prismatics

blastdoor said:

Wow $7k to upgrade to the 28 core Xeon -- Intel's prices are crazy!

The 64 core AMD Epyc costs $7k; the 32 core version costs $3400. 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/4

Thats for the 2P, for the 1P the price is just 4.5k.

I'm somewhat surprised why Apple didn't take the AMD Threadripper devices. 

Key factors:
PCIe 4.0
64+ PCIe Lanes each supporting Infinity Fabric Link to AMD GPUs (effectively reducing latency and allowing for perfect workload scalability using PCIe4.0 SerDes)
(soon) up to 64 cores and 8 memory channels
extremely cheap price for a workstation class CPU (32 core for 2k$)

Hell they could even go full house with two EPYC 7742 64-core processors (for a total of 128 cores that have combined 256 PCIe 4.0 lanes (or an equivalent of 530% bandwidth compared to the intel part) that cost retail even combined less than what Intel asks for its 28-core part while consuming about a third of energy per unit of performance when compared against the Intel device in question. Imagine performing tasks with such a setup, the render is just a click away, almost real-time!

The Intel platform looks kindof End-of-Life by now. It's specs look years old. The socket does not support PCIe4.0 speeds, it doesn't supply enough memory channels for acceptable bandwidth scalability going above 32 core. I'm sure they considered Threadripper, there must be very special contracts that prevent Apple from using the better product. I really hope Apple doesn't design themselves inside a corner with this.

Mac Pro as a platform currently kinda looks obsolete for seriously professional computing looking forward considering the Threadripper parts are proven to be a big time saver by the time it ships. It doesn't seem to be a viable investment so I'll be waiting for their next Mac Pro and meanwhile continue using the Threadripper workstation I have built last year that is still faster.

We should remember that the MacBook 15" had underwhelming GPUs mainly due to thermal constraints, where Apple really just cant put their hands off from designing themselves into a corner where they can't compete any longer; A win for everyone as Apple starts to regret their extortion-level flash pricing as well.

Will be certainly interesting as AMD will launch Ryzen Mobile 4th gen very soon and AMD currently has a big lead on power consumption with their newest technology.
I really hope they choose to move fully into mobile as well and make an 8-core SKU. I guess they chose their battle on server though as TSMC struggles to satisfy demand and those mobile chips have no other fab to be produced in since Samsung won't be there fast enough. Pairing AMD mobile with their Navi architecture (which has been shown to offer very good future outlooks) could mean even higher performance in the same power envelope.

coolfactor said:

sflocal said:

macxpress said:

ernestu said:

I'm surprised it doesn't come with the new WiFi 6.

I doubt any professional buying this is doing things off wireless. Wireless is still too unreliable. We're lucky it even comes with wireless to be honest. 

They probably put it in there for Apple Watch users since it requires WiFi for certain things.  

Any wireless connection between a Mac and an Apple Watch would be Bluetooth (direct device-to-device), not over the Wifi network (Mac-to-router-to-Watch). If that Wifi connection is required on the Watch side for something, it still doesn't matter how the Mac connects to the router... wireless or wired.

Apple requires WiFi for Apple Watch unlock as signal Time of Flight calculations as well as Spatial Beam Phase calculations all rely on WiFi hardware. Plus, Bluetooth sucks when it comes to raw data throughput, so Apple uses a combination of bluetooth-based discovery with its own WiFi stack (what you call WiFi direct on android is comparable, but not the same) for high data throughput as well as device authentification using advanced math with paramters that can be extracted from WiFi signals. Bluetooth does not offer any such feature and is infeasible for authentification purposes (e.g. Android based watch unlock is inherently insecure).

Its kinda sad the new iOS removes significant 3D Touch functionality from iPhone devices which have been sold with this feature advertised. I'd really love to downgrade back to iOS 12 if I had done a backup previously ^^'