Seems kind of strange that they would even bother with having a version of the GPU card without the SSD connector on it.
You would think it would be cheaper just to have a single version of the GPU card and leave the slot available for expansion.
You're looking at the slide that shows graphics. Scroll to the next slide and it clearly shows the storage in the same spot.
There are not two slots for storage.
Wanna bet?
Yes. I do.
On the left is a flat spot with no connector. On the right is a PCIe slot with a connector.
Yes. I do.
On the left is a flat spot with no connector. On the right is a PCIe slot with a connector.
In order to achieve anything over 1GB/s reads, you will need a second PCIe based flash module. The Mac Pro will use the same module (specs wise) as the new MacBook Air is using, which tops out at ~800MB/s reads....point proven.
In order to achieve anything over 1GB/s reads, you will need a second PCIe based flash module. The Mac Pro will use the same module (specs wise) as the new MacBook Air is using, which tops out at ~800MB/s reads....point proven.
The most likely reason is that the speeds Apple is claiming are for 512GB or 1TB SSD. With PCIe we're no longer capped at 550MB/s so more NAND yields better performance also at the highest capacities.
You're making an assumption. We don't know for sure. But as it stands right now there is only one slot.Officially.
In order to achieve anything over 1GB/s reads, you will need a second PCIe based flash module. The Mac Pro will use the same module (specs wise) as the new MacBook Air is using, which tops out at ~800MB/s reads....point proven.
Hellhammer - I don't care if it's different NAND, it won't make up for 400MB/s difference.
Some sites are claiming that the Air is using the Samsung XP941 which claims a sequential read performance of 1,400MB/s.
That's also interesting, because it would mean the SSD isn't a proprietary Apple part, which would be good news for third-party upgrades. However, you have to string together 2-3 websites to reach that conclusion so don't bet on it.
Just as much are you are making an assumption that there will only be one connector.
Hellhammer - I don't care if it's different NAND, it won't make up for 400MB/s difference.
It will do over 1GB/s without a doubt. The 512GB SSD in MBA does ~725MB/s read and write, but it's very uncommon for an SSD to have equal read and write performance (reading from NAND is much faster than writing to it). That means there's likely some throttling going on (probably through firmware) because the interface itself is good for up to 1GB/s. It would make sense for the reads to be in the ~1200MB/s range if the write performance is a little over 700MB/s.
Samsung has also officially announced the PCIe-based M.2 SSD and claims that it's good for up to 1.4GB/s.
The SSDs Apple use are proprietary but only in the sense that the connector is proprietary, other parts of the hardware like controller and NAND are not. This hasn't changed, the M.2 connector is different from the one Apple uses in new MBAs and in the demo Mac Pro.
The SSDs Apple use are proprietary but only in the sense that the connector is proprietary, other parts of the hardware like controller and NAND are not. This hasn't changed, the M.2 connector is different from the one Apple uses in new MBAs and in the demo Mac Pro.
In order to achieve anything over 1GB/s reads, you will need a second PCIe based flash module. The Mac Pro will use the same module (specs wise) as the new MacBook Air is using, which tops out at ~800MB/s reads....point proven.
Thanks for the insights... do you know how many PCIe lanes need to be budgeted for these SSDs? Is it a x2 PCIe 2.0 interface?
Furthermore, if RAID was necessary, they can do RAID on a single stick, one drive on each side of the PCB.
Not sure what Apple is using, but M.2 socket 3 uses PCIe 2.0 x4 lanes. The New Mac Pro will be on the bleeding edge for ssd speed, and there won't be much on the PC desktop side of things as there are only a handful of PC motherboards that offer M.2 slots(all are ROG boards from Asus). PC laptops will have faster storage options than most PC desktops until next year(Intels 9 series chipset). I know Apple isn't using M.2 but they are using something similar that is PCIe based and if I had to guess its x4 as well.
I for one hope the Asus ROG Maximus Impact is easy to umm you get the idea, since Apple still refuses to have something in between the imac and the mac pro.
This is already done at a lower level... SSDs effectively stripe data across NAND chips in parallel to achieve faster speeds which is why larger capacity drives with more NAND chips perform better... They can fully utilize all the channels of the controller in parallel exactly the same as a RAID0 array of drives works.
Thanks for the insights... do you know how many PCIe lanes need to be budgeted for these SSDs? Is it a x2 PCIe 2.0 interface?
Is the Apple connector propriety or is it just a bog standard PCIe connector?
Not the mini-PCIe connector of the wifi modules. From the close up shots on iFixit it looks like a standard PCIe up to the key notch but has more pins than x1 and not enough for x4. Almost like it's a x2 if such a thing existed.
Curious to see if you plugged it in to a spare slot in a Mac Pro would it just show up?
(yes possibly very expensive curiosity)