Mac Pro will never have the upgrade cycles of Mac Book Pro's or iMac; the market isn't large enough to justify it.
Yes, the amount of money Apple makes on professional users isn't enough for them to give two turds about that market. Professionals users don't like to buy expensive deposable computers every couple of years and that is what butters Apple's bread these days.
Using both of these reasonings, Apple should just dump the Mac Pro and probably the Mac entirely.
On the other hand, the Mac was nearly Apple's entire business in the not-too-distant past. So you can't tell me they can't devote the resources if they wanted to. Sure, it's small compared to the iPhone, but that doesn't make it unimportant.
With that said, ever since Apple nixed the Xserve RAID, I've had a bad feeling about the demise of the pro Apple market. If you look at the number of pro products they have cut or sidelined in the last 8 years, it's pretty staggering. The Xserve and Xserve RAID, nearly their entire Pro media software (Shake, Soundtrack Pro, Aperature, etc) relegating the Mac Pro to a "hobby", not updating their stand alone monitors, making the server tools an app and leaving them buggy...
This is a very bad track record. It clearly shows they have no commitment to the professional market. And even worse, I believe it's a sign that the Mac will be sidelined in its entirety at some point in the future. What I don't understand is the short-sightedness of this paradigm shift. Don't they want iOS apps to be made on Macs (including the media within the app)? If for only that reason, you would think they would make it a bigger priority.
Talk about a mind filled with negativity.
First off Intel does update its pro hardware like it does the mainstream processor lines. As such it makes no sense at all for Apple to try to enforce a one year update cycle. In fact if you look at when parts become available to make a worthwhile Mac Pro update you can get an idea of when Apple will release a new machine. By the way it isn't just the Intel processor that needs to be updated.
As for XServe, get real, they barely sold any of those, The pro market rejected the platform for low cost Linux machines. Apple stopped production because pros had rejected the line.
As for software it is probably in Apples best interests to leave that to third parties anyways. The third party pro software market is pretty strong in Apples ecosystem so no harm has been done.
Using both of these reasonings, Apple should just dump the Mac Pro and probably the Mac entirely.
On the other hand, the Mac was nearly Apple's entire business in the not-too-distant past. So you can't tell me they can't devote the resources if they wanted to. Sure, it's small compared to the iPhone, but that doesn't make it unimportant.
With that said, ever since Apple nixed the Xserve RAID, I've had a bad feeling about the demise of the pro Apple market. If you look at the number of pro products they have cut or sidelined in the last 8 years, it's pretty staggering. The Xserve and Xserve RAID, nearly their entire Pro media software (Shake, Soundtrack Pro, Aperature, etc) relegating the Mac Pro to a "hobby", not updating their stand alone monitors, making the server tools an app and leaving them buggy...
This is a very bad track record. It clearly shows they have no commitment to the professional market. And even worse, I believe it's a sign that the Mac will be sidelined in its entirety at some point in the future. What I don't understand is the short-sightedness of this paradigm shift. Don't they want iOS apps to be made on Macs (including the media within the app)? If for only that reason, you would think they would make it a bigger priority.
Talk about a mind filled with negativity.
First off Intel does update its pro hardware like it does the mainstream processor lines. As such it makes no sense at all for Apple to try to enforce a one year update cycle. In fact if you look at when parts become available to make a worthwhile Mac Pro update you can get an idea of when Apple will release a new machine. By the way it isn't just the Intel processor that needs to be updated.
As for XServe, get real, they barely sold any of those, The pro market rejected the platform for low cost Linux machines. Apple stopped production because pros had rejected the line.
As for software it is probably in Apples best interests to leave that to third parties anyways. The third party pro software market is pretty strong in Apples ecosystem so no harm has been done.
apple needed to have there server os be able to run in a VM on any hardware (legally and with out Hackintosh work around) There use the mac pro as a server was a joke and they cut the mini down making the mac mini server go away.
Talk about a mind filled with negativity.
First off Intel does update its pro hardware like it does the mainstream processor lines. As such it makes no sense at all for Apple to try to enforce a one year update cycle. In fact if you look at when parts become available to make a worthwhile Mac Pro update you can get an idea of when Apple will release a new machine. By the way it isn't just the Intel processor that needs to be updated.
As for XServe, get real, they barely sold any of those, The pro market rejected the platform for low cost Linux machines. Apple stopped production because pros had rejected the line.
As for software it is probably in Apples best interests to leave that to third parties anyways. The third party pro software market is pretty strong in Apples ecosystem so no harm has been done.
apple needed to have there server os be able to run in a VM on any hardware (legally and with out Hackintosh work around) There use the mac pro as a server was a joke and they cut the mini down making the mac mini server go away.
I think Apple realized that these days real server duties are taken on by Linux based servers no matter who you are. With no real success with XServe Apple had no choice but to drop the line.
We we need to think about this a bit because if no one wants to buy your product having it on the market is a bit senseless. Right now a good portion of the entire internet runs on Linux based servers and is the preferred server operating system at a massive number of large tech firms. That is the way the server world evolved, leaving no market for a Mac based server.
As as for the Mini there is nothing really to keep it from being a server today, at least for extremely light duty work, but with the internal power supply I'd have to say it is less than optimal. What made the Mini so useful as a server was that it was a neat module that you could plug in incrementally and service easily. Since power supply failures as a big portion of all failures with respect to servers, the external supply made for easy servicing. Now it isn't so easy.
Beyond all of that modern servers are multicore wonders. Modern chips can have as many as 48 cores in them, which places the Mini at a huge disadvantage when it comes to servicing modern server needs. I just don't believe people whining about XServe really understand what the modern server world is like.
The Xeon E5 v4 slides may be outdated, the latest slide point to 22 Core Max.
3DS RDIMM support up to 256GB DDR4 on 4 Channel. And if Apple really want to push it, there is samsung recently announced 128GB per RDIMM module. Pushing the Max Memory to 512GB. The current Max Memory on Mac Pro offered by Apple is only 64GB, which is very little for professional.
Current Mac Pro SSD only goes up to 1GB/s. Based on PCI-E 2.0 x4. This is rather slow as even a latest Macbook Pro could out run it. With PCI-E 3.0 there is no reason why Apple can't push this to at least 2.5GB/s. The fastest on the market right now 3.3GB/s
There will definitely be Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1, and 2x 10Gbps Ethernet.
AMD has yet to have their Gfx switch to 16nm. Since today's GPU performance are either limited by Software ( drivers ) or Nodes. Which means the new Mac Pro will likely not get much of Gfx Improvement. May be GPU gets more Gfx Memory for the same price, but from a GPU core performance predictive there aren't much headroom. ( Or they could surprise us with Nvidia Quadro or Intel Knight Landing........ )
I still remember there was an article on MacRumors saying how limited the Mac Pro is. But what they fail to realise if how the Mac Pro could be down the road. It's main complain are most likely be solved with next Gen.
I could only wish there something could be done on the GPU side of things, may be Apple will have their own GPU ( PowerVR based ) design from 16nm.
Assuming Apple don't be stingy. This next Mac Pro will likely last for a very very long time. PCI-E 4.0 isn't coming out till 2018, Intel 10nm on workstation or Server will likely be 2019 as well. Next Gen Thunderbolt will likely be optical based as Intel has state, and will take a long time to get it to an acceptable price point. 25Gbps / 50 Gbps Ethernet are still in draft stage. But those are for Top of the Rack exchange rather then Server Port. So really apart from GPU, there isn't lot could be done in the next 3 years.
Edit: Assuming Apple could solve / further enhance the Heat Dissipation, there is no reason why Apple can't fit 2 CPU inside a Mac Pro instead of the current 1 CPU only. So to write the script for Apple, they could provide another Mac Pro update in 2018 with 2x CPU, even more extension port, as currently it is limited by its PCI lane. And a 16nm GPU update to provide 2x improvement in both CPU and GPU. Then 2020 will be an 10nm upgrade cycle along side with other things.
It’ll be 2050 before you give this nonsense up, won’t it?
What's nonsense about having a real pro machine with choice?
Not updating the pro machine for three years is now "innovation"?!?
I'm simply flabbergasted that the company that popularized the graphical user interface and many of the apps that still, even today, benefit from robust discrete graphics is offering the most pathetic and anemic lineup of machines that when discrete graphics are offered, they completely suck.
And no, @Marvin I don't care about CPU choice. AMD hasn't been a high end competitor to Intel for some time now, sadly. CPU isn't the problem. GPUs wouldn't be a problem either if the stupid "Pro" machine had at least one slot!
P.S. To those griping about AMD over Nvidia GPUs.. t
I'm griping that I used to be able to pick my GPU and change vendors as my needs change. When you pick an already less than cutting edge GPU, embed it in a fixed way and then let the whole machine stagnate for years you end up with what we have now - a ridiculously overpriced Mac Pro that is shamefully outdated.
P.S. To those griping about AMD over Nvidia GPUs.. t
I'm griping that I used to be able to pick my GPU and change vendors as my needs change. When you pick an already less than cutting edge GPU, embed it in a fixed way and then let the whole machine stagnate for years you end up with what we have now - a ridiculously overpriced Mac Pro that is shamefully outdated.
It isn't the out dated!!! Frankly I don't think a new rev is that far away. AMD has its die shrunk GPU's out now so that is good. Soon AMD will have their "Pro" GPU hardware updated. All the parts are falling in place for a worthwhile update.
Right now though it simply isn't worth anybodies time to update the Mac Pro while the available hardware would only give a trivial improvement.
Not updating the pro machine for three years is now "innovation"?!?
I'm simply flabbergasted that the company that popularized the graphical user interface and many of the apps that still, even today, benefit from robust discrete graphics is offering the most pathetic and anemic lineup of machines that when discrete graphics are offered, they completely suck.
And no, @Marvin I don't care about CPU choice. AMD hasn't been a high end competitor to Intel for some time now, sadly. CPU isn't the problem. GPUs wouldn't be a problem either if the stupid "Pro" machine had at least one slot!
I'm griping that I used to be able to pick my GPU and change vendors as my needs change. When you pick an already less than cutting edge GPU, embed it in a fixed way and then let the whole machine stagnate for years you end up with what we have now - a ridiculously overpriced Mac Pro that is shamefully outdated.
The Mac Pro is at the end of its refresh cycle so of course it looks bad now, every Mac looks its worst the day before it gets a refresh.
If the machine had one slot then you couldn't fit dual high-end cards in it. It needs two to have a smooth UI while doing computing tasks.
There's a page listing the new E5 CPU dated about 3 weeks ago:
AMD's next GPUs aren't out yet. TSMC gave NVidia priority and they are shipping their 1080s out. AMD's GPU will ship late June/July. They announced a new FirePro model a couple of weeks ago:
That won't be what Apple uses but whatever they do use will likely double the performance of the last ones, possibly a bit more.
The long update cycles are annoying but they are going to keep getting worse the more that the PC industry slows down. 3 year upgrade cycles will become the norm for major improvements in any of the PC product lines. The next Mac Pro refresh after the upcoming one won't be until 2019.
Intel will only be improving their CPUs by 50% after 3 years so there's no CPUs worth upgrading to in between. Apple could have bumped the GPUs up sometime in 2015 to a Fiji GPU. The ones Apple uses are Tahiti, after which there was Hawaii (2014), Fiji (2015) and Polaris is due in a couple of weeks. The above FirePro is based on Fiji so Apple probably just skipped a single generation. NVidia's Quadros are still on Maxwell.
The D700 GPUs were powerful GPUs at launch, they are close to a 780ti when used together:
A 2015 refresh could have used something that performed like a dual R9 290. Instead it will jump much higher. That's a problem if people really need to update between mid-cycle and the next but it's ok if they buy close to the refresh cycle.
The upcoming refresh is going to be a decent upgrade: up to 18-core up to 512GB RAM GPUs could be 50% faster than a single NVidia 1080 3GB/s SSD 6xTB3 ports
There's hoping. Just as possible that the nMP won't be refreshed for another six months and nobody is ever going to buy one again.
I'm still of the opinion that people giving up on the Mac Pro due to a lack of an update on their schedule are woefully uninformed! Every time I see a post I swear the poster hasn't check on chip availability or any supposed performance gains to be had. Apple will ship. Anew Mac Pro when the hardware is ready and no sooner.
There's hoping. Just as possible that the nMP won't be refreshed for another six months and nobody is ever going to buy one again.
I'm still of the opinion that people giving up on the Mac Pro due to a lack of an update on their schedule are woefully uninformed! Every time I see a post I swear the poster hasn't check on chip availability or any supposed performance gains to be had. Apple will ship. Anew Mac Pro when the hardware is ready and no sooner.
I'm still of the opinion that people giving up on the Mac Pro due to a lack of an update on their schedule are woefully uninformed! Every time I see a post I swear the poster hasn't check on chip availability or any supposed performance gains to be had. Apple will ship. Anew Mac Pro when the hardware is ready and no sooner.
You are right...2023.
You do realize that Intel has been real slow with hardware releases and further that neither AMD nor Nvidia have shipped suitable Mac Pro upgrade cards yet.
You do realize that Intel has been real slow with hardware releases and further that neither AMD nor Nvidia have shipped suitable Mac Pro upgrade cards yet.
At this point the only reason Moore’s Law is projected to be “finished” ten years from now is they keep fucking delaying their chip releases. If they had followed their original schedule we’d be in big trouble right about now.
I take that back. While the 2000 range CPUs are designed for dual processor motherboards, it looks like the 12 core Mac Pro uses the E5-2697.
The 4-8 core Mac Pros use the 1xxx range processors.
I think that Apple chooses the 2xxx as they have QPI instead of a frontside bus for memory that the 1xxx has, but QPI would also be an advantage for GPGPU's I would think.
Neither type uses frontside bus. That was phased out some time ago. You probably read a very old article somewhere. The only reason Apple uses 26xx on some models is that that they have a higher maximum core count. If you could get something equivalent in an E5 16** version, Apple would use those instead.
Comments
We we need to think about this a bit because if no one wants to buy your product having it on the market is a bit senseless. Right now a good portion of the entire internet runs on Linux based servers and is the preferred server operating system at a massive number of large tech firms. That is the way the server world evolved, leaving no market for a Mac based server.
As as for the Mini there is nothing really to keep it from being a server today, at least for extremely light duty work, but with the internal power supply I'd have to say it is less than optimal. What made the Mini so useful as a server was that it was a neat module that you could plug in incrementally and service easily. Since power supply failures as a big portion of all failures with respect to servers, the external supply made for easy servicing. Now it isn't so easy.
Beyond all of that modern servers are multicore wonders. Modern chips can have as many as 48 cores in them, which places the Mini at a huge disadvantage when it comes to servicing modern server needs. I just don't believe people whining about XServe really understand what the modern server world is like.
3DS RDIMM support up to 256GB DDR4 on 4 Channel. And if Apple really want to push it, there is samsung recently announced 128GB per RDIMM module. Pushing the Max Memory to 512GB. The current Max Memory on Mac Pro offered by Apple is only 64GB, which is very little for professional.
Current Mac Pro SSD only goes up to 1GB/s. Based on PCI-E 2.0 x4. This is rather slow as even a latest Macbook Pro could out run it. With PCI-E 3.0 there is no reason why Apple can't push this to at least 2.5GB/s. The fastest on the market right now 3.3GB/s
There will definitely be Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1, and 2x 10Gbps Ethernet.
AMD has yet to have their Gfx switch to 16nm. Since today's GPU performance are either limited by Software ( drivers ) or Nodes. Which means the new Mac Pro will likely not get much of Gfx Improvement. May be GPU gets more Gfx Memory for the same price, but from a GPU core performance predictive there aren't much headroom.
( Or they could surprise us with Nvidia Quadro or Intel Knight Landing........ )
I still remember there was an article on MacRumors saying how limited the Mac Pro is. But what they fail to realise if how the Mac Pro could be down the road. It's main complain are most likely be solved with next Gen.
I could only wish there something could be done on the GPU side of things, may be Apple will have their own GPU ( PowerVR based ) design from 16nm.
Assuming Apple don't be stingy. This next Mac Pro will likely last for a very very long time. PCI-E 4.0 isn't coming out till 2018, Intel 10nm on workstation or Server will likely be 2019 as well. Next Gen Thunderbolt will likely be optical based as Intel has state, and will take a long time to get it to an acceptable price point. 25Gbps / 50 Gbps Ethernet are still in draft stage. But those are for Top of the Rack exchange rather then Server Port. So really apart from GPU, there isn't lot could be done in the next 3 years.
Edit: Assuming Apple could solve / further enhance the Heat Dissipation, there is no reason why Apple can't fit 2 CPU inside a Mac Pro instead of the current 1 CPU only.
So to write the script for Apple, they could provide another Mac Pro update in 2018 with 2x CPU, even more extension port, as currently it is limited by its PCI lane. And a 16nm GPU update to provide 2x improvement in both CPU and GPU. Then 2020 will be an 10nm upgrade cycle along side with other things.
I'm simply flabbergasted that the company that popularized the graphical user interface and many of the apps that still, even today, benefit from robust discrete graphics is offering the most pathetic and anemic lineup of machines that when discrete graphics are offered, they completely suck.
And no, @Marvin I don't care about CPU choice. AMD hasn't been a high end competitor to Intel for some time now, sadly. CPU isn't the problem. GPUs wouldn't be a problem either if the stupid "Pro" machine had at least one slot!
I'm griping that I used to be able to pick my GPU and change vendors as my needs change. When you pick an already less than cutting edge GPU, embed it in a fixed way and then let the whole machine stagnate for years you end up with what we have now - a ridiculously overpriced Mac Pro that is shamefully outdated.
Right now though it simply isn't worth anybodies time to update the Mac Pro while the available hardware would only give a trivial improvement.
If the machine had one slot then you couldn't fit dual high-end cards in it. It needs two to have a smooth UI while doing computing tasks.
There's a page listing the new E5 CPU dated about 3 weeks ago:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117639
AMD's next GPUs aren't out yet. TSMC gave NVidia priority and they are shipping their 1080s out. AMD's GPU will ship late June/July. They announced a new FirePro model a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3050380/computer-hardware/amds-new-firepro-s9300-x2-is-its-latest-monster-gpu.html
That won't be what Apple uses but whatever they do use will likely double the performance of the last ones, possibly a bit more.
The long update cycles are annoying but they are going to keep getting worse the more that the PC industry slows down. 3 year upgrade cycles will become the norm for major improvements in any of the PC product lines. The next Mac Pro refresh after the upcoming one won't be until 2019.
Intel will only be improving their CPUs by 50% after 3 years so there's no CPUs worth upgrading to in between. Apple could have bumped the GPUs up sometime in 2015 to a Fiji GPU. The ones Apple uses are Tahiti, after which there was Hawaii (2014), Fiji (2015) and Polaris is due in a couple of weeks. The above FirePro is based on Fiji so Apple probably just skipped a single generation. NVidia's Quadros are still on Maxwell.
The D700 GPUs were powerful GPUs at launch, they are close to a 780ti when used together:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+980+Ti&id=3218
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/10
http://barefeats.com/gtx980d.html
A 2015 refresh could have used something that performed like a dual R9 290. Instead it will jump much higher. That's a problem if people really need to update between mid-cycle and the next but it's ok if they buy close to the refresh cycle.
The upcoming refresh is going to be a decent upgrade:
up to 18-core
up to 512GB RAM
GPUs could be 50% faster than a single NVidia 1080
3GB/s SSD
6xTB3 ports