
The CPU and dual GPU are configured in a triangular shape with the cooling right up the middle with a large, quiet fan sucking air up through the middle - cold air sucked in at the base and put out the top. This means the 3 parts share a single cooling area so if one part is working harder, it gets better cooling.
It looks like a single CPU socket so there must be a 12-core Ivy Bridge single chip option and it looks like the CPU is removable.
It has 4 RAM slots so I'm guessing 64GB RAM maximum for now (DDR4 might double this) but I think it's saying 6GB of video memory per GPU so 12GB of video memory. 7 teraflops of compute power.
The chassis is black aluminium so this will look much better in real life. It's also much smaller than it looks. It's only 6.6" in diameter so smaller footprint than a Mac Mini. 9.9" tall so you couldn't get a full length 12" PCI card in there anyway.
Performance over PCI-E 2.0 x4 eliminated expanded GPGPU support.
These aren't things that were commonly used on the Mac Pro and dual GPUs makes up for this. Plus, it is actually possible to run GPUs over Thunderbolt with the right drivers, the Thunderbolt bandwidth isn't the slowdown when GPUs have enough memory.
As far as GPU upgrades, Apple doesn't want users buying their own GPUs because that's what they do instead of buying a new machine from Apple. Apple wants buyers to keep buying from them. That doesn't mean you throw away a $4000 machine after a year. You sell it second hand and you'll easily get 75% of the price back so the next year, you buy the latest model with the latest CPU and GPU for $1000. This is the kind of machine they have a reason to upgrade every year. Although they could have offered new GPUs every year, they'd make far less from that.
As for the cylindrical design, it's better for space because these machines can sit side by side without affecting the cooling performance as much.
As the text on the marketing page says, this is a machine people will sit on their desks, not under them. This design sums Apple up perfectly. They make their play for the long game and this is a forward-thinking design. I imagine some people will be wondering about how their Red Rocket or Blackmagic cards will work but they work fine in Thunderbolt cases - it's the exception that people will use these anyway as they are very expensive - and they might not have to use some cards with the compute power of the GPUs.
I'm actually surprised at the GPU selection, though it will lead to one expensive machine. lets hope that there is a base model available. AMD chips really rock doing double precision which means the new Mac Pro will be able to support a very wide range of professional users.
Except that AMD drivers have traditionally sucked. Not as bad as intel drivers but worse than NVidia's. Plus no CUDA.
Quote:
PCI Express based storage is almost a requirement for anything that wants to call itself a workstation over the next few years. SATA simply isn't fast enough What will be interesting is the size of these flash arrays. I see Apple has a flash up grade option that puts another 256GB of flash into the new 13" air for $300. That is not as bad as it could be for 256 GB of extra storage. So I could see an entry level machine coming in with a 512 GB SSD or possibly 1TB. They should be able to offer up to 2TB relatively cheaply. So the machines will have very nice boot/app drive capability plus a significant amount of scratch space.
The animated view shows only one, maybe two, SSD slot although the space in front of the other CPU is blank and could have room for another SSD slot. That's pretty minimal if there's only one or two SSD blade slots and 1-2TB is really nothing in terms of space for pro machines.
Again, I also really doubt you're going to see any 1TB SSD offering for $600 which is what you can buy a 1TB SATA SSD for.
This is the best looking computer Apple has ever made. Whoever said Apple is doomed without Steve is wrong! I really like the direction they are taking. Now hurry up and release it so you can take my money already!!
I can't stand noise from any computers, and I like how it has that one single, large fan on the top, and supposedly, they say that this computer is very quiet, and that's needless to say, a very good thing as far as I'm concerned.
No optical drive?
No support for RAID (hard drives)?
These do not need to be internal. The reality is external RAID offer you far more options and flexibility.
More of a Mac maxi rather than a Mac Pro.
Bull Crap! You are hung up on the way things where done in the past. Did you resist the move away from dot matrix printers or the move to switching power supplies in computers?
Granted, SSDs are amazing fast. But if you need bulk storage (and you want it inside the box), this will be disappointing.
I can understand this to a certain extent but many users have already graduated to more modern arraignment of computing hardware. One needs to think in terms of flexibility here and the idea of partitioning an installation into logical components.
I can understand lack of optical drive on "non-Pro" machines, but for those who produce video having to attach an external drive is just a bit of fugliness that is not needed here.
Again it isn't perfect but video producers that actually need an optical drive are a small portion of the total Mac Pro market.
Given that people who typically use Mac Pros tend to work with large data files (and may need to mail them to clients in some form other than electronic), the lack of a built-in optical drive should raise some eyebrows.
There is this concept, it refers to the idea of plugging in devices to gain functionality - the port.
No slots? Gee, one thing that has kept Mac Pro units working as long as they have in the past has been the ability to swap in new graphic cards.
This is where the lack of info will kill us but to support TB 2 most likely the video cards are on the motherboard. The exact architecture is unknown at the moment but thy could very well be using a new interface. In any event this is just something people will have to get over like when the FPU was integrated on die.
TB2 may help a little, but it's not quite the same as a 16x PCIe slot. Further, there are other devices people might want to add to a new Mac Pro (or, more likely, pull out of an existing Mac Pro and stick in the new one) that the lack of slots will be problematic.
Slots will be a problem for a small minority of users, this is hard to deny. Life goes on though eventually you have to buy new hardware.
Cylindrical? Crap! A device that could have been easily rack-mounted would have been much more practical.
The lack of a clean rack mount solution is rather short sighted of them.
Even if that wasn't in the cards, cylindrical is going to create space problems on desktops and other rectangular areas where Mac Pros currently set.
This is garbage, by any measure the new design will free up a lot of space. More so the compact design will allow placement where the old Mac Pro could never be placed.
Someone in Apple's industrial design department should have made this a little more "industrial". Granted, the Mac Pro user is *far* from Apple's demographic (which seems to like "thin is in") but you think they would have done a better job of designing something for the Pro users.
What are you talking about here! They have made a very professional computer that is a very forward looking machine.
Heck, I'd much rather they stuck with the old case. Pro users don't need something that would look good in a museum -- they need something practical. Cylindrical fails that. If this is an example of "can't innovate my ass", I'd prefer less innovation, thank you.
I think you need to sleep on this one as the new design is really awesome if I do say so myself. It deals with the reality that for computers to get faster they must become smaller. The design partitions the Mac Pro into its base functionality, which is computation, and leaves the rest of the hardware outside the tube.
OTOH, the performance does look pretty damn good. Mac Pro users will be forced to upgrade on that point alone.
Users are always being forced into something. AT slots gave way to PCI which gave way to PCI Express with a detour to AGP. Line printers gave way to dot matrix which gave way to ink jet which gave way to laser printers. FPU chips gave way to on board FPU which gave way to vector processing subsections which is yielding to GPU compute. You are really whining about nothing here.
It might be too early to project but I see a significant bump in sales figures for this model. In fact if they come up with the right tiering I could see this being the hottest selling Mac Pro ever.
I can't think of a reason why a cylinder would even be an advantageous shape.
Cooling for one. I'm imagining one big fan at the top of the machine with a diameter almost as big around as the cylinder itself. With variable speed that fan could spin up to move a lot of air when required. For that matter the fan could be at the bottom too.
As for manufacturing round could help there too. Many parts could be diecasted for example or turned on automatic lathes.
In any event it will be very interesting to see the internals of this device. There may be other reasons for the round cylindrical shape.
This was not the Mac Pro I was hoping for. I like upgradability and tinkering and the Mac Pro was the very last Mac that allowed you to do that. This new one looks like they have closed the loophole. It seems Apple just doesn't want us to get inside or change anything on a Mac Pro or any Apple device for that matter. I understand their thinking since I am sure lots of people have probably screwed things up and that costs Apple money for repairs caused by people breaking things. I was always attracted to the Power Mac then the Mac Pro line because I knew they were heavy duty beasts that would not be obsolete in a year. With the Power Mac I upgraded my G4 867 single core to a 1.5GHz dual core for example and added USB2. The Mac Pro made upgrading the CPU a lot more hassle but at least I knew I could upgrade RAM, hard drives, the GPU and also had PCI to keep it current. Now it looks like those have gone as well.
I guess my current Mac Pro will have to do a little longer service than I had hoped and when it it time to upgrade I will likely build my own Mac which apparently is easier than ever now or look to buy an iMac for the very first time ever. It would be very tempting to build my own since I love my monitors now and could reuse my Geforce 670 and all 4 of my current hard drives in my Mac Pro which would save a lot of money. I had never before considered building my own Mac but maybe it is time. I don't blame Apple nor am I angry. I am a little disappointed but it was expected and I saw the writing on the wall. I am curious to see the prices and configurations though. In a way maybe they did me a favor since I miss my old tinkering days and being able to upgrade my own computer to my heart's content.
This is the best looking computer Apple has ever made. Whoever said Apple is doomed without Steve is wrong! I really like the direction they are taking. Now hurry up and release it so you can take my money already!!
Actually... I bet SJ saw many portions of this new design before he died. Apple does NOT create new computers over night, or within a year, specifically one that they expect to sell for the next 5-10 years.
Other than the cylindrical part... which by all physical logic is brilliant... it's almost exactly what I was expecting. Speculating a couple of months back, I thought it would be about 3-4 stacked Mac Minis in height, with stackable TB chassis. Actually, I still think those may be coming from either Apple or 3rd parties.
Also.... one last note: nobody mentioned the logical design as it mirrors Apple's new campus.... can you say Power Hub? 8-)
Edit: I see someone else saw the Spaceship metaphor as i was writing the above :smokey:
Cooling for one. I'm imagining one big fan at the top of the machine with a diameter almost as big around as the cylinder itself. With variable speed that fan could spin up to move a lot of air when required. For that matter the fan could be at the bottom too.
No, it's only on the top. I saw that on Apple's site. It pulls in air from bottom. I guess the fan pushes it out from top.
It has a broad market of professional uses if it isn't just fixed with Workstation CAD/CAM only GPGPUs.
More baloney. The GPUS are more or less defined by the drivers available for them. In that regard I expect the GPUs to be tailored for common usages on the Mac.
More to the point, by the time this machine comes out, AMD 9000 cards will be out. And by the end of 2014 AMD is moving to Excavator with AMD 9000/10000 GPGPUs via SoC. Meanwhile, this Mac Pro is fixed on its GPGPU capabilities and upgrades.
It is no more fixed than any other model Apple has ever produced. In 2014 or 2015 they can come out with a model with upgraded GPU's just like they have done for ages now.
It's truly a static, fixed market device that does not integrate with pre-existing equipment unless these Pros spend a lot on third party connectivity to interoperate with this new product.
Where in the hell are you getting this crap??? The machine is very forward looking as all NEW Apple products should be. You don't win by designing a machine for the last decades usage patterns. You design a machine that can be sustained for years as technology advances.
I don't expect this design to last for the next ten years. It'll be modified and the size will expand over time.
Well it might get smaller. The logic boards are certain to shrink even more over time.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
They'll be out before the Mac Pro is.
I wouldn't be surprised. They're probably already scrambling.
It shouldn't take them more than a few hours to design one of their computers.
This makes me wonder if the PCI-Express interface will be rocking the fruits of their Anobit purchase. As for the internals I can't wait for a tear down. I expect an architecture that will be good for close to a decade. It is notable that the pics left a lot to be desired and they where very short on specifics but I see a lot of potential here.
i'm just going to get this out of the way...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhyde
No slots?
No optical drive?
No support for RAID (hard drives)?
More of a Mac maxi rather than a Mac Pro.
Granted, SSDs are amazing fast. But if you need bulk storage (and you want it inside the box), this will be disappointing.
I can understand lack of optical drive on "non-Pro" machines, but for those who produce video having to attach an external drive is just a bit of fugliness that is not needed here. Given that people who typically use Mac Pros tend to work with large data files (and may need to mail them to clients in some form other than electronic), the lack of a built-in optical drive should raise some eyebrows.
No slots? Gee, one thing that has kept Mac Pro units working as long as they have in the past has been the ability to swap in new graphic cards. TB2 may help a little, but it's not quite the same as a 16x PCIe slot. Further, there are other devices people might want to add to a new Mac Pro (or, more likely, pull out of an existing Mac Pro and stick in the new one) that the lack of slots will be problematic.
Cylindrical? Crap! A device that could have been easily rack-mounted would have been much more practical. Even if that wasn't in the cards, cylindrical is going to create space problems on desktops and other rectangular areas where Mac Pros currently set. Someone in Apple's industrial design department should have made this a little more "industrial". Granted, the Mac Pro user is *far* from Apple's demographic (which seems to like "thin is in") but you think they would have done a better job of designing something for the Pro users. Heck, I'd much rather they stuck with the old case. Pro users don't need something that would look good in a museum -- they need something practical. Cylindrical fails that. If this is an example of "can't innovate my ass", I'd prefer less innovation, thank you.
OTOH, the performance does look pretty damn good. Mac Pro users will be forced to upgrade on that point alone.
The lighted ports are a hint: this goes under the worksurface to free up space for those 4K monitors, tablets etc. Another reason not to put drives in the thing, so they can be (if needed at all) placed on the worksurface where they are accessible. Thtis isn't our grandfathers "desktop".... or, for myself lol, MY desktop.
I want one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by philipm
Why doesn’t anyone else see this?
It’s a Dalek.
I was thinking more like R2D2 without the struts.
They explain it on the page:
http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
The CPU and dual GPU are configured in a triangular shape with the cooling right up the middle with a large, quiet fan sucking air up through the middle - cold air sucked in at the base and put out the top. This means the 3 parts share a single cooling area so if one part is working harder, it gets better cooling.
It looks like a single CPU socket so there must be a 12-core Ivy Bridge single chip option and it looks like the CPU is removable.
It has 4 RAM slots so I'm guessing 64GB RAM maximum for now (DDR4 might double this) but I think it's saying 6GB of video memory per GPU so 12GB of video memory. 7 teraflops of compute power.
The chassis is black aluminium so this will look much better in real life. It's also much smaller than it looks. It's only 6.6" in diameter so smaller footprint than a Mac Mini. 9.9" tall so you couldn't get a full length 12" PCI card in there anyway.
Yeah but I think that's why Phil emphasised that people should be using OpenCL. Time to get a move on with that AE raytracer Adobe.
These aren't things that were commonly used on the Mac Pro and dual GPUs makes up for this. Plus, it is actually possible to run GPUs over Thunderbolt with the right drivers, the Thunderbolt bandwidth isn't the slowdown when GPUs have enough memory.
Not any more, OpenGL 4 was on the 10.9 slide.
As far as GPU upgrades, Apple doesn't want users buying their own GPUs because that's what they do instead of buying a new machine from Apple. Apple wants buyers to keep buying from them. That doesn't mean you throw away a $4000 machine after a year. You sell it second hand and you'll easily get 75% of the price back so the next year, you buy the latest model with the latest CPU and GPU for $1000. This is the kind of machine they have a reason to upgrade every year. Although they could have offered new GPUs every year, they'd make far less from that.
As for the cylindrical design, it's better for space because these machines can sit side by side without affecting the cooling performance as much.
As the text on the marketing page says, this is a machine people will sit on their desks, not under them. This design sums Apple up perfectly. They make their play for the long game and this is a forward-thinking design. I imagine some people will be wondering about how their Red Rocket or Blackmagic cards will work but they work fine in Thunderbolt cases - it's the exception that people will use these anyway as they are very expensive - and they might not have to use some cards with the compute power of the GPUs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I'm actually surprised at the GPU selection, though it will lead to one expensive machine. lets hope that there is a base model available. AMD chips really rock doing double precision which means the new Mac Pro will be able to support a very wide range of professional users.
Except that AMD drivers have traditionally sucked. Not as bad as intel drivers but worse than NVidia's. Plus no CUDA.
Quote:
PCI Express based storage is almost a requirement for anything that wants to call itself a workstation over the next few years. SATA simply isn't fast enough What will be interesting is the size of these flash arrays. I see Apple has a flash up grade option that puts another 256GB of flash into the new 13" air for $300. That is not as bad as it could be for 256 GB of extra storage. So I could see an entry level machine coming in with a 512 GB SSD or possibly 1TB. They should be able to offer up to 2TB relatively cheaply. So the machines will have very nice boot/app drive capability plus a significant amount of scratch space.
The animated view shows only one, maybe two, SSD slot although the space in front of the other CPU is blank and could have room for another SSD slot. That's pretty minimal if there's only one or two SSD blade slots and 1-2TB is really nothing in terms of space for pro machines.
Again, I also really doubt you're going to see any 1TB SSD offering for $600 which is what you can buy a 1TB SATA SSD for.
This is the best looking computer Apple has ever made. Whoever said Apple is doomed without Steve is wrong! I really like the direction they are taking. Now hurry up and release it so you can take my money already!!
This baby is tiny. Just made a quick mockup in SketchUp and wow.
Now if they would come out with a 3 meter TB cable...
I can't stand noise from any computers, and I like how it has that one single, large fan on the top, and supposedly, they say that this computer is very quiet, and that's needless to say, a very good thing as far as I'm concerned.
It might be too early to project but I see a significant bump in sales figures for this model. In fact if they come up with the right tiering I could see this being the hottest selling Mac Pro ever.
Don't forget about the SPACESHIP CAMPUS!!
Oh and to add RAM DISK for everybody is now the new norm? Wow we have come along way from running our OS from an Optical Cartridge...
Cooling for one. I'm imagining one big fan at the top of the machine with a diameter almost as big around as the cylinder itself. With variable speed that fan could spin up to move a lot of air when required. For that matter the fan could be at the bottom too.
As for manufacturing round could help there too. Many parts could be diecasted for example or turned on automatic lathes.
In any event it will be very interesting to see the internals of this device. There may be other reasons for the round cylindrical shape.
This was not the Mac Pro I was hoping for. I like upgradability and tinkering and the Mac Pro was the very last Mac that allowed you to do that. This new one looks like they have closed the loophole. It seems Apple just doesn't want us to get inside or change anything on a Mac Pro or any Apple device for that matter. I understand their thinking since I am sure lots of people have probably screwed things up and that costs Apple money for repairs caused by people breaking things. I was always attracted to the Power Mac then the Mac Pro line because I knew they were heavy duty beasts that would not be obsolete in a year. With the Power Mac I upgraded my G4 867 single core to a 1.5GHz dual core for example and added USB2. The Mac Pro made upgrading the CPU a lot more hassle but at least I knew I could upgrade RAM, hard drives, the GPU and also had PCI to keep it current. Now it looks like those have gone as well.
I guess my current Mac Pro will have to do a little longer service than I had hoped and when it it time to upgrade I will likely build my own Mac which apparently is easier than ever now or look to buy an iMac for the very first time ever. It would be very tempting to build my own since I love my monitors now and could reuse my Geforce 670 and all 4 of my current hard drives in my Mac Pro which would save a lot of money. I had never before considered building my own Mac but maybe it is time. I don't blame Apple nor am I angry. I am a little disappointed but it was expected and I saw the writing on the wall. I am curious to see the prices and configurations though. In a way maybe they did me a favor since I miss my old tinkering days and being able to upgrade my own computer to my heart's content.
Actually... I bet SJ saw many portions of this new design before he died. Apple does NOT create new computers over night, or within a year, specifically one that they expect to sell for the next 5-10 years.
Other than the cylindrical part... which by all physical logic is brilliant... it's almost exactly what I was expecting. Speculating a couple of months back, I thought it would be about 3-4 stacked Mac Minis in height, with stackable TB chassis. Actually, I still think those may be coming from either Apple or 3rd parties.
Also.... one last note: nobody mentioned the logical design as it mirrors Apple's new campus.... can you say Power Hub? 8-)
Edit: I see someone else saw the Spaceship metaphor as i was writing the above :smokey:
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Cooling for one. I'm imagining one big fan at the top of the machine with a diameter almost as big around as the cylinder itself. With variable speed that fan could spin up to move a lot of air when required. For that matter the fan could be at the bottom too.
No, it's only on the top. I saw that on Apple's site. It pulls in air from bottom. I guess the fan pushes it out from top.
What's wrong with Schiller? Was he on speed? He was talking so fast i barely kept up.