JustSomeGuy1

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JustSomeGuy1
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  • Inside Apple's fantastically fast new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    wozwoz said:
    I'd like to see the 2013 Mac Pro (cylinder) updated with Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, faster RAM, faster graphics cards ... not difficult to do - and in an amazingly compact and quiet form factor. It would be the Prosumer model. I just don't buy the line in the article that "While the design of previous 2013 Mac Pro wasn't physically large enough to accommodate the heat dissipation of increasingly hotter chips" ... have you seen how much bigger the cylinder is than a Pro notebook? Or compared to an iMac Pro? And how much better it is at dissipating heat?   Apple has just been lazy in not updating the Pro cylinder.
    Apple has itself stated that cooling was the big problem with the cylinder. (I think the words they used were "backed into a thermal corner".)

    The other big problem with the cylinder is that you can't upgrade the graphics card. And unlike the CPU, it's quite common to upgrade the graphics before replacing the machine. Even if Apple were to sell GPU upgrades, they'd be custom and highly overpriced compared to the PCIe GPU market. This eliminates one of the big advantages of buying a modular Mac.

    Apple could make a single-PCIe-slot Mac, stuff the GPU into the slot, and call it a day. Of course I'd rather have two or three slots, but with a handful of TB3 ports, one would be adequate. If they could put that into a cylinder, fine, but I doubt that would be a good shape, given the PCIe card.
    StrangeDays

  • Inside Apple's fantastically fast new Mac Pro

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    sdw2001 said:
    I can't get over what a monster this thing is.  Apple's "pro" machines have always been more marketed to prosumers/power users rather than true workstation users.  This machine changes everything.  

    I'm not up on PC workstation class machines, so a question for someone who is:  Is there anything even close to this?  
    Yes and no. You can get machines from HP, Dell, etc. with similar CPUs, RAM, and room for video cards. The afterburner card, no. That much Thunderbolt, no. Those video cards, no, though you can use NVidia cards that are either way better or somewhat worse, depending on what you do. Flash storage, yes, and you can do better than the Mac (FSVO better, again depending on use case). Slots... maybe not, I haven't checked.

    Unfortunately, this Mac *still* hasn't shipped, whereas EPYC 2 is now readily available, with Zen-2 based Threadripper coming soon. While some people will still be unwilling to look at AMD products, I doubt that that will last long, as the AMD chips are ridiculously superior to Intel's product line, and will remain so for at least a year, I expect.

    This Mac Pro will be a great workstation at a reasonably competitive price *for Intel-based workstations* (probably, but Intel pricing volatility and Apple's pricing stability may make Apple's pricing very unfavorable - time will tell). But cheaper Threadripper or EPYC-based workstations will wipe the floor with it, in most ways, and probably by the end of the year.

    On a separate topic, does anyone know if the TB3 ports on the PCIe card are somehow provided with full bandwidth? Or are they constrained by the bandwidth of the PCIe card?
    dysamoriafastasleepentropyscy_starkmanphilboogie

  • Editorial: Microsoft has learned some lessons from Apple, and that benefits us all

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1

    Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, it seems that MS did no silicon design work at all, much as I said. What they did, as far as can be discerned from the article quoted here, is not even as much as Apple did with their initial A4 design.
    watto_cobra

  • Russian man sues Apple for 'turning him gay' after cryptocurrency mixup

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    macgui said:
    He just needs his firmware rebooted.
    Better yet, a boot in his firmware. And if it's currently software, he can just use a couple of his coins, it'll turn firmware again.
    watto_cobra

  • Editorial: Microsoft has learned some lessons from Apple, and that benefits us all

    JustSomeGuy1JustSomeGuy1
    matrix077 said:
    Microsoft has worked with chip manufacturers for a custom chip to do exactly what Microsoft needs

    This is interesting because, does Microsoft has the scale Apple have though? Are they going to absorb the loss on chip order?

    I doubt they'll have any losses on chip orders.  On co-developed chips, it's not like they'd have minimum orders.  Besides,  MS reference designs will slide into mainstream OEM designs and that's where the larger chip orders will appear.  When OEM's like HP, Dell, Asus, etc. start pushing out their interpretations of MS' latest thats when these designs will gain traction.  By the time MS's future devices hit the market, I'd bet the major OEM's will have their variations ready shortly thereafter.  All my opinion of course, but I don't think I'm off by much if at all.
    You're just making stuff up ("not like they'd have minimum orders" and "reference design"). At this time nobody knows exactly what "co-developed" means. They might be available later to OEMs, or they might not. They might have substantial amounts of newly designed logic, or not. (And thus cost to develop might be high or low.)

    My personal prediction, based on what they've done over the last few years, is that it will NOT be available to others. And I do not expect them to recoup a lot of investment in hardware from their fairly pitiful sales, though they might recover enough, depending on how big their investment was - and I expect it to be small.
    What?  Did you miss where I said that was my opinion?
    No. Perhaps I was too terse. The items I put in parentheses were claims of fact (not opinion) that you made, which I believe you can't back up. Minimum orders are common for custom parts, and I am not aware of anything that would substantiate the claim that Surface products are "reference designs" as the term is used in this industry. In particular, the video you attached makes no such claim. Rather, Nadella says he wants their designs to inspire copies. That's not at all the same thing, and especially it does not imply that the work MS put into their custom chips (which may be significant, or not) is available to competitors.
    Regardless of what you think co-developed means, I'm pretty freakin' sure it doesn't mean MS has a required minimum order from Qualcomm.  That would be ludicrous.  Almost as ludicrous as thinking the SQ1 wouldn't be available for MS OEM partners to use.  It's almost assured MS has had these chips in their partners hands in anticipation of them coming out with their own devices.  Microsoft's Surface line has always their reference designs for OEM's.  It was one of the reasons for the creation of the Surface line.  I thought that was common knowledge.  But hey, if you won't take my word for it, maybe you'll take this guy's word: [vid link removed]
    Nothing there backs your claims at all. Do you have any actual information that suggests that MS is sharing designs (system- or chip-level) with OEMs?
    watto_cobra