chelgrian

9secondkox2 said:

Doesn't make sense. It's already server-grade packaging. Perhaps better than other server-grade packaging.

I can think of 3 reasons this would make sense:

1. If Apple is combining their silicon with third party chips from Nvidia or semthing. 

2. Alternatively, another way it could make sense is if Apple is looking to add more GPU cores to various iterations of its chips, without increasign CPU core counts. i.e. having multiple sets of max/Ultra chips - one set for laptops, one for Mac Studio, and another for Mac Pro.

or...

3. Appel could be redoing the way it tiers its chip lineup. CPU could be the same, but GPU would be different for each tier. 

Interesting to see how this develops. 

It’s much simpler than that, the top end chips Apple are currently producing are already at the reticle limit that is they are as large as you can go and still be a single chip.

To add more resources the only thing you can do is manufacture multiple chiplets each themselves at the reticle limit and package them together.

The Massimo board approved spinning Sound United back out again in April but there has been no more announcements about what that might look like.

It’s an almost certainty it couldn’t be open sourced code bases this age tend to have all sorts of copyright issues and rights holders involved and it can be next to impossible track down all the right holders and to get the license changes needed. There are two relatively successful instances I know of which are Blender and Staroffice (which became open/libreoffice) I can’t think of any other successes.

For similar reasons it may be impossible to release a ‘sunset’ edition it’s very probable that they have third party licensed code or libraries which require periodic fees.

It’s very stupid but copyright law can make it prohibitively expensive or far too hard to allow software like Finale to continue vs forcing a hard end date.

The people who consider the Mac Pro a massive fumble are not the target market and do not understand why the machine exists at all. Apple was never going to make a direct replacement for the x86 Mac Pro.

The current Mac Pro exists only to host Avid HDX cards for ProTools and to host 8K video acquisition cards from AJA or Blackmagic Design.

The instant that neither of those applications need an internal PCI-E slot then the Mac Pro goes away for good.

I very much doubt Apple will 'pick up the phone' that would result in having to pay a license fee in the US, possibly retroactive royalties for product already shipped and set a precedent for action in the rest of the world.

They will presumably rev the hardware to remove the feature at least for the US market and bring it back the moment the patent expires.

For example it's speculated that the real reason MagSafe went away and came back again was a 3rd party patent claim on elements of it.