zimmie

blastdoor said:

zimmie said:

anonconformist said:

blastdoor said:

DAalseth said:

longfang said:

DAalseth said:

I have a feeling that Apple will introduce an M-Series Mac Pro, but keep the Intel version around.

Apple historically doesn’t really do the hang on to the past thing. 

Also consider that getting rid of Intel would vastly simplify software development efforts. 

True, but there’s Mac Pro users that need massive amounts of RAM. Amounts that Apple Silicon just doesn’t support.

That said, I’m not a computer engineer so it may be a crazy idea;
Would it be feasible to use two tiers of RAM? The high speed RAM built into the chip, and then a TB or more of comparatively slow conventional RAM in sticks on the MB like it has now? It would have to keep track of what needed to be kept in the extra high speed on chip space, and what could be parked on the sticks. It would be like virtual RAM does now but not to the SSD.
Not sure how feasible this is but it was a crazy idea that just crossed my mind. 

I think that’s highly feasible and the only question is whether it’s necessary. Another alternative is very fast pcie5 SSD swap (virtual memory). Apparently a pcie 5 SSD could hit up to 14GB/sec in bandwidth (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/pcie-5-0-ssds-promising-up-to-14gb-s-of-bandwidth-will-be-ready-in-2024/). That’s similar to dual channel ddr2 sdram. 

That’s interesting throughput, but SSD (unless using Optane) has a rather finite number of write cycles, so that’s bonkers for a solution. I’ve purposely provisioned all my machines with enough RAM keeping that in proper perspective and context, because I don’t replace machines super often. Swap files in a normal usage scenario are one thing, but treating SSD with finite write cycles as RAM is a whole other story.

Flash write durability hasn’t been a serious limit on SSD lifespan in close to two decades. Controller firmware bugs take out multiple orders of magnitude more drives than the flash wearing out does.

This is literally talking about using some high-performance SSDs as dedicated swap devices. No more, no less.

The headache would be random access, just like with swap. NVMe SSDs can get DDR2 levels of data throughput, but much worse latency for random operations. If you mix reads and writes, performance gets ridiculously bad. Give a 70/30 R/W workload to a flash-based SSD and its performance drops to around 15% of high-queue-depth peak read or peak write.

The only time I recall being in a situation where I needed more than 256GB of RAM, I doubt that a lot of small random writes to swap were needed. Instead, it really was a case of swapping big chunks, and I could see the SSD read/write statistics in glances go through the roof (Linux threadripper system). 

To need more than 1TB of RAM is way outside my experience. For folks who have such experience— does your work involve a lot of random reads and writes to that 1TB or do you think you’re really swapping in and out multi-GB chunks?

InspiredCode said:

The consensus opinion seems to be that Apple will add AMD GPU support to Apple Silicon since they need some sort of GPU expansion. I'm having some trouble believing that though. If anything, at this point a shift back to nVidia would make more sense because those cards are more preferred by scientific and high-end rendering users...

mayfly said:

zimmie said:

mayfly said:

"Apple said at WWDC that the battery is not casually removable from the headset. There is a USB-C port on the battery for charging and directly powering the Apple Vision Pro."

Just my uninformed opinion, but I think Apple missed an opportunity by attaching the battery this way. Better to put two USB-C ports on the headset, so users could just swap battery packs without it powering down. Weight gain would be marginal, and it would be easy to add a latch to prevent accidental detachment. Unless it's possible to attach a backup battery to the USB port on the battery. At this time, there's been no mention of that from Apple.

USB power delivery is extremely janky. It isn’t suitable for anything without a built-in battery. Devices can abruptly lose their internal state for any number of reasons. The only possible safe response to this failure is to drop to the lowest supported voltage and current, which definitely isn’t enough to keep the Vision Pro running. It also flatly does not support seamless handoff between two power sources.

They could have done it with a sizable internal battery and USB power delivery, but then all this upcoming legislation mandating easily replaceable batteries would bite them. They would probably also need to change away from glass for the outer face to hit their target weight. Apple uses plastics for AirPods, the Magic Mouse, and all of their keycaps, but they haven’t done plastic in front of a display in a long time.

I have two Leviton USB-C outlets with power delivery in my house. There is none of this "jank" of which you speak, and they charge every USB-C device we own (2 iPads, an M1 MacBook Air, and an M2 MacBook Pro), and fast. Yes, there is a port on the VP battery, and I mentioned it may be possible to attach a second battery or charger to it, but that would violate every page of the Apple Design Book. I'd guess the real reason there's no USB port on the VP is that Apple doesn't want anyone attaching any third party hardware to it. And there's plenty of historical precedent to back that up!

dewme said:

I wonder if they’ll offer standard non-prescription reading glasses style magnifier lenses? Nothing fancy, just $1.5X - $3.5X magnifiers with high quality lenses. A large number of 40-ish and older folks have presbyopia and later in life,or due to other vision complications, far field corrected  monovision as a result of cataract surgery. Cataract surgery is one of the most, if not the single most, common outpatient surgeries performed in the US. 

adam venier said:

My dream version of the Mac Pro: Modular Design.

Create a series of bricks having the same length and width (a la Mac Studio, OWC Ministack STX, etc.) but with different heights.  Allow these to be vertically stacked to customize the server of your dreams.  I would then create:

• CPU - essentially an upgraded Mac Studio
• RAID array module based on M.2 SSDs
• RAID array module based on HDDs
• PCI expansion modules (for graphics cards, scientific packages, etc.)
• Power backup module (lithium battery for space)

The Mac Pro 'special sauce' would be the integration between all the components.  I'd make the footprint larger than the Mac Studio to support the 312mm PCI cards and appropriate cooling fans.  Extra credit for allowing multiple CPU modules to work together.

Were Apple to go this route, I believe they could capture the majority of revenue associated with server hardware.

dinoone said:

I propose an alternative interpretation to the news above: a proper bus mainboard holding extension boards, each extension board including both RAM and Apple Silicon processors.

In this way each extra extension board (RAM+M2) would simultaneously extend both amount of RAM and number of processors.

This would be compatible with the wording "lack of user-upgradable memory".

maciekskontakt said:

Still no macOS virtualization on Windows or Linux hosts regardless if old Intel or ARM. Go figure.

maciekskontakt said:
As I said only as host - macOS is not a client and never was. ... Otherwise, you are nobody in IT especially in virtualization space where banks use it extensively. I am chief architect at one of NYC banks.

... I was using virtualization products then on Mac OSX and not only Fusion or Parallels. Still only host system not capable to be client.

hmlongco said:

Getting rather tired of the endless series of post-apocalyptic, dystopian movies and shows.

How about a series where people actually thrive and succeed?

How about a series like The Martian, where ingenuity counts and is showcased?

How about a modern Star Trek (or some such) that shows the future in a positive light?

danvm said:

thadec said:

michelb76 said:

9secondkox2 said:

Gurman is wrong. 

Apple didn’t delay the Mac Pro two plus years in order to give us a Mac Studio with a different name. 

The new Mac Pro won’t arrive until apple is ready to blow the doors off everything else - even if that means waiting for M3 Extreme. 

The M2 just isn’t the destroyer hoped for. It’s great, but not something that will meet expectations of the delayed pro. 

M3 has been for a long time where the convergence of all the good things was headed. It may mean Apple breaks a promise, but it’s better than releasing something prematurely just because an ambitious project didn’t work out in time. 

The only way an M2 Ultra goes in a Mac Pro is if Apple developed an external-to-SOC traffic controller that mimics how their Fabric works - and then add multiple M2Ultra packages in a “modular” config. 

We don't know. It's very much possible that an 'M3 extreme' is also uneconomical.

It is not that it is "possible." It is that it is the entire case. Threadripper, Epyc, Xeon, even ARM servers benefit from a combination of economies of scale and data center customers willing (needing) to pay whatever they cost. So it makes sense for the chipmakers (chip designers?) to pay the foundries to stand up the manufacturing lines. But it doesn't make economic sense for Apple to do the same for "Extreme" SOCs to be used in Mac Pros and iMac Pros that are only going to move maybe 10,000 units a year and still need to have a starting price of around $5000. This problem didn't exist with the Mac Pro because it used Xeon CPUs that Intel sells to everybody else, allowing them to be made and sold to Apple relatively cheaply.

The original 2020 M1 merely required adding 2 cores to what was basically a pre-existing smartphone chip at a manufacturer that had already been making octacore ARM chips for Android devices for years. By contrast M2 Extreme would have required horizontal combining 4 M2 chips to make by far the largest PC chip (in surface area) in history. Please note that Intel and AMD have abandoned the horizontal thing with 3-D scaling (vertical and horizontal) AND are atomizing the CPU parts into components - AMD calls them chiplets, Intel calls them tiles - because it is less expensive to manufacture and package in a motherboard. But even there, it is only financially feasible because Intel and AMD are going to sell a lot more Xeon and Epyc CPUs than Apple will Extremes.

I still maintain that Apple should go into the ARM server market. It would require them to emulate what Microsoft did with Windows Server and come out with a bona fide server version of macOS. Not only would they make a lot of money directly, but the byproduct would mean making workstation CPUs that would otherwise need to be manufactured in very small numbers for a few niche customers financially viable. So Apple, go ahead and make a competitor to Nvidia Grace https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/08/29/details-emerge-on-nvidias-grace-arm-cpu/ except limit it to small and medium sized servers!

I'm not sure an Apple server would succeed.  They'll be competing with HP, Dell and other large server's OEM's that have been doing business with SMB and enterprises for years.  Most of those business have devices, services and applications from different vendors, and Apple is terrible integrating with other vendors.  Another thing Apple lacks is the ecosystem companies as Microsoft have.  They also would be competing with public cloud providers, considering a lot of business and enterprises are moving some or all workloads to AWS, Azure / MS 365 and GCP / Google Workspace.  

I don't think creating an additional niche product would work at all.  

ITGUYINSD said:

Each episode is basically the same.  Some opulent resort that no one can afford and most of the show talks about how Eugene Levy has some sort of phobia about something or another and how he normally never leaves the resort.  More of a "Watch Eugene Levy do things he's never done before" show than a travel show.

Mildly entertaining if you want to watch something that doesn't require a lot of thought.

1. Arctic TreeHouse Hotel in Finland - $300-$650 per night
2. Nayara Tented Camp in Costa Rica - $800-$1200 per night
   
3. Gritti Palace in Venice - $800-$1200 per night
   
4. Amangiri in Utah - $3k-$4k per night
   
5. Kudadoo in the Maldives - $5k-$7k per night
6. Kruger Shalati Train Lodge in South Africa - $600-$900 per night
   
7. Verride Palácio Santa Catarina in Lisbon - $500-$5k per night (they have a weird variety of rooms)
   
8. HOSHINOYA in Tokyo - $500-$1k per night
   

verne arase said:

I think Volkswagen's board should be broken up and be subject to criminal prosecution for committing environmental testing fraud - but Volkswagen is not an American company and we can't do that.