9secondkox2

Marvin said:

9secondkox2 said:

Interesting that there is no space grey option for the studio or display. Ye ol’ silver is to be the sole “pro” color? Interesting. 

The ultra chip is pretty awesome. Can’t wait for future versions to come in other form factors. 

One bummer is it seems like Apple’s aesthetics sort of nosedived on this design. The Porte on the front look a bit haphazard like on a PC.

I think the 2013 model was a nicer and more iconic design, they could have reused this for the Studio, maybe shorter in height but they have to mount them sideways in a server environment. One of the design choices for the Studio was to have a minimal footprint and the marketing photos of the Studio show it positioned under the display so that it uses less desk area. This is likely one of the reasons for the ports on the front as it's harder to get to the back when the computer is tucked under the display.





A 2019 style in a smaller form factor would have been nice, even though it would use more desk space:



It wouldn't need the handles at the top and it could have a single fan at the front like in the 2019 that blows through a heatsink. It doesn't need ports at the front either. Apple (Jony Ive) put ports on the front of the old Mac Pros so it's not like it's a new thing but it doesn't look good with cables coming from the front and people who need easier access to the ports can buy a hub:



Internally they could allow for two M.2 SSDs on top of internal soldered SSD so people could buy 1TB and add dual 8TB M.2. Maybe a cube is the design they will use for the Mac Pro.

rob53 said:

anonconformist said:

rob53 said:

anonconformist said:

rob53 said:

Here's my idea for a Mac Pro replacement that's user modifiable. Unfortunately for many people, I believe the only replaceable parts will come from Apple but they would (might) allow the Mac Pro to be actually upgradeable where it counts.

...

The number of connections and the tiny scale of everything involved including the maximum signal length makes the backplane idea very improbable at best.  If there’s anything resembling a backplane, it would be something factory-assembled.  Remember the mention on the video of over 10,000 signals and connections?

I totally understand the amount of connections. I have to wonder whether Apple could build a vertical stack of M1 Maxes to sell as a pluggable stack into the motherboard. What connections actually come out of the SoC? How many?

I watched this video earlier today that goes into both that and what they’ve already done: https://youtu.be/8Yz1pqX_eC0  “Apple’s M2 Ultra DUO Mac Pro will be LEGENDARY! (Leaks).

I have no connection with that other than being a viewer.  As explained on the video, how the “interposer” is done is the simplest possible way during manufacturing  to join two dies: never cut them to start with!

In theory, Apple could have a single socketed SoC on the main board that has the relatively few other chips that are required, but in practice, it may lock them down too much in designing where pins go versus where they’re at on the die making it limited to a single chip generation design, so it’d make it slightly less expensive for repairs, but soldered down chips tend to be more reliable in systems, so it’s a tradeoff.

If all the system RAM and GPU and all the other things now on the M1 series remains on that die, that greatly reduces the number of pins needed for other than ground and power; a large portion of pins on such BGA sockets tend to be either one of those, as electrical needs for impedance dictates where they’re needed, and you can’t provide all the power the chip needs through too small of a number.

I would guess all the Apple Silicon SoCs have a rather small number (relatively speaking) of pins because of their integration, and lower power requirements than AMD/Intel chips on average.  Keep in mind AMD/Intel BGA chips have sockets for over 1000 pins for many of their sockets historically.

I’m not persuaded Apple will make their boards with sockets, as I’m expecting they’ve already got final board yields high enough that adding sockets into the mix just adds expense.

My reason for putting the SoCs into sockets is so the SoC can be upgraded without upgrading everything else. This keeps the new Mac Pro user configurable, something many current Mac Pro users complain about. The typically need to keep them longer than consumers to pay off their obscenely high cost. Keep it upgradeable and the SoC can be switched out gaining additional power without buying everything again. Of course, the SoC has just about everything in it so you're buying a new computer anyway.

There is an assumption that Mac Pro users are complaining about things but Apple knows how the votes are being cast with the purchases. Often people talk about the Mac Pro not offering the highest performance but Apple compares the Studio to the most popular Mac Pro configurations, which are the mid-range models.

All Apple needs to offer in the Mac Pro is an Ultra Duo. That will be competitive with most high-end PCs.

That can fit in a cube like the above design. If it needs PCIe expansion, they can add an expansion box outside for the few people who will use it. GPUs aren't going to be needed by most users when they have 40TFLOPs internally.

I suspect they will use a dual stack M1 Ultra. A design like having 4 boards with an Ultra chip each and have one as the controlling board would be powerful but a configurable design has to be practical. It's not likely that people would swap single boards in and out and mismatch them. If they upgrade all of the units, they have effectively bought a new machine and there's not much chance they can sell the old boards.

A Mac Pro with an M1 Ultra Duo would likely cost around $10k. There's not much point in selling $3-4k boards with Ultras on them each when someone can easily buy a new $10k model and resell the old one for $5k+. Because every Mac is based on the same chips, they can all be refreshed on the same cycle, every model can get an M1, M2, M3. No skipping years like with Xeon chips.

WWDC launch, Mac Pro Cube with M1 Ultra 128GB for $5999 and M1 Ultra Duo 256GB $9999.

It can have a PCIe 5 connector for external expansion and a box that supports MPX modules. Most users won't need them when there's so much performance internally but it allows for edge cases and for optical connections if Apple doesn't bundle this by default.

Stabitha_Christie said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Does anyone else think that paying $400 for 32GB of RAM or $200 for 512GB of SSD space is a bit expensive? Like perhaps four times what the parts should cost? I guess we will just have to upgrade them our... oh snap!

It's always entertaining when commenters here become component cost experts. 

edr said:

Top of my wishlist - built-in power supply. I don't like what they did with the current iMac - "We Don't Need Another Brick in the ... Floor"!