killroy

Marvin said:

crowley said:

Again, this is just a total bunch of guesswork, seems to have some massive gaps, and seems weirdly hostile to the Mac Pro as a concept.  You're completely overlooking Apple's R&D costs, licensing costs, the fact that they can't profit on any chip volume sales and that 3nm is as of now an unknown quantity that Apple have not used in the CPU of any shipping product.   

The assertion that "Apple can match that spec on Apple Silicon for over $12k less" (previously "as much as $12k" now "over $12k"?) is completely baseless as of now.  Apple have no Apple Silicon product that can match that spec, and the products that they do have are not so much cheaper to justify anywhere near that kind of optimism.

TSMC 3nm will offer chip density up to 300 million transistors per mm2, end products will be a bit less. Apple's current 5nm chips are around 130m. Obviously it's an unknown in terms of shipped product but they've placed the orders, as has Intel, which is enough of an indication that they have something worth shipping.

In terms of what they are capable of making, this can be seen with the game consoles, the XBox series X is a 12TFLOP SoC:



https://www.techpowerup.com/271115/microsoft-details-xbox-series-x-soc-drops-more-details-on-rdna2-architecture-and-zen-2-cpu-enhancements

This is using TSMC 7nm RDNA2/Zen2 and is under 200W of power. 3nm would allow Apple to more than double the chip density in the same power, closer to 3x. Microsoft sells this hardware for $500. If Apple couldn't significantly improve on that at a $5k price point, they'd be doing something very wrong. This would be somewhere in the region of 24-36TFLOP hardware in a 200W cylinder-like form factor, that's not being overly optimistic, the hardware easily allows for this.

As for the price difference vs current Intel Mac Pro, the only way there wouldn't be a $12k difference in price is if Apple charged $12k of profit on it. I don't see why they'd do that. The low-end products didn't change in price because those used lower priced Intel chips. Apple won't charge $12k for their highest-end chips.

killroy said:

Marvin said:

Like I say though, the tower form factor hasn't made much sense for Apple to keep making it for at least a decade and it makes less sense now than ever with such efficient hardware. Apple has stated repeatedly their goal was always to make the hardware disappear, that's why the new iMacs are so compact. The Mac Pro has stuck around as an ugly wart on that goal for far longer than necessary and this was only due to the failings of Intel, Nvidia and AMD over the years. Now they can go it alone and build exactly the hardware they want.

I would have to disagree, if it wasn't for the pro towers they would not have the Pro market where I work. The infrastructure where I work requires PCI slots. There's a lot of 32 gigabit fiber-optic networking for video editing and all the apps or Adobe and Avid. If Apple ever put out another product like the trashcan my employer may never approve an Apple  product again no matter what chip is in it.

Having no high speed connector options at all creates limitations but this doesn't require having internal slots. The connector can be there just as there are PCIe SSD slots and they can connect to an external unit for people who need them. If it's just for this optical connection, Apple could even bundle one with the machine, it's not that expensive relative to the rest of the hardware, there are Thunderbolt products too:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Qsfp-Server-Network-Card/dp/B07QZHQTVH/
https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-Fiber-DisplayPort-External-Enclosure/dp/B079RNJ7NK

Marvin said:

Like I say though, the tower form factor hasn't made much sense for Apple to keep making it for at least a decade and it makes less sense now than ever with such efficient hardware. Apple has stated repeatedly their goal was always to make the hardware disappear, that's why the new iMacs are so compact. The Mac Pro has stuck around as an ugly wart on that goal for far longer than necessary and this was only due to the failings of Intel, Nvidia and AMD over the years. Now they can go it alone and build exactly the hardware they want.

ericthehalfbee said:

I don’t think so

I can see a refreshed Mac Pro with Intel this fall as the last update to satisfy existing users and a brand-new Apple Silicon Mac Pro in 2022.