tenthousandthings

keithw said:

blastdoor said:

Good comments discussion of GPU performance. 

In order for the Mac Pro to compete with 'pro' level Windows/Linux systems using high-end discrete GPUs, I wonder if Apple needs to either (1) continue to include high-end discrete GPUs in the Mac Pro (which kind of runs contrary to Apple's strongly expressed preference for sharing memory between CPU and GPU cores, but perhaps so be it) or (2) reconfigure Apple Silicon so that CPU and GPU cores sit on different pieces of silicon and are linked together via 'UltraFusion', thereby perhaps improving chip yields since CPU and GPU cores could be on separate cores. 

I'm inclined to think that option 2 is more appealing technically, but I'm not sure about the business/economics side. If Apple puts CPU and GPU on different dies linked by UltraFusion (or whatever they want to call their 'glue'), they would likely need to do that across more product lines than just the Mac Pro. Maybe only integrate CPU and GPU on a single piece of silicon for the generic M#, but for Pro, Max, Ultra, etc, put CPU and GPU on different dies linked. That would allow independent scaling of CPU and GPU power to better target the needs of users who either need more CPU or more GPU (or both). 

I can see no technical reason Apple can't have both a powerful on-chip set of GPUs as well as supporting discrete PCIe GPU boards for people who need it.  I've been running an AMD RX 6900 XT graphics card in a Thunderbolt 3-based eGPU enclosure made by Sonnettech, and getting similar GB 5 metal results to the current Mac Pro.  This is with a 5-year-old iMac Pro.

I think if we step back, it’s evident the current Mac Pro must have been designed to house Apple Silicon. They introduced it only a year before the announcement (shipping only months before it) — the planning and preparation for such a consequential move must have been well underway in 2017 and 2018 when the current Mac Pro was created. If so, then the plan all along has been to support MPX modules with Apple Silicon, including GPUs. 

mikethemartian said:

hodar said:

rob53 said:

Wish I could simply plug a Mac mini into my iMac display.

That is my single “ding” against the iMac line.  The display is magnificent; but then tech on the motherboard will be obsolete decades before the monitor is done.  The monitor doesn’t have the ability to switch inputs; which is why I went with the Mac Mini

With a decent monitor; keyboard, mouse and a little extra storage the cost outlay is not that far apart, assuming you start off with a upper level Mini

It is a risk someone takes whenever they buy an all-in-one product from any company.

To state the obvious, the comments here about wanting to use the iMac 5K as a display vividly illustrate why the iMac 5K is dead.

Somewhere, I’m pretty sure it was in 2017 when they did the mea-culpa about the 2013 Mac Pro graphics and thermals, someone explained the target audience of the iMac 5K — the same as the Mac Studio. They learned a lot from that — the iMac 5K sold to a broader audience than they expected. So now they’ve got this broad range, from $599 to $3999 (base configurations), plus the Studio Display.

The bonus in this is it returns the iMac to the original vision for it (and that of the original Macintosh as well) — I think we’ll see it in March, along with the M2 iPad Air.

Then WWDC features both the announcement of the reality machine, and the powerful Macs designed to create for it, the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio. Also, one more thing, the new Liquid Retina Pro Display, in two sizes, 28" 6K and 32" 8K, all with Thunderbolt 5, all available in Fall 2023, thus ending the Apple Silicon transition. 

I realize the forums are a tiny aspect of Apple Insider, and it's a giant pain in the ass to moderate them, but this article/editorial contains two factual errors that have already been addressed repeatedly in the comments on earlier articles that made the same mistake—if the author had read those comments, he could have made a stronger argument here.

First and foremost, the A16 is 4nm. Apple stated that outright. It is the N4 process. The linked The Information article AI covered on December 23 may have some elements of truth in it. After all, chipmaking is hard, or everyone would be doing it. Especially high-end graphics. The quote from Ian Cutress therein says all that needs to be said. But it's Apple Insider who makes the leap there to say that the A16 stayed on 5nm and didn't go to 4nm because of these challenges. That is just wrong, wrong, wrong. The A16 did go to 4nm (N4). Apple touted this in its presentation. I find this insistence otherwise, in multiple articles by two different members of the AI staff (Wesley twice and now Malcolm), to be just inexplicable.

The second error is more of a detail, but it's an important one if you're going to be editorializing about Apple and chipmaking. TSMC's so-called "4nm" is the third generation of its 5nm (N5) FinFET platform. It's not a "die shrink," to reference Malcolm's 2019 article where he laid out some of the factors driving Apple's A-series chip production. It uses the same design library. N4 is a second "Tock" not a "Tick," to use the same terms Malcolm used in 2019. That's why Apple could easily revert to the A15 graphics designs for A16 (while staying with N4 for A16, instead of N5P used for the A15), as rumored/leaked in the aforementioned The Information article.

TSMC provides a definitive English-language source of information about how these “process technologies” relate to one another: https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/logic

This will replace the 13" Touch Bar MBP, and fill the same spot in the marketing/pricing lineup.

And let’s not forget the 2019 Mac Pro was announced just a year before the Apple Silicon announcement. The launch was less than six months before. It makes perfect sense that it would have been designed for Apple Silicon from the start.