I'm guessing no internal GPU expansion. Thunderbolt handicapped mid range GPU performance let alone high end ones, and Thunderbolt 2 actually has the same aggregate bandwidth, 2x10 and 2x10 up and down vs 1x20 up and down, 40Gb/s each, mind the little B. PCI-E is still way ahead.
Yeah Phil slipped up a bit, he sounded pretty excited to be unveiling this but they're all on good form today.
6x Thunderbolt 2 ports 20Gbps each - I think he said 3 controllers. 4x USB. Dual ethernet.
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.
The Pixar and Foundry demos are a nice touch, I wonder if they'll have OpenCL optimized versions of Renderman and Nuke.
Looks like internal storage is also a victim here.
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.
Looks like internal storage is also a victim here. Not sure if traditional pros that might also use PCI cards will be happy. At least it has the performance and latest chips!
Huge internal storage is not the future.
Also, external Thunderbolt RAID storage is more reliable and just as fast.
Looks like internal storage is also a victim here. Not sure if traditional pros that might also use PCI cards will be happy. At least it has the performance and latest chips!
Yep. My favorite part of my last G5 desktop was that it didn't require an external PCI cage for the cards nor keeping external drives at hand for working storage.
This means pretty much as much spaghetti as using a laptop, with the advantage that you can keep it out of site and not feel like you're wasting a display and keyboard. Oh well.
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.
Also, external Thunderbolt RAID storage is more reliable and just as fast.
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
Are you sure about that on 10.9? I wouldn't make such claims.
In practice, external RAIDs work fantastically.
You're acting like internal storage is reliable. You know how many HDDs I've had to replace over the years?
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
I don't think RAID and SMART belong in the same sentence. RAID provides the redundancy, so individual drives can be run to failure. SMART is about predicting failure before it happens.
If only they scaled it up 3:2 and allowed one to plug-n-play different GPGPU daughter cards. I'd love to purchase a separate daughter card that had non-FirePro GPGPU dual Processors on it to swap in and out for different needs. Or a separate daughter card to add 2 additional GPGPUs and let the OS manage their computing via OS X and activate them for OpenCL/OpenGL on the fly. That would have allowed a new definition of plug-n-play and expansion.
All storage expansion via Thunderbolt 2 for any serious performance is nauseating.
Cost just went through the roof.
It's possible that it could help push less expensive options.
It would have been nice to have an nVidia option, you need nVidia for certain tasks.
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
Is it possible to do SMART over any external device save for maybe eSATA?
Given that Thunderbolt is PCIe, I think it could support SMART because it would be a SATA chip on PCIe.
That said, the number of times SMART saved my bacon on any computer was zero.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
Great cards for specific market segment. Still highly expensive.
The machine is a great machine for a specific market segment and is highly expensive.
Just saying...
I'm guessing no internal GPU expansion. Thunderbolt handicapped mid range GPU performance let alone high end ones, and Thunderbolt 2 actually has the same aggregate bandwidth, 2x10 and 2x10 up and down vs 1x20 up and down, 40Gb/s each, mind the little B. PCI-E is still way ahead.
Yeah Phil slipped up a bit, he sounded pretty excited to be unveiling this but they're all on good form today.
6x Thunderbolt 2 ports 20Gbps each - I think he said 3 controllers. 4x USB. Dual ethernet.
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by s.metcalf
Looks like internal storage is also a victim here. Not sure if traditional pros that might also use PCI cards will be happy. At least it has the performance and latest chips!
Huge internal storage is not the future.
Also, external Thunderbolt RAID storage is more reliable and just as fast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pendergast
Why does it need to be bigger?
No, it's "Why does it have to be smaller?" It goes under the desk. It shouldn't have any nods to portability, we have other machines for that.
Did they put the ports so close to each other that you can't use two adjacent ones?
Quote:
Originally Posted by s.metcalf
Looks like internal storage is also a victim here. Not sure if traditional pros that might also use PCI cards will be happy. At least it has the performance and latest chips!
Yep. My favorite part of my last G5 desktop was that it didn't require an external PCI cage for the cards nor keeping external drives at hand for working storage.
This means pretty much as much spaghetti as using a laptop, with the advantage that you can keep it out of site and not feel like you're wasting a display and keyboard. Oh well.
Love the specs/concept though. Hopefully will be able to afford it when it hits the market.
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.
Quote:
Also, external Thunderbolt RAID storage is more reliable and just as fast.
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davida
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
Are you sure about that on 10.9? I wouldn't make such claims.
In practice, external RAIDs work fantastically.
You're acting like internal storage is reliable. You know how many HDDs I've had to replace over the years?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Fix
Apple once again proving they hate professionals.
Maybe you're stuck in the past, hmm?
People are never happy.
The Mac Pro reminds me of a 21st century SGI O2 in a Beer can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davida
All external storage on Macs is less reliable, because MacOS doesn't support SMART reporting except for motherboard SATA connections and SATA on PCIe cards.
I don't think RAID and SMART belong in the same sentence. RAID provides the redundancy, so individual drives can be run to failure. SMART is about predicting failure before it happens.
I want.
Am soooo looking forward to the actual introduction when we will find out a lot more about this beast.
It's possible that it could help push less expensive options.
It would have been nice to have an nVidia option, you need nVidia for certain tasks.
Is it possible to do SMART over any external device save for maybe eSATA?
Given that Thunderbolt is PCIe, I think it could support SMART because it would be a SATA chip on PCIe.
That said, the number of times SMART saved my bacon on any computer was zero.