OMG, PCIe slots? I think I'm hyperventilating. I hope it is true.
That would imply that now suddenly they solved all their indecisiveness around open vs. closed design, licensing vs. enforcing standards, configurability vs. non-configurability, disruptive vs. gradual innovation, form vs. function, Pro vs. capucchino Pro - and other intrinsic disparities they created themselves. Not gonna happen with this stalemate billionaire pensionado Board - unable to innovate their lower back-ends, for the major part of this decade.
apple is taking so long with this that it’s hard to imagine what they’re doing.
trying to come up with ways to lock the pro customers in without being obvious about it and giving them "modularity" without really allowing anything other than their custom made parts... at least that is what I think is happening behind the curtains. Otherwise why take so long? Just build a tower with modern parts, update macos so it supports a couple of new hardware and after 6 months you are ready to show it and probably ship it.
Apple couldn’t do what you’re suggesting. If Apple has a modular system, according to the courts, companies are allowed to build equipment to interface with it. There’s nothing Apple could do to prevent that. It also would be no point to it. With the “trash Can” Mac Pro, Apple explicitly made it so that third parties could (had to) interface with it. That’s not what killed it. In fact, many of us wanted Apple to made these external boxes, but they didn’t. Apple has a long history of leaving this to third parties.
that doesn’t mean that they won’t made their own plug-in modules, assuming that all the speculation about modules is correct. But if a third party wants to make them too, I don’t see Apple attempting to prevent it. They could ease the development, by publishing the hardware and software specs. Otherwise, third parties will have to do their own R&D about how to accomplish it. But that’s allowed, by law, if a company wants to expend the effort.
we see the same thing in the camera industry. Some camera manufacturers publish the specs for the mechanical and electronic portions of their mount (Sony), while others don’t (Canon), and yet others try to keep it a secret (Nikon). Yet, third party lines for all three platforms are available.
If companies think there’s a viable market, they will do it. The question is whether the market for a new Mac Pro would be big enough these days. I hope it will be. But only if Apple does it right, and shows that they will properly support it over time with regular upgrades, unlike what they’ve been doing with the trash can model.
I’m more interested in what that “X2 chip” is, I doubt it’s an ARM CPU.
I would add that the Mac Pro would get a T3 chip, they would want to shift more overhead off of the CPU/GPU. The idea of a master high speed data bus is what the X2 chip would be. In theory, put the X2 on the motherboard with the RAM, and the CPU/GPU units will run in parallel. The X2 would then open channel(s) to the processing units and dynamically change their tasks. Perhaps throw a bunch of NeuralCores on the X2 and let machine learning watch how you work, anticipate your next action, and eliminate human observed latency.
A Mac article, finally. Better late than never. I am very very tired by everything iPhone or iOS world. Though I won't be buying Mac Pro anytime soon as I recently plunged my cash on iMac Pro and on maxed out 2018 Mac mini (as music server), I will definitely read all the articles related to Mac Pro and the new monitor with all my heart.
I'm not the most qualified to speculate on authenticity of this leak, but the lack of any mention of storage is the main reason I think it's fake news (among other omissions). Also it looks ugly. And I can't see any air vents. Apple specifically cited air vent requirements as the main reason for changing the Mac Pro. Air rises. The gap at the bottom isn't large enough. And two/three prominent Apple logos? - I normally see only one per Mac It just doesn't smell right.
Considering the date of the presentation, one possibility (other than being a complete fake , is that is an internal presentation of a concept, not of an actual machine.
Thunderbolt 4: well, you know, we can be pretty sure there is somebody working on the future of Thunderbolt, and he is probably a colleague of the guy making the presentation, so i wouldn't consider this a reason to consider the presentation a fake.
apple is taking so long with this that it’s hard to imagine what they’re doing.
trying to come up with ways to lock the pro customers in without being obvious about it and giving them "modularity" without really allowing anything other than their custom made parts... at least that is what I think is happening behind the curtains. Otherwise why take so long? Just build a tower with modern parts, update macos so it supports a couple of new hardware and after 6 months you are ready to show it and probably ship it.
Apple couldn’t do what you’re suggesting. If Apple has a modular system, according to the courts, companies are allowed to build equipment to interface with it. There’s nothing Apple could do to prevent that. It also would be no point to it. With the “trash Can” Mac Pro, Apple explicitly made it so that third parties could (had to) interface with it. That’s not what killed it. In fact, many of us wanted Apple to made these external boxes, but they didn’t. Apple has a long history of leaving this to third parties.
that doesn’t mean that they won’t made their own plug-in modules, assuming that all the speculation about modules is correct. But if a third party wants to make them too, I don’t see Apple attempting to prevent it. They could ease the development, by publishing the hardware and software specs. Otherwise, third parties will have to do their own R&D about how to accomplish it. But that’s allowed, by law, if a company wants to expend the effort.
we see the same thing in the camera industry. Some camera manufacturers publish the specs for the mechanical and electronic portions of their mount (Sony), while others don’t (Canon), and yet others try to keep it a secret (Nikon). Yet, third party lines for all three platforms are available.
If companies think there’s a viable market, they will do it. The question is whether the market for a new Mac Pro would be big enough these days. I hope it will be. But only if Apple does it right, and shows that they will properly support it over time with regular upgrades, unlike what they’ve been doing with the trash can model.
I’m more interested in what that “X2 chip” is, I doubt it’s an ARM CPU.
To me, that’s a minor thing. I doubt Apple would put a fully functional SoC in the machine at this time.
apple is taking so long with this that it’s hard to imagine what they’re doing.
trying to come up with ways to lock the pro customers in without being obvious about it and giving them "modularity" without really allowing anything other than their custom made parts... at least that is what I think is happening behind the curtains. Otherwise why take so long? Just build a tower with modern parts, update macos so it supports a couple of new hardware and after 6 months you are ready to show it and probably ship it.
Apple couldn’t do what you’re suggesting. If Apple has a modular system, according to the courts, companies are allowed to build equipment to interface with it. There’s nothing Apple could do to prevent that. It also would be no point to it. With the “trash Can” Mac Pro, Apple explicitly made it so that third parties could (had to) interface with it. That’s not what killed it. In fact, many of us wanted Apple to made these external boxes, but they didn’t. Apple has a long history of leaving this to third parties.
that doesn’t mean that they won’t made their own plug-in modules, assuming that all the speculation about modules is correct. But if a third party wants to make them too, I don’t see Apple attempting to prevent it. They could ease the development, by publishing the hardware and software specs. Otherwise, third parties will have to do their own R&D about how to accomplish it. But that’s allowed, by law, if a company wants to expend the effort.
we see the same thing in the camera industry. Some camera manufacturers publish the specs for the mechanical and electronic portions of their mount (Sony), while others don’t (Canon), and yet others try to keep it a secret (Nikon). Yet, third party lines for all three platforms are available.
If companies think there’s a viable market, they will do it. The question is whether the market for a new Mac Pro would be big enough these days. I hope it will be. But only if Apple does it right, and shows that they will properly support it over time with regular upgrades, unlike what they’ve been doing with the trash can model.
you missunderstood me
with "their custom made parts" I didn't mean only Apple stuff but also third party addons etc. this is what I think they are doing..
building a proprietary interface for things that are already available in the standard pc world, or on the old cheesgrater for that matter..
then coming up with a fancy name for it and telling everyone the reason you did it is because they are superior/faster/more reliable than anything else on the planet and not because you want to lock your customers in
if I sound bitter it's because I was hoping for an apple workstation suitable for 3D, VFX and simulation workloads since before they did the trashcan, which if you tried to sim or render heavy stuff would choke on it's thermals and don't even get me started on the gpus in those...
now gpu rendering is the shit, threadripper is disrupting the intel dominated CPU world and everyone in my industry is abandoning apple because their lack of any support
i was forced to switch to a HP windows workstation and this new mac pro is my last hope to get back to where the grass used to be really green
1) PCIe v4 IS available, but not for the current line of Intel CPU's. It is available for example on POWER 9 & 10 chipsets. 2) DDR5 isn't even available in the custom/high-end server market, there are no DDR5 controllers available atm, Apple usually doesn't speculate on non-existant technology. 3) Apple has nothing leaked about an accelerator chip, and why junp straight to X2 instead of X or X1? The T2 chip already offers acceleration of decrypting drives. 4) Why would Apple use these advanced and not even commercially available specs... when it is designing high-end ARM CPU's to replace Intel chips? Why would they waste so much in design just to render it obsolete a few years later? This makes sense for MacBooks but not for the Mac Pro line of computers.
These specs, from someone who follows hardware closely, looks like one of those school yard discussions I had back in the day where we'd think up impossible specs for an upcomming video game system. Its just childish speculations.
If it wasnt an Intel Xeon, and maybe hinted at a custom ARM powered Pro, this would make a helluvah lot more sense, even though the DDR5 thing still throws it off, if they are designing their own ustom silicon then they would have more control about what technologies could be offered.
apple is taking so long with this that it’s hard to imagine what they’re doing.
trying to come up with ways to lock the pro customers in without being obvious about it and giving them "modularity" without really allowing anything other than their custom made parts... at least that is what I think is happening behind the curtains. Otherwise why take so long? Just build a tower with modern parts, update macos so it supports a couple of new hardware and after 6 months you are ready to show it and probably ship it.
Apple couldn’t do what you’re suggesting. If Apple has a modular system, according to the courts, companies are allowed to build equipment to interface with it. There’s nothing Apple could do to prevent that. It also would be no point to it. With the “trash Can” Mac Pro, Apple explicitly made it so that third parties could (had to) interface with it. That’s not what killed it. In fact, many of us wanted Apple to made these external boxes, but they didn’t. Apple has a long history of leaving this to third parties.
that doesn’t mean that they won’t made their own plug-in modules, assuming that all the speculation about modules is correct. But if a third party wants to make them too, I don’t see Apple attempting to prevent it. They could ease the development, by publishing the hardware and software specs. Otherwise, third parties will have to do their own R&D about how to accomplish it. But that’s allowed, by law, if a company wants to expend the effort.
we see the same thing in the camera industry. Some camera manufacturers publish the specs for the mechanical and electronic portions of their mount (Sony), while others don’t (Canon), and yet others try to keep it a secret (Nikon). Yet, third party lines for all three platforms are available.
If companies think there’s a viable market, they will do it. The question is whether the market for a new Mac Pro would be big enough these days. I hope it will be. But only if Apple does it right, and shows that they will properly support it over time with regular upgrades, unlike what they’ve been doing with the trash can model.
you missunderstood me
with "their custom made parts" I didn't mean only Apple stuff but also third party addons etc. this is what I think they are doing..
building a proprietary interface for things that are already available in the standard pc world, or on the old cheesgrater for that matter..
then coming up with a fancy name for it and telling everyone the reason you did it is because they are superior/faster/more reliable than anything else on the planet and not because you want to lock your customers in
if I sound bitter it's because I was hoping for an apple workstation suitable for 3D, VFX and simulation workloads since before they did the trashcan, which if you tried to sim or render heavy stuff would choke on it's thermals and don't even get me started on the gpus in those...
now gpu rendering is the shit, threadripper is disrupting the intel dominated CPU world and everyone in my industry is abandoning apple because their lack of any support
i was forced to switch to a HP windows workstation and this new mac pro is my last hope to get back to where the grass used to be really green
You can sound as bitter as you like. But I don’t think the strategy you stated is correct. Apple has no reason to do that. You’re also not giving a real reason why they would. History even shows that you’re wrong.
why did Apple come out with the 2013 Mac Pro? Was it to lock users into an Apple proprietary system? No, it wasn’t. Apple genuinely thought that what they were doing was better. They were wrong, but it took some time for it to sink in. Meanwhile, apple could have come out with their own external PCI boxes. But they didn’t. They totally left that to third parties via the TB connectors.
they could have come out with their own external GPU, but instead they convinced BlackMagic to do so, with a bit of technical help from Apple.
apple has no external drives, or much of anything. One would think that if they did, they would sell well. But there’s no evidence that Apple is interested.
so there’s no evidence that Apple is rubbing its collective hands together in anticipation of making all this money licensing a proprietary connection scheme. Really, even if they did, how much would they make? Very little. This is not going to sell in the millions each year. It may never even reach a million total, though I hope it does. This is true for the iMac Pro as well. I know more than a few pro users who find the top of the line iMac to be sufficient to their needs. Just some external drives, and maybe, just maybe, an external GPU. Most of those users would have been Powermac and Mac Pro users, but not anymore.
a joke on you, as it looks as though Threadripper is being depreciated by AMD. It may be gone in a year, or two. For most work, where a core’s performance is still more important than more cores (most of everything), Threadripper falls behind Intel, whose cores beat those of AMD.
apple is taking so long with this that it’s hard to imagine what they’re doing.
trying to come up with ways to lock the pro customers in without being obvious about it and giving them "modularity" without really allowing anything other than their custom made parts... at least that is what I think is happening behind the curtains. Otherwise why take so long? Just build a tower with modern parts, update macos so it supports a couple of new hardware and after 6 months you are ready to show it and probably ship it.
Apple couldn’t do what you’re suggesting. If Apple has a modular system, according to the courts, companies are allowed to build equipment to interface with it. There’s nothing Apple could do to prevent that. It also would be no point to it. With the “trash Can” Mac Pro, Apple explicitly made it so that third parties could (had to) interface with it. That’s not what killed it. In fact, many of us wanted Apple to made these external boxes, but they didn’t. Apple has a long history of leaving this to third parties.
that doesn’t mean that they won’t made their own plug-in modules, assuming that all the speculation about modules is correct. But if a third party wants to make them too, I don’t see Apple attempting to prevent it. They could ease the development, by publishing the hardware and software specs. Otherwise, third parties will have to do their own R&D about how to accomplish it. But that’s allowed, by law, if a company wants to expend the effort.
we see the same thing in the camera industry. Some camera manufacturers publish the specs for the mechanical and electronic portions of their mount (Sony), while others don’t (Canon), and yet others try to keep it a secret (Nikon). Yet, third party lines for all three platforms are available.
If companies think there’s a viable market, they will do it. The question is whether the market for a new Mac Pro would be big enough these days. I hope it will be. But only if Apple does it right, and shows that they will properly support it over time with regular upgrades, unlike what they’ve been doing with the trash can model.
I’m more interested in what that “X2 chip” is, I doubt it’s an ARM CPU.
It's either an ARM, RISC-V, or FPGA prototyped custom silicon. Apple has dumped all of their chips in the ARM market moving forward so it is more than likely not going to be of ARM origin if I had to bet on it, just like the T2. That's not saying it's going to be "just an ARM" though. It could be an ARM chip with one or few high performance cores, and maybe many low performance cores. Or, could be an ARM chip linked to something like an nVidia chip with many CUDA cores just used for acceleration.
It's to early to tell but hardware accelerators do excite me lol
Considering the date of the presentation, one possibility (other than being a complete fake , is that is an internal presentation of a concept, not of an actual machine.
Thunderbolt 4: well, you know, we can be pretty sure there is somebody working on the future of Thunderbolt, and he is probably a colleague of the guy making the presentation, so i wouldn't consider this a reason to consider the presentation a fake.
Maurizio
Theres not much to go on so it's really anyones guess until we have multiple leaks with similar info. Theres a lot of flags here that lead me to believe it's fake, but yeah if we are just speculating on future technologies with no concrete release date, why not hype it up, especially if it is just an internal memo?
Comments
Not gonna happen with this stalemate billionaire pensionado Board - unable to innovate their lower back-ends, for the major part of this decade.
The idea of a master high speed data bus is what the X2 chip would be. In theory, put the X2 on the motherboard with the RAM, and the CPU/GPU units will run in parallel. The X2 would then open channel(s) to the processing units and dynamically change their tasks. Perhaps throw a bunch of NeuralCores on the X2 and let machine learning watch how you work, anticipate your next action, and eliminate human observed latency.
Anything else for the wishlist?
this is what I think they are doing..
1) PCIe v4 IS available, but not for the current line of Intel CPU's. It is available for example on POWER 9 & 10 chipsets.
2) DDR5 isn't even available in the custom/high-end server market, there are no DDR5 controllers available atm, Apple usually doesn't speculate on non-existant technology.
3) Apple has nothing leaked about an accelerator chip, and why junp straight to X2 instead of X or X1? The T2 chip already offers acceleration of decrypting drives.
4) Why would Apple use these advanced and not even commercially available specs... when it is designing high-end ARM CPU's to replace Intel chips? Why would they waste so much in design just to render it obsolete a few years later? This makes sense for MacBooks but not for the Mac Pro line of computers.
These specs, from someone who follows hardware closely, looks like one of those school yard discussions I had back in the day where we'd think up impossible specs for an upcomming video game system. Its just childish speculations.
If it wasnt an Intel Xeon, and maybe hinted at a custom ARM powered Pro, this would make a helluvah lot more sense, even though the DDR5 thing still throws it off, if they are designing their own ustom silicon then they would have more control about what technologies could be offered.
why did Apple come out with the 2013 Mac Pro? Was it to lock users into an Apple proprietary system? No, it wasn’t. Apple genuinely thought that what they were doing was better. They were wrong, but it took some time for it to sink in. Meanwhile, apple could have come out with their own external PCI boxes. But they didn’t. They totally left that to third parties via the TB connectors.
they could have come out with their own external GPU, but instead they convinced BlackMagic to do so, with a bit of technical help from Apple.
apple has no external drives, or much of anything. One would think that if they did, they would sell well. But there’s no evidence that Apple is interested.
so there’s no evidence that Apple is rubbing its collective hands together in anticipation of making all this money licensing a proprietary connection scheme. Really, even if they did, how much would they make? Very little. This is not going to sell in the millions each year. It may never even reach a million total, though I hope it does. This is true for the iMac Pro as well. I know more than a few pro users who find the top of the line iMac to be sufficient to their needs. Just some external drives, and maybe, just maybe, an external GPU. Most of those users would have been Powermac and Mac Pro users, but not anymore.
a joke on you, as it looks as though Threadripper is being depreciated by AMD. It may be gone in a year, or two. For most work, where a core’s performance is still more important than more cores (most of everything), Threadripper falls behind Intel, whose cores beat those of AMD.
It's to early to tell but hardware accelerators do excite me lol
Wonder what the revision date is on this (render of a fake booklet) imagery...?
Oh look, they changed the top...!
You created an account just to say this?