rob53

Marvin said:

stuartf said:

Except…

John Turnes of Apple quite literally said that the M1 Ultra completes the M1 line up just days ago

It is more likely that the MacPro will be based on M2 silicon or even a completely different design

Maybe but they could also have designed the Ultra chip to be able to join to other Ultra chips in which case it doesn't need a new name. The diagram shows two M1 Ultras connected in the middle using a different connector:



The Mac Pro can be offered with M1 Ultra at the entry level and an M1 Ultra Duo. There is no higher name than Ultra. Pro = better, Max = maximum, Ultra = beyond maximum. They can only call it Ultra something like infinity + 1. I expect they will be able to offer 256GB RAM on the Ultra Duo. The amount of RAM they need to offer is just what people have been installing, they don't need to support 1TB+ just because other computers do.

This isn't what I've seen from people on youtube. There isn't an UltraFusion connector to tie into the vertical area you're showing and simply rotating them doesn't work either. What I've seen is two stacked Ultras with a double height connector in the middle so connection lengths are minimal. The only way they get the bus speed is to keep the UltraFusion as short as possible. They've also talked about how the Ultra's UltraFusion connection is added once the Maxes have been created and tested. The Ultra is only created when two Maxes test 100% side by side, then the 10K connections are made.The good Maxes next to bad Maxes are cut out and used in MBPs while some of the bad Maxes can still be used as binned or have some parts cut off and used as a Pro. Apple is trying to maximize chip production. Putting two Ultras together like you're suggesting means very few Duo Ultras can be produced from a single platter. It would make more sense to create Ultras, test them, cut them out then stack them together. 

I don't want to violate copyrighted images so check out max tech, Apple's M2 Ultra DUO Mac Pro, 7:34 mark.

Let's see. Why isn't the UK going after big oil? It stifles competition but governments don't seem to care. Same with automobile dealerships. These are worse because stupid legislatures have put this monopoly into law. Apple makes a great product, has a very good ecosystem and is something people actually are willing to buy. People make the decision on what products to buy. Forcing Apple to degrade their product in the bogus name of competition is simply a money grab by governments. Apple products cost more than others but people buy them so how is Apple stopping competition? This is all a distraction, especially in the US, to not go after the actual criminals in this country and around the world.

MacCatHatter said:

My biggest gripe is putting every thing on one internal drive.
It's not very UNIX smart.

I would prefer a smaller OS only drive and multiple data drives.
I would also like them all mirrored (disk arrays).
That's how I always build a unix server - redundancy is simpler and faster than icloud backups.
But, I backup, too.
I have a large legacy of archives I need to keep accessible and constantly migrating it to newer media.
Remember when we thought CD's would be a long term storage solution ?  I can't even read some of them any longer.
Stuff I put on the iCloud was lost, even at Apple's first cloud storage (Mobile ? - can't remember what it was called).
Huge photo albums I created and carefully annotated files, lost with move to Photos.
Heartless, cruel Marketing people....

There is nothing worse than a single point of failure - and one big SSD is exactly that.

I'll ignore the others who talk about using USB external drives. As for storage, we all need to erase everything we're used to when discussing HDDs and SSDs. Integrated storage on an SoC is totally different. It has different issues but I don't believe it really has anything that similar to other types of storage, definitely not HDDs and early SATA SSDs. The speed of unified memory, which includes storage, is so much faster than anything you can get from external drives. I believe it will also prove to have less issues than previous storage. As for redundancy, I'm all for having backup storage, both on fast storage and "slower" storage. As for archives, we're at a point where everything is changing so fast you need to re-archive more often. I'm not sure what media you would even choose nowadays. I see LTO tape coming back and as long as you can keep the hardware running it, and other types of tape backup, might work better for archiving than the latest SSD/NVMe storage.

As for RAID storage, I don't see Apple making redundant, mirrored storage an option for internal storage. External storage is only as fast as the interface (Thunderbolt) can deliver. I haven't read anything about what version of PCIe the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra is using but that has an impact of Thunderbolt and therefore external storage. I know there are at least software RAID systems configured with multiple NVMe blades, check out OWC, but I haven't seen them with multiple Thunderbolt inputs. The M1 Pro, etc., have individual TB4 channels, they aren't shared (so far I think that's correct), making it a possibility a vendor could build a 4+ blade, dual TB4 input, RAID, either software based or hardware based that "might" match the speed of the internal storage, which is very fast. Let me say that again, it's very very very fast. In fact, the storage media might not be able to even keep up with the storage bus. 

As for a single point of failure time will tell on how failure prone the M1 Macs are. On older Macs, the RAM and disk storage had more failure than the actual CPU, which included various cache and other types of storage. I am hopeful the integrated storage and memory in the SoC will mean a whole lot less failure. As I said at the beginning, we need to Think Different with this generation of Macs.

Fidonet127 said:

viclauyyc said:

sflocal said:

viclauyyc said:

Well, it looks good on number in the presentation. But let’s not forget the Ultra is comparing with a 2 year old Xeon. 2 years is a lot in computer technology. Not to mention, arguably AMD’s Epyc is the fastest CPU in the PC world. 

Let’s hope the future Mac Pro will be even faster with 4/8 sets of CPU. But it might cost $8000 on the entry model.

Intel's offerings until just recently have remained stagnant on the Xeon side.  It's only right to compare it with Apple's current Mac Pro offerings, even though it's 2 years old.  It's still incredible how Apple has pushed the performance envelope in those two years where Intel was nowhere to be seen.

While AMD's offerings is also impressive, when compared in terms of performance-per-watt, ASi outperforms them both.

Honestly, I don’t understand why Apple is so emphasis on performance/watt. Sure save energy is good and less noise from fan. But no one really care if their $100000 sports car use much less gas than the next car. People care about how fast it can go and how it handle the corner, not gas/miles.

Many reasons to be energy efficient. Apple is pushing and being pushed to be environmentally friendly. More efficient computers is less power, fan usage, and cooling needed. One computer isn’t significant, millions of computers are. More efficient computers allow longer run time on UPSs during a power outage. Solar is still expensive, so. Using less power, means less solar is needed. Think about racks of these computers. I’m warmed up behind a half rack of servers in a cold room. Power efficiency is a huge deal when dealing with a rack or more of computers. 

Most people complain about fan noise along with everything in the room heating up. The new Intel CPUs and most GPUs already need dedicated 15-20A outlets because of the high power requirements. This usually requires a good electrician or a dedicated room with multiple dedicated outlets to power everything. The new Mac Studio has a max power of 370W, basically 3A. This means you can share a 15-20A outlet among five Macs, something every residential house comes standard with. 

If you want to rack mount these, they won't fit in the current 19" rack assemblies but I'm sure these will be available very soon. Turning them on their side lets you put five in a 3 or 4U rack. That's 15A/120V per shelf. A rack of these could use a much lower kVA UPS than the old Intel Mac minis. I wish I was still working, I would have ordered several right away. 

ppietra said:

godofbiscuits said:

Because a trillion dollar petroleum fund has the strong ethics to say no to income and wealth disparity.

Actually it does! Take a good look at why the fund exists and how Norway is socially organized. 

I'm not worried about Norway's citizens I'm concerned about trillion dollar petroleum companies polluting the earth.