What I've been noticing is that there are a lot of people that read into Apple's documentation things that Apple has never said.
The document here was presented in a video where the presenter said that Intel Macs have Intel, Nvidia or AMD GPUs, Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs. I'm sure he would have said Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs and other GPUs if that was going to be the case because it's a video for developers telling them how they should design their software.
In this case we have people seemingly taking a statement that says nothing about discreet GPU's as a statement that Apple has no intention to use AMD GPU's in the future. It doesn't matter what Apple is doing in this case because it is a stretch to imply that AMD is out of the picture. In fact I just spent some time listening to a WWDC blurb on ray tracing support in Metal, this implies to me that they have plans that will likely require external hardware to achieve max performance. I say that because I don't see Apple having enough die space to be able to offer up a high performance ray tracing support. Now Apple could offer an external GPU or even a MCM but even the MCM could be supporting a third party chip. There are all sorts of options here.
There are options and there are ARM systems with PCIe support and 3rd party GPU support:
but 3rd party GPUs would only be needed if Apple's GPUs don't perform well enough and they seem to be suggesting they will. It's the same reason they are switching CPU.
They are also tuning Metal to work best on their GPU hardware, which has a different rendering structure than other GPUs. Apple is sending a clear message here, that they can beat everyone in silicon design so they have no need to buy 3rd party hardware and resell it when then they can do a better job themselves.(1)
I still think that if apple wants to offer a high performance Mac Pro, a third party GPU (or external compute chip) is a must for the next few years. I just see them needing a couple of years to offer up an ARM based chip that is similar in performance to Fijitsu's chip. Even then an accelerator chip can still make sense no matter how fast your CPU is. So instead of dropping AMD, I rather see them increasing their partnership with AMD. In this case that might mean new technology in Mac compute accelerations. Think a fabric connection to an external CDNA chip.
The Afterburner card is a PCIe card so if they want to keep using that, they need some kind of interface for it. But with a custom GPU, they could build this into a higher-end package in the iMac Pro without needing a card or the iMac Pro can have an internal slot for it.
I suspect they will leave the Mac Pro on Intel hardware. They should be able to match its performance in the iMac form factor and over time people will wonder why pay the Intel premium of thousands extra per CPU when a standard iMac can do the same job at a much better price.
It's possible that higher-end AMD/Nvidia GPUs will outperform some of Apple's options if Apple sticks to lower power profiles but it doesn't really matter. (3) Once you have a GPU that is over 10TFLOPs, everything beyond that is gravy. Gravy is nice but optional and it doesn't matter as much for real-time processing as for offline processing for which multiple machines can be used.
For hardware lineup, I'm expecting: - Macbook Air and mini 8-core (4-big, 4 small) CPU, 4TFLOP GPU (MBP level performance) - Macbook Pro 16-core (could be 12 big, 4 small), 8TFLOP GPU (iMac level performance) - iMac 32-core, 16TFLOP GPU (Mac Pro level performance), possibly with optional accelerators like Afterburner
- Mac Pro continue to use Intel Xeon and 3rd party GPUs, updated every 2-3 years and probably removed from sale in 6-8 years
If that's what they manage at launch, there's nothing in the roadmap that will need them to use 3rd party hardware any more but we'll only know for sure when they start shipping the first ARM Mac (likely Macbook Air) later in the year.
1). Interesting. I bet we'll see dedicated graphics card. A guy I knew said we'll see their own eGPUs, and he's pretty good predict these things, what do you think?
2). I was thinking about the same, wondering if it's possible. The guy mentioned above think external solution will slowly replace internal slots as eGPUs are more flexible. Though, both of us don't think that'll replace the Mac Pro.
3). In fact, I believe Apple could create their own niche instead playing along with rest of the PC industry. Sure they can beat an i9 with ease (a leak suggests the first ASi is on-par with i7-10700K, at1/3 of its consumption), but with that level of performance, it's not a requirement.
To give an example, let's say a 14" aimed between both Ultrabooks and High-performance notebooks, with a consumption that's lower than both of them, or a fanless 13" that closely matched or exceeds all other 13".
4). Agreed, though I think two extra cores is likely.
It's possible for them to make an eGPU, it would likely be a sealed unit so not a card in a PCIe box. Whether it would be commercially useful depends on how fast their internal GPUs are but I guess it will always be of use on the lower-end models. Given that they will support Thunderbolt, supporting 3rd party eGPUs is a possibility. Their documentation could have been referring to internal GPUs only. If they continue to support 3rd party eGPUs, they wouldn't need to make their own.
The Mac Pro would be an unusual model for Apple Silicon because if they use PCIe GPUs, they don't need to have an integrated GPU and they'd run into issues with switching graphics drivers. The moves Apple made with the Mac Pro looked like they were in preparation for discontinuing it and they made it due to getting some pushback. If they planned to continue using the form factor, it would need them to support PCIe GPUs and they'd be replacing the CPU and motherboard.
I think the iMac (Pro) form factor is much more suited to Apple Silicon and they can make an iMac model that competes with the Mac Pro on performance and leave the Mac Pro on Intel.
The priority with Apple Silicon is the laptops, that's over 80% of their Mac audience and mostly the Air and 13" Pro. Some rumors have suggested going back to a fanless design Macbook but that limits them to a 5-7W power profile. The Air can go up to 15W and the magic/scissor keyboard is a better keyboard as well as the larger display and more USB ports.
They could easily have a single 13"/14" model. The main reason they have more models is they are buying chips from Intel at different power profiles. Apple can design a single chip to do what they want. There wouldn't be much reason for them to sell a 16" model with multiple GPUs because they aren't buying the GPUs from a 3rd party. They'd have to manufacturer different chips to do that. I could see them simplifying the laptop lineup to a single 14" in an Air design and a single 16" and then charging for the RAM and storage.
iPad Pro can be 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU 7W (1-2TFLOP) Macbook 14" 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU 15-25W (4TFLOP) Macbook Pro 16" 20-core CPU, 32-core GPU 30-60W (8TFLOP) iMac 36-core CPU, 64-core GPU 60-100W (16TFLOP) An iMac Pro can go up to 500W.
Current GPUs can do around 100GFLOPs/Watt on 7nm, if Apple can go up 50% on 5nm to 150GFLOPs/Watt, that's a huge amount of performance at lower power levels. It doesn't seem like there would be much need for higher than a standard iMac. The Mac Pro supports up to 56TFLOPs of GPU compute but, assuming 3rd party eGPUs, a couple of 20TFLOP GPUs connected to an iMac gets there at a fraction of the price.
What I've been noticing is that there are a lot of people that read into Apple's documentation things that Apple has never said.
The document here was presented in a video where the presenter said that Intel Macs have Intel, Nvidia or AMD GPUs, Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs. I'm sure he would have said Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs and other GPUs if that was going to be the case because it's a video for developers telling them how they should design their software.
In this case we have people seemingly taking a statement that says nothing about discreet GPU's as a statement that Apple has no intention to use AMD GPU's in the future. It doesn't matter what Apple is doing in this case because it is a stretch to imply that AMD is out of the picture. In fact I just spent some time listening to a WWDC blurb on ray tracing support in Metal, this implies to me that they have plans that will likely require external hardware to achieve max performance. I say that because I don't see Apple having enough die space to be able to offer up a high performance ray tracing support. Now Apple could offer an external GPU or even a MCM but even the MCM could be supporting a third party chip. There are all sorts of options here.
There are options and there are ARM systems with PCIe support and 3rd party GPU support:
but 3rd party GPUs would only be needed if Apple's GPUs don't perform well enough and they seem to be suggesting they will. It's the same reason they are switching CPU.
They are also tuning Metal to work best on their GPU hardware, which has a different rendering structure than other GPUs. Apple is sending a clear message here, that they can beat everyone in silicon design so they have no need to buy 3rd party hardware and resell it when then they can do a better job themselves.(1)
I still think that if apple wants to offer a high performance Mac Pro, a third party GPU (or external compute chip) is a must for the next few years. I just see them needing a couple of years to offer up an ARM based chip that is similar in performance to Fijitsu's chip. Even then an accelerator chip can still make sense no matter how fast your CPU is. So instead of dropping AMD, I rather see them increasing their partnership with AMD. In this case that might mean new technology in Mac compute accelerations. Think a fabric connection to an external CDNA chip.
The Afterburner card is a PCIe card so if they want to keep using that, they need some kind of interface for it. But with a custom GPU, they could build this into a higher-end package in the iMac Pro without needing a card or the iMac Pro can have an internal slot for it.
I suspect they will leave the Mac Pro on Intel hardware. They should be able to match its performance in the iMac form factor and over time people will wonder why pay the Intel premium of thousands extra per CPU when a standard iMac can do the same job at a much better price.
It's possible that higher-end AMD/Nvidia GPUs will outperform some of Apple's options if Apple sticks to lower power profiles but it doesn't really matter. (3) Once you have a GPU that is over 10TFLOPs, everything beyond that is gravy. Gravy is nice but optional and it doesn't matter as much for real-time processing as for offline processing for which multiple machines can be used.
For hardware lineup, I'm expecting: - Macbook Air and mini 8-core (4-big, 4 small) CPU, 4TFLOP GPU (MBP level performance) - Macbook Pro 16-core (could be 12 big, 4 small), 8TFLOP GPU (iMac level performance) - iMac 32-core, 16TFLOP GPU (Mac Pro level performance), possibly with optional accelerators like Afterburner
- Mac Pro continue to use Intel Xeon and 3rd party GPUs, updated every 2-3 years and probably removed from sale in 6-8 years
If that's what they manage at launch, there's nothing in the roadmap that will need them to use 3rd party hardware any more but we'll only know for sure when they start shipping the first ARM Mac (likely Macbook Air) later in the year.
1). Interesting. I bet we'll see dedicated graphics card. A guy I knew said we'll see their own eGPUs, and he's pretty good predict these things, what do you think?
2). I was thinking about the same, wondering if it's possible. The guy mentioned above think external solution will slowly replace internal slots as eGPUs are more flexible. Though, both of us don't think that'll replace the Mac Pro.
3). In fact, I believe Apple could create their own niche instead playing along with rest of the PC industry. Sure they can beat an i9 with ease (a leak suggests the first ASi is on-par with i7-10700K, at1/3 of its consumption), but with that level of performance, it's not a requirement.
To give an example, let's say a 14" aimed between both Ultrabooks and High-performance notebooks, with a consumption that's lower than both of them, or a fanless 13" that closely matched or exceeds all other 13".
4). Agreed, though I think two extra cores is likely.
It's possible for them to make an eGPU, it would likely be a sealed unit so not a card in a PCIe box. Whether it would be commercially useful depends on how fast their internal GPUs are but I guess it will always be of use on the lower-end models. Given that they will support Thunderbolt, supporting 3rd party eGPUs is a possibility. Their documentation could have been referring to internal GPUs only. If they continue to support 3rd party eGPUs, they wouldn't need to make their own.
The Mac Pro would be an unusual model for Apple Silicon because if they use PCIe GPUs, they don't need to have an integrated GPU and they'd run into issues with switching graphics drivers. The moves Apple made with the Mac Pro looked like they were in preparation for discontinuing it and they made it due to getting some pushback. If they planned to continue using the form factor, it would need them to support PCIe GPUs and they'd be replacing the CPU and motherboard. (2)
I think the iMac (Pro) form factor is much more suited to Apple Silicon and they can make an iMac model that competes with the Mac Pro on performance and leave the Mac Pro on Intel.
The priority with Apple Silicon is the laptops, that's over 80% of their Mac audience and mostly the Air and 13" Pro. (3) Some rumors have suggested going back to a fanless design Macbook but that limits them to a 5-7W power profile. The Air can go up to 15W and the magic/scissor keyboard is a better keyboard as well as the larger display and more USB ports. (3)
They could easily have a single 13"/14" model. The main reason they have more models is they are buying chips from Intel at different power profiles. Apple can design a single chip to do what they want. There wouldn't be much reason for them to sell a 16" model with multiple GPUs because they aren't buying the GPUs from a 3rd party. They'd have to manufacturer different chips to do that. I could see them simplifying the laptop lineup to a single 14" in an Air design and a single 16" and then charging for the RAM and storage. (4)
iPad Pro can be 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU 7W (1-2TFLOP) Macbook 14" 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU 15-25W (4TFLOP) Macbook Pro 16" 20-core CPU, 32-core GPU 30-60W (8TFLOP) iMac 36-core CPU, 64-core GPU 60-100W (16TFLOP) An iMac Pro can go up to 500W.
Current GPUs can do around 100GFLOPs/Watt on 7nm, if Apple can go up 50% on 5nm to 150GFLOPs/Watt, that's a huge amount of performance at lower power levels. It doesn't seem like there would be much need for higher than a standard iMac. The Mac Pro supports up to 56TFLOPs of GPU compute but, assuming 3rd party eGPUs, a couple of 20TFLOP GPUs connected to an iMac gets there at a fraction of the price.
1). Right, so the situation that's most likely will be proprietary eGPUs. That sounds crazy since they never build such things, but that's the only way to get faster graphics on an ASi MacBook. The guy also suggests the ASi to have their own peripherial bus for the job, that we'll see.
2). That actually reminds me. Come to think about, most Mac workstations since Steve Jobs have a modular CPU design:
So pretty much every design with the exception of G3? and current release. There were also rumors suggested the Mac Pro to be modular, too. It could make sense to have a motherboard that's just connections, while leaving processors and GPUs to be independent, all component can be swapped and upgrade with ease. I don't worry too much about stolen IP (if you're wondering), consider they'll most likely integrated the Secure Enclave inside the SoC.
3). We can actually see that just on Steam's database: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ In fact, 8-Core CPUs makes up only 4% of Mac's user base, where as 2-Core and 4-Core combined to be 80%. That suggests me even the 16-inch is a small minority by comparison. (I also believe the 16" is st least faster than 70%~80% of the computers right now. It used to be higher for sure so there's a need to bump up the spec.) These were based on gamers for sure, but does give us what should we expect.
As for the MacBook Air, all I can say is that at least there's no throttle in A12X/Z's CPU (the larger iPad Pro), even running it with stress tests, that I believe is 15 Watts.
4). That's just some example, I personally have no clue how they'll meet their customer's demand. I do think the current line-up is still bit of a mess as there are two 13" Pro at the same time. I was hoping something similar like late 90s where only two models available (maybe three, I think that's fine).
What I've been noticing is that there are a lot of people that read into Apple's documentation things that Apple has never said.
The document here was presented in a video where the presenter said that Intel Macs have Intel, Nvidia or AMD GPUs, Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs. I'm sure he would have said Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs and other GPUs if that was going to be the case because it's a video for developers telling them how they should design their software.
In this case we have people seemingly taking a statement that says nothing about discreet GPU's as a statement that Apple has no intention to use AMD GPU's in the future. It doesn't matter what Apple is doing in this case because it is a stretch to imply that AMD is out of the picture. In fact I just spent some time listening to a WWDC blurb on ray tracing support in Metal, this implies to me that they have plans that will likely require external hardware to achieve max performance. I say that because I don't see Apple having enough die space to be able to offer up a high performance ray tracing support. Now Apple could offer an external GPU or even a MCM but even the MCM could be supporting a third party chip. There are all sorts of options here.
There are options and there are ARM systems with PCIe support and 3rd party GPU support:
but 3rd party GPUs would only be needed if Apple's GPUs don't perform well enough and they seem to be suggesting they will. It's the same reason they are switching CPU.
They are also tuning Metal to work best on their GPU hardware, which has a different rendering structure than other GPUs. Apple is sending a clear message here, that they can beat everyone in silicon design so they have no need to buy 3rd party hardware and resell it when then they can do a better job themselves.(1)
I still think that if apple wants to offer a high performance Mac Pro, a third party GPU (or external compute chip) is a must for the next few years. I just see them needing a couple of years to offer up an ARM based chip that is similar in performance to Fijitsu's chip. Even then an accelerator chip can still make sense no matter how fast your CPU is. So instead of dropping AMD, I rather see them increasing their partnership with AMD. In this case that might mean new technology in Mac compute accelerations. Think a fabric connection to an external CDNA chip.
The Afterburner card is a PCIe card so if they want to keep using that, they need some kind of interface for it. But with a custom GPU, they could build this into a higher-end package in the iMac Pro without needing a card or the iMac Pro can have an internal slot for it.
I suspect they will leave the Mac Pro on Intel hardware. They should be able to match its performance in the iMac form factor and over time people will wonder why pay the Intel premium of thousands extra per CPU when a standard iMac can do the same job at a much better price.
It's possible that higher-end AMD/Nvidia GPUs will outperform some of Apple's options if Apple sticks to lower power profiles but it doesn't really matter. (3) Once you have a GPU that is over 10TFLOPs, everything beyond that is gravy. Gravy is nice but optional and it doesn't matter as much for real-time processing as for offline processing for which multiple machines can be used.
For hardware lineup, I'm expecting: - Macbook Air and mini 8-core (4-big, 4 small) CPU, 4TFLOP GPU (MBP level performance) - Macbook Pro 16-core (could be 12 big, 4 small), 8TFLOP GPU (iMac level performance) - iMac 32-core, 16TFLOP GPU (Mac Pro level performance), possibly with optional accelerators like Afterburner
- Mac Pro continue to use Intel Xeon and 3rd party GPUs, updated every 2-3 years and probably removed from sale in 6-8 years
If that's what they manage at launch, there's nothing in the roadmap that will need them to use 3rd party hardware any more but we'll only know for sure when they start shipping the first ARM Mac (likely Macbook Air) later in the year.
1). Interesting. I bet we'll see dedicated graphics card. A guy I knew said we'll see their own eGPUs, and he's pretty good predict these things, what do you think?
2). I was thinking about the same, wondering if it's possible. The guy mentioned above think external solution will slowly replace internal slots as eGPUs are more flexible. Though, both of us don't think that'll replace the Mac Pro.
3). In fact, I believe Apple could create their own niche instead playing along with rest of the PC industry. Sure they can beat an i9 with ease (a leak suggests the first ASi is on-par with i7-10700K, at1/3 of its consumption), but with that level of performance, it's not a requirement.
To give an example, let's say a 14" aimed between both Ultrabooks and High-performance notebooks, with a consumption that's lower than both of them, or a fanless 13" that closely matched or exceeds all other 13".
4). Agreed, though I think two extra cores is likely.
It's possible for them to make an eGPU, it would likely be a sealed unit so not a card in a PCIe box. Whether it would be commercially useful depends on how fast their internal GPUs are but I guess it will always be of use on the lower-end models. Given that they will support Thunderbolt, supporting 3rd party eGPUs is a possibility. Their documentation could have been referring to internal GPUs only. If they continue to support 3rd party eGPUs, they wouldn't need to make their own.
The Mac Pro would be an unusual model for Apple Silicon because if they use PCIe GPUs, they don't need to have an integrated GPU and they'd run into issues with switching graphics drivers. The moves Apple made with the Mac Pro looked like they were in preparation for discontinuing it and they made it due to getting some pushback. If they planned to continue using the form factor, it would need them to support PCIe GPUs and they'd be replacing the CPU and motherboard. (2)
I think the iMac (Pro) form factor is much more suited to Apple Silicon and they can make an iMac model that competes with the Mac Pro on performance and leave the Mac Pro on Intel.
The priority with Apple Silicon is the laptops, that's over 80% of their Mac audience and mostly the Air and 13" Pro. (3) Some rumors have suggested going back to a fanless design Macbook but that limits them to a 5-7W power profile. The Air can go up to 15W and the magic/scissor keyboard is a better keyboard as well as the larger display and more USB ports. (3)
They could easily have a single 13"/14" model. The main reason they have more models is they are buying chips from Intel at different power profiles. Apple can design a single chip to do what they want. There wouldn't be much reason for them to sell a 16" model with multiple GPUs because they aren't buying the GPUs from a 3rd party. They'd have to manufacturer different chips to do that. I could see them simplifying the laptop lineup to a single 14" in an Air design and a single 16" and then charging for the RAM and storage. (4)
iPad Pro can be 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU 7W (1-2TFLOP) Macbook 14" 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU 15-25W (4TFLOP) Macbook Pro 16" 20-core CPU, 32-core GPU 30-60W (8TFLOP) iMac 36-core CPU, 64-core GPU 60-100W (16TFLOP) An iMac Pro can go up to 500W.
Current GPUs can do around 100GFLOPs/Watt on 7nm, if Apple can go up 50% on 5nm to 150GFLOPs/Watt, that's a huge amount of performance at lower power levels. It doesn't seem like there would be much need for higher than a standard iMac. The Mac Pro supports up to 56TFLOPs of GPU compute but, assuming 3rd party eGPUs, a couple of 20TFLOP GPUs connected to an iMac gets there at a fraction of the price.
1). Right, so the situation that's most likely will be proprietary eGPUs. That sounds crazy since they never build such things, but that's the only way to get faster graphics on an ASi MacBook. The guy also suggests the ASi to have their own peripherial bus for the job, that we'll see.
2). That actually reminds me. Come to think about, most Mac workstations since Steve Jobs have a modular CPU design: So pretty much every design with the exception of G3? and current release. There were also rumors suggested the Mac Pro to be modular, too. It could make sense to have a motherboard that's just connections, while leaving processors and GPUs to be independent, all component can be swapped and upgrade with ease. I don't worry too much about stolen IP (if you're wondering), consider they'll most likely integrated the Secure Enclave inside the SoC.
3). We can actually see that just on Steam's database: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ In fact, 8-Core CPUs makes up only 4% of Mac's user base, where as 2-Core and 4-Core combined to be 80%. That suggests me even the 16-inch is a small minority by comparison. (I also believe the 16" is st least faster than 70%~80% of the computers right now. It used to be higher for sure so there's a need to bump up the spec.) These were based on gamers for sure, but does give us what should we expect.
As for the MacBook Air, all I can say is that at least there's no throttle in A12X/Z's CPU (the larger iPad Pro), even running it with stress tests, that I believe is 15 Watts.
4). That's just some example, I personally have no clue how they'll meet their customer's demand. I do think the current line-up is still bit of a mess as there are two 13" Pro at the same time. I was hoping something similar like late 90s where only two models available (maybe three, I think that's fine).
The eGPU situation on Apple Silicon is not very clear. It would be unusual for Apple to make external GPUs and that's probably the least likely scenario because it's the hardest one for Apple. The easiest is no eGPU support. We know they will support Thunderbolt so at least hardware-level support is there but the reason eGPUs are currently supported is that there are drivers available due to Apple supporting AMD internally on Intel Macs. Once there are no internally supported 3rd party GPUs, who writes the drivers? AMD/NVidia would be unlikely to write drivers for the eGPU market alone, especially with Apple locking down kernel extensions.
I think it would be nice if Apple did make eGPUs because they'd run really quiet like the Blackmagic ones and it would be guaranteed that software built for Apple Silicon Macs would run properly (Metal etc) but I think the route Apple will go with these machines is make the internal GPUs as fast as possible so that people won't feel the need to use an eGPU.
If someone has a 5600m Macbook Pro (5TFLOP), there's not much need for an eGPU. The Vega 56 Blackmagic eGPU was 10TFLOPs so would still offer a boost but if the internal GPUs on 5nm are 50% faster than the AMD ones, it's getting pretty close to higher-end eGPU speed internally without the hassle of the external unit.
For modularity, I think Apple will stick to being more locked down. The soldered SSD in the recent iMac indicates this.
Regarding the lineup, simplifying it to fewer models would make sense in light of their in-house manufacturing because an upgraded model would mean manufacturing another chip. However, not having upgrades means they can't do much to upsell models. What manufacturers sometimes do is manufacture batches of the same chips and either disable cores or change the clock speeds. The GPU would be the best way to differentiate the models so either change the number of cores, disable some or change the clock speeds.
Entry 14" Macbook 3TFLOP ($899), upgraded model 4TFLOP ($1299). 16" MBP entry 6TFLOP ($1999), upgraded model 8TFLOP ($2399). Then the memory and SSD fills out the rest of the price range up to a max of around $5399 for 64GB RAM and 8TB SSD.
Using non-volatile memory like XPoint would be good for having large affordable memory capacity. This would suit the iMac, especially if they wanted to solder the memory in:
This way 128/256GB of RAM would cost closer to a premium SSD at that capacity and could be an option on the laptops. It's slower than RAM but data can be quickly shuffled in/out of fast memory. Having a tiered memory system would offer the most affordable setup, for example, have really fast low capacity GPU memory, this can run around 1-2TB/s and only needs to be a few GB. Then lower cost system memory up to 32-64GB around 300GB/s. Then even lower cost non-volatile memory up to 1TB capacity around 20GB/s. Finally SSD storage up to 8TB capacity around 3GB/s.
What I've been noticing is that there are a lot of people that read into Apple's documentation things that Apple has never said.
The document here was presented in a video where the presenter said that Intel Macs have Intel, Nvidia or AMD GPUs, Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs. I'm sure he would have said Apple Silicon Macs will have Apple GPUs and other GPUs if that was going to be the case because it's a video for developers telling them how they should design their software.
In this case we have people seemingly taking a statement that says nothing about discreet GPU's as a statement that Apple has no intention to use AMD GPU's in the future. It doesn't matter what Apple is doing in this case because it is a stretch to imply that AMD is out of the picture. In fact I just spent some time listening to a WWDC blurb on ray tracing support in Metal, this implies to me that they have plans that will likely require external hardware to achieve max performance. I say that because I don't see Apple having enough die space to be able to offer up a high performance ray tracing support. Now Apple could offer an external GPU or even a MCM but even the MCM could be supporting a third party chip. There are all sorts of options here.
There are options and there are ARM systems with PCIe support and 3rd party GPU support:
but 3rd party GPUs would only be needed if Apple's GPUs don't perform well enough and they seem to be suggesting they will. It's the same reason they are switching CPU.
They are also tuning Metal to work best on their GPU hardware, which has a different rendering structure than other GPUs. Apple is sending a clear message here, that they can beat everyone in silicon design so they have no need to buy 3rd party hardware and resell it when then they can do a better job themselves.(1)
I still think that if apple wants to offer a high performance Mac Pro, a third party GPU (or external compute chip) is a must for the next few years. I just see them needing a couple of years to offer up an ARM based chip that is similar in performance to Fijitsu's chip. Even then an accelerator chip can still make sense no matter how fast your CPU is. So instead of dropping AMD, I rather see them increasing their partnership with AMD. In this case that might mean new technology in Mac compute accelerations. Think a fabric connection to an external CDNA chip.
The Afterburner card is a PCIe card so if they want to keep using that, they need some kind of interface for it. But with a custom GPU, they could build this into a higher-end package in the iMac Pro without needing a card or the iMac Pro can have an internal slot for it.
I suspect they will leave the Mac Pro on Intel hardware. They should be able to match its performance in the iMac form factor and over time people will wonder why pay the Intel premium of thousands extra per CPU when a standard iMac can do the same job at a much better price.
It's possible that higher-end AMD/Nvidia GPUs will outperform some of Apple's options if Apple sticks to lower power profiles but it doesn't really matter. (3) Once you have a GPU that is over 10TFLOPs, everything beyond that is gravy. Gravy is nice but optional and it doesn't matter as much for real-time processing as for offline processing for which multiple machines can be used.
For hardware lineup, I'm expecting: - Macbook Air and mini 8-core (4-big, 4 small) CPU, 4TFLOP GPU (MBP level performance) - Macbook Pro 16-core (could be 12 big, 4 small), 8TFLOP GPU (iMac level performance) - iMac 32-core, 16TFLOP GPU (Mac Pro level performance), possibly with optional accelerators like Afterburner
- Mac Pro continue to use Intel Xeon and 3rd party GPUs, updated every 2-3 years and probably removed from sale in 6-8 years
If that's what they manage at launch, there's nothing in the roadmap that will need them to use 3rd party hardware any more but we'll only know for sure when they start shipping the first ARM Mac (likely Macbook Air) later in the year.
1). Interesting. I bet we'll see dedicated graphics card. A guy I knew said we'll see their own eGPUs, and he's pretty good predict these things, what do you think?
2). I was thinking about the same, wondering if it's possible. The guy mentioned above think external solution will slowly replace internal slots as eGPUs are more flexible. Though, both of us don't think that'll replace the Mac Pro.
3). In fact, I believe Apple could create their own niche instead playing along with rest of the PC industry. Sure they can beat an i9 with ease (a leak suggests the first ASi is on-par with i7-10700K, at1/3 of its consumption), but with that level of performance, it's not a requirement.
To give an example, let's say a 14" aimed between both Ultrabooks and High-performance notebooks, with a consumption that's lower than both of them, or a fanless 13" that closely matched or exceeds all other 13".
4). Agreed, though I think two extra cores is likely.
It's possible for them to make an eGPU, it would likely be a sealed unit so not a card in a PCIe box. Whether it would be commercially useful depends on how fast their internal GPUs are but I guess it will always be of use on the lower-end models. Given that they will support Thunderbolt, supporting 3rd party eGPUs is a possibility. Their documentation could have been referring to internal GPUs only. If they continue to support 3rd party eGPUs, they wouldn't need to make their own.
The Mac Pro would be an unusual model for Apple Silicon because if they use PCIe GPUs, they don't need to have an integrated GPU and they'd run into issues with switching graphics drivers. The moves Apple made with the Mac Pro looked like they were in preparation for discontinuing it and they made it due to getting some pushback. If they planned to continue using the form factor, it would need them to support PCIe GPUs and they'd be replacing the CPU and motherboard. (2)
I think the iMac (Pro) form factor is much more suited to Apple Silicon and they can make an iMac model that competes with the Mac Pro on performance and leave the Mac Pro on Intel.
The priority with Apple Silicon is the laptops, that's over 80% of their Mac audience and mostly the Air and 13" Pro. (3) Some rumors have suggested going back to a fanless design Macbook but that limits them to a 5-7W power profile. The Air can go up to 15W and the magic/scissor keyboard is a better keyboard as well as the larger display and more USB ports. (3)
They could easily have a single 13"/14" model. The main reason they have more models is they are buying chips from Intel at different power profiles. Apple can design a single chip to do what they want. There wouldn't be much reason for them to sell a 16" model with multiple GPUs because they aren't buying the GPUs from a 3rd party. They'd have to manufacturer different chips to do that. I could see them simplifying the laptop lineup to a single 14" in an Air design and a single 16" and then charging for the RAM and storage. (4)
iPad Pro can be 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU 7W (1-2TFLOP) Macbook 14" 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU 15-25W (4TFLOP) Macbook Pro 16" 20-core CPU, 32-core GPU 30-60W (8TFLOP) iMac 36-core CPU, 64-core GPU 60-100W (16TFLOP) An iMac Pro can go up to 500W.
Current GPUs can do around 100GFLOPs/Watt on 7nm, if Apple can go up 50% on 5nm to 150GFLOPs/Watt, that's a huge amount of performance at lower power levels. It doesn't seem like there would be much need for higher than a standard iMac. The Mac Pro supports up to 56TFLOPs of GPU compute but, assuming 3rd party eGPUs, a couple of 20TFLOP GPUs connected to an iMac gets there at a fraction of the price.
1). Right, so the situation that's most likely will be proprietary eGPUs. That sounds crazy since they never build such things, but that's the only way to get faster graphics on an ASi MacBook. The guy also suggests the ASi to have their own peripherial bus for the job, that we'll see.
2). That actually reminds me. Come to think about, most Mac workstations since Steve Jobs have a modular CPU design: So pretty much every design with the exception of G3? and current release. There were also rumors suggested the Mac Pro to be modular, too. It could make sense to have a motherboard that's just connections, while leaving processors and GPUs to be independent, all component can be swapped and upgrade with ease. I don't worry too much about stolen IP (if you're wondering), consider they'll most likely integrated the Secure Enclave inside the SoC.
3). We can actually see that just on Steam's database: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ In fact, 8-Core CPUs makes up only 4% of Mac's user base, where as 2-Core and 4-Core combined to be 80%. That suggests me even the 16-inch is a small minority by comparison. (I also believe the 16" is st least faster than 70%~80% of the computers right now. It used to be higher for sure so there's a need to bump up the spec.) These were based on gamers for sure, but does give us what should we expect.
As for the MacBook Air, all I can say is that at least there's no throttle in A12X/Z's CPU (the larger iPad Pro), even running it with stress tests, that I believe is 15 Watts.
4). That's just some example, I personally have no clue how they'll meet their customer's demand. I do think the current line-up is still bit of a mess as there are two 13" Pro at the same time. I was hoping something similar like late 90s where only two models available (maybe three, I think that's fine).
The eGPU situation on Apple Silicon is not very clear. It would be unusual for Apple to make external GPUs and that's probably the least likely scenario because it's the hardest one for Apple. The easiest is no eGPU support. We know they will support Thunderbolt so at least hardware-level support is there but the reason eGPUs are currently supported is that there are drivers available due to Apple supporting AMD internally on Intel Macs. Once there are no internally supported 3rd party GPUs, who writes the drivers? AMD/NVidia would be unlikely to write drivers for the eGPU market alone, especially with Apple locking down kernel extensions.
I think it would be nice if Apple did make eGPUs because they'd run really quiet like the Blackmagic ones and it would be guaranteed that software built for Apple Silicon Macs would run properly (Metal etc) but I think the route Apple will go with these machines is make the internal GPUs as fast as possible so that people won't feel the need to use an eGPU.
If someone has a 5600m Macbook Pro (5TFLOP), there's not much need for an eGPU. The Vega 56 Blackmagic eGPU was 10TFLOPs so would still offer a boost but if the internal GPUs on 5nm are 50% faster than the AMD ones, it's getting pretty close to higher-end eGPU speed internally without the hassle of the external unit.
For modularity, I think Apple will stick to being more locked down. The soldered SSD in the recent iMac indicates this. (1)
Regarding the lineup, simplifying it to fewer models would make sense in light of their in-house manufacturing because an upgraded model would mean manufacturing another chip. However, not having upgrades means they can't do much to upsell models. What manufacturers sometimes do is manufacture batches of the same chips and either disable cores or change the clock speeds. The GPU would be the best way to differentiate the models so either change the number of cores, disable some or change the clock speeds.
Entry 14" Macbook 3TFLOP ($899), upgraded model 4TFLOP ($1299). 16" MBP entry 6TFLOP ($1999), upgraded model 8TFLOP ($2399). Then the memory and SSD fills out the rest of the price range up to a max of around $5399 for 64GB RAM and 8TB SSD.
Using non-volatile memory like XPoint would be good for having large affordable memory capacity. This would suit the iMac, especially if they wanted to solder the memory in:
This way 128/256GB of RAM would cost closer to a premium SSD at that capacity and could be an option on the laptops. It's slower than RAM but data can be quickly shuffled in/out of fast memory. Having a tiered memory system would offer the most affordable setup, for example, have really fast low capacity GPU memory, this can run around 1-2TB/s and only needs to be a few GB. Then lower cost system memory up to 32-64GB around 300GB/s. Then even lower cost non-volatile memory up to 1TB capacity around 20GB/s. Finally SSD storage up to 8TB capacity around 3GB/s.
I think the biggest reason to go external is flexibility, maybe more so than performance. You can share the external drive across your devices while being potentially faster than a single stick (RAID inside a laptop/desktop don't always mean faster). It's still better to have bigger drives inside but that requirement will be getting smaller.
If that's true for SSD, I don't see how eGPU is less important. Laptops don't always have the luxury to upgrade for years, even if they do, the power consumption might change. iGPUs could be fast for the time but always struggle after three or four years, that's not really for an SSD (think how Many people still using SATA III).
In fact, the best "upgrade" for your laptop IMO is GPU performance:
1). Mobile CPU sockets usually lasts two generations (and now doubling down with BGA). 2). RAM is bound by either chipset or the CPU. 3). SSD is limited by the chipset & easy to maxed out.
I don't think lockdown just for the sake of it is the answer, but who knows, the future we know is still largely in blank.
I see a few on my Twitter trend quit using Macs after the news of ASi, with the only concern being Apple would lockdown the system, making it an larger iPad. He used to do professional graphics on his 15" in spare time.
While I don't think we'll see Apple went that far (bottom line: make macOS behaves like iOS/iPadOS), I'd say having flexibility is important for personal computers. Killing external PCIe while locking everything inside isn't the way to go. I can have the excuse that laptops couldn't be upgrade like desktops, but being non-curated is one biggest difference between it to an iPad (more than performance, I'd say).
I see a few on my Twitter trend quit using Macs after the news of ASi, with the only concern being Apple would lockdown the system, making it an larger iPad. He used to do professional graphics on his 15" in spare time.
While I don't think we'll see Apple went that far (bottom line: make macOS behaves like iOS/iPadOS), I'd say having flexibility is important for personal computers. Killing external PCIe while locking everything inside isn't the way to go. I can have the excuse that laptops couldn't be upgrade like desktops, but being non-curated is one biggest difference between it to an iPad (more than performance, I'd say).
If they actually quit because of an assumption they're largely wrong about, that's pretty stupid.
There will be external PCIe, it's called Thunderbolt and we know it's supported.
Comments
The Mac Pro would be an unusual model for Apple Silicon because if they use PCIe GPUs, they don't need to have an integrated GPU and they'd run into issues with switching graphics drivers. The moves Apple made with the Mac Pro looked like they were in preparation for discontinuing it and they made it due to getting some pushback. If they planned to continue using the form factor, it would need them to support PCIe GPUs and they'd be replacing the CPU and motherboard.
I think the iMac (Pro) form factor is much more suited to Apple Silicon and they can make an iMac model that competes with the Mac Pro on performance and leave the Mac Pro on Intel.
The priority with Apple Silicon is the laptops, that's over 80% of their Mac audience and mostly the Air and 13" Pro. Some rumors have suggested going back to a fanless design Macbook but that limits them to a 5-7W power profile. The Air can go up to 15W and the magic/scissor keyboard is a better keyboard as well as the larger display and more USB ports.
They could easily have a single 13"/14" model. The main reason they have more models is they are buying chips from Intel at different power profiles. Apple can design a single chip to do what they want. There wouldn't be much reason for them to sell a 16" model with multiple GPUs because they aren't buying the GPUs from a 3rd party. They'd have to manufacturer different chips to do that. I could see them simplifying the laptop lineup to a single 14" in an Air design and a single 16" and then charging for the RAM and storage.
iPad Pro can be 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU 7W (1-2TFLOP)
Macbook 14" 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU 15-25W (4TFLOP)
Macbook Pro 16" 20-core CPU, 32-core GPU 30-60W (8TFLOP)
iMac 36-core CPU, 64-core GPU 60-100W (16TFLOP)
An iMac Pro can go up to 500W.
Current GPUs can do around 100GFLOPs/Watt on 7nm, if Apple can go up 50% on 5nm to 150GFLOPs/Watt, that's a huge amount of performance at lower power levels. It doesn't seem like there would be much need for higher than a standard iMac. The Mac Pro supports up to 56TFLOPs of GPU compute but, assuming 3rd party eGPUs, a couple of 20TFLOP GPUs connected to an iMac gets there at a fraction of the price.
1). Right, so the situation that's most likely will be proprietary eGPUs. That sounds crazy since they never build such things, but that's the only way to get faster graphics on an ASi MacBook. The guy also suggests the ASi to have their own peripherial bus for the job, that we'll see.
2). That actually reminds me. Come to think about, most Mac workstations since Steve Jobs have a modular CPU design:
So pretty much every design with the exception of G3? and current release.
There were also rumors suggested the Mac Pro to be modular, too. It could make sense to have a motherboard that's just connections, while leaving processors and GPUs to be independent, all component can be swapped and upgrade with ease.
I don't worry too much about stolen IP (if you're wondering), consider they'll most likely integrated the Secure Enclave inside the SoC.
3). We can actually see that just on Steam's database:
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
In fact, 8-Core CPUs makes up only 4% of Mac's user base, where as 2-Core and 4-Core combined to be 80%. That suggests me even the 16-inch is a small minority by comparison.
(I also believe the 16" is st least faster than 70%~80% of the computers right now. It used to be higher for sure so there's a need to bump up the spec.)
These were based on gamers for sure, but does give us what should we expect.
As for the MacBook Air, all I can say is that at least there's no throttle in A12X/Z's CPU (the larger iPad Pro), even running it with stress tests, that I believe is 15 Watts.
4). That's just some example, I personally have no clue how they'll meet their customer's demand. I do think the current line-up is still bit of a mess as there are two 13" Pro at the same time. I was hoping something similar like late 90s where only two models available (maybe three, I think that's fine).
I think it would be nice if Apple did make eGPUs because they'd run really quiet like the Blackmagic ones and it would be guaranteed that software built for Apple Silicon Macs would run properly (Metal etc) but I think the route Apple will go with these machines is make the internal GPUs as fast as possible so that people won't feel the need to use an eGPU.
If someone has a 5600m Macbook Pro (5TFLOP), there's not much need for an eGPU. The Vega 56 Blackmagic eGPU was 10TFLOPs so would still offer a boost but if the internal GPUs on 5nm are 50% faster than the AMD ones, it's getting pretty close to higher-end eGPU speed internally without the hassle of the external unit.
For modularity, I think Apple will stick to being more locked down. The soldered SSD in the recent iMac indicates this.
Regarding the lineup, simplifying it to fewer models would make sense in light of their in-house manufacturing because an upgraded model would mean manufacturing another chip. However, not having upgrades means they can't do much to upsell models. What manufacturers sometimes do is manufacture batches of the same chips and either disable cores or change the clock speeds. The GPU would be the best way to differentiate the models so either change the number of cores, disable some or change the clock speeds.
Entry 14" Macbook 3TFLOP ($899), upgraded model 4TFLOP ($1299). 16" MBP entry 6TFLOP ($1999), upgraded model 8TFLOP ($2399). Then the memory and SSD fills out the rest of the price range up to a max of around $5399 for 64GB RAM and 8TB SSD.
Using non-volatile memory like XPoint would be good for having large affordable memory capacity. This would suit the iMac, especially if they wanted to solder the memory in:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-annual-report-indicates-second-gen-3d-xpoint-might-be-delayed-until-2021
This way 128/256GB of RAM would cost closer to a premium SSD at that capacity and could be an option on the laptops. It's slower than RAM but data can be quickly shuffled in/out of fast memory. Having a tiered memory system would offer the most affordable setup, for example, have really fast low capacity GPU memory, this can run around 1-2TB/s and only needs to be a few GB. Then lower cost system memory up to 32-64GB around 300GB/s. Then even lower cost non-volatile memory up to 1TB capacity around 20GB/s. Finally SSD storage up to 8TB capacity around 3GB/s.
If that's true for SSD, I don't see how eGPU is less important. Laptops don't always have the luxury to upgrade for years, even if they do, the power consumption might change. iGPUs could be fast for the time but always struggle after three or four years, that's not really for an SSD (think how Many people still using SATA III).
In fact, the best "upgrade" for your laptop IMO is GPU performance:
1). Mobile CPU sockets usually lasts two generations (and now doubling down with BGA).
2). RAM is bound by either chipset or the CPU.
3). SSD is limited by the chipset & easy to maxed out.
I don't think lockdown just for the sake of it is the answer, but who knows, the future we know is still largely in blank.
While I don't think we'll see Apple went that far (bottom line: make macOS behaves like iOS/iPadOS), I'd say having flexibility is important for personal computers. Killing external PCIe while locking everything inside isn't the way to go. I can have the excuse that laptops couldn't be upgrade like desktops, but being non-curated is one biggest difference between it to an iPad (more than performance, I'd say).
There will be external PCIe, it's called Thunderbolt and we know it's supported.