8-Core Mac Pro Details Emerging?

[ezekielrage_99]

Until they get the 45nm process up and going, I think this is going to be the top of the line. 4 cores topping out around the mid 2GHz range.

I wonder if this is Intel's long term strategy-- keep the cores relatively untouched, but double the number with each process step. That'll be entertaining for a generation or so, but they're going to have to come up with something else.

Sounds like both Intel and AMD are going by the philosophy more cores more speed.

It looks like the programmers will be in for a fun old time.

 

[SRSound]

Well I'm already finding quite a lot of hesitation over this chip because it will attempt to squeeze too much power through a smaller FSB and create a huge bottleneck in system performance! If this is true, maybe it would be better to stick with the current Xeon chips until Clovertown is revised to address this issue.

See: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=25349

 

[SirOmega]

Anandtech already reported the 4 core chips WILL WORK in the Mac Pro.

I can definately see how this is going to work out model wise. We'll see the current $2499 model and the up and down options, plus one quad core model at $3299 or possibly less depending on the dual core price drop.

Also, 8 cores would be insane for rendering workstations. 4 cores for rendering in the background, 2 for OS, 2 for other work.

 

[sososowhat]

(expected later this quarter to PC manufacturers according to Daily Tech).

That would mean sometime in the next 5 days.

 

[Voltes V]

start savings and look for stuff to sell.

What the hell am I going to do with 8 cores??? :-D

you can use it to browse the web.............................and all the things you thought impossible, oooops i got overboard.

 

[spicyapple]

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

 

[DMann]

Final Cut Pro, Logic, Photoshop, et.al.

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

Eight cores, with hyper threading active would dramatically reduce
rendering times, making production a whole lot faster and
more efficient. This is truly something to be psyched about!

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

I made a joke before about what the hell anyone would need with 8 cores, but the truth is that I've been doing so much simultaneous photo, PS/InD, video at work this past couple weeks that I'm constantly taxing the 2GHz dual G5 w/ 4.5GB of RAM.. I mean like grinding it to a halt. Same with my MacBook, and don't even get me started on my iMac G5 Rev C.

I've said this before though: Apple, and other devs, need to make use of parallel processing. A handful of apps will use 2 procs / cores, but it's a wasteland above that. All these cores are great for working with multiple apps simultaneously, but I want to use 5-6 cores on one app. Make that possible and I'm happy.

My only hope is now that multi-core systems have gone mainstream that someone (cough -M$-cough) will make multi-processor aware apps "fashionable" and extend the trend.

The Demi-Gods may be able to back me up on this, but Apple's not been great on this front despite leading (well, NEXT) the front on main stream multi-processor systems.

/rant

8 cores ought to be enough for anybody. true, what would you do with extra cores? simply overkill.

2 core OS? You runnin' Vista? :-D

Anandtech already reported the 4 core chips WILL WORK in the Mac Pro.

I can definately see how this is going to work out model wise. We'll see the current $2499 model and the up and down options, plus one quad core model at $3299 or possibly less depending on the dual core price drop.

Also, 8 cores would be insane for rendering workstations. 4 cores for rendering in the background, 2 for OS, 2 for other work.

 

[macman2790]

man whats next 32 cores?

 

[noservice2001]

so can i expect a quad core macbook pro soon?

 

[eXan]

Play WoW and CoD......

And UT2007 and Q4 and render video. All at the same time

Do we need that?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Can I ask a question? I'm a bit non-technical when it comes to things like this.

When particular apps aren't designed to use multiple processors — let's just say randomly, oooo... Adobe Illustrator, for example — what benefit would a machine like this have? Would it run exactly the same as on single processor of the same speed?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me.

 

[generik]

Can I ask a question? I'm a bit non-technical when it comes to things like this.

When particular apps aren't designed to use multiple processors — let's just say randomly, oooo... Adobe Illustrator, for example — what benefit would a machine like this have? Would it run exactly the same as on single processor of the same speed?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me.

As far as that one application is concerned, no difference, but you get to do so much more in the background =)

 

[ChrisA]

So say I’m using my 8-core Mac Pro for CPU intensive digital audio recording. Would I be able to assign two cores the main program, two to virtual processing........

That is not the way it's done. One does not asign threads to cores. What yu do is crate threads and let the operating system shedle cores to "ready" threads

 

[Blue Velvet]

As far as that one application is concerned, no difference, but you get to do so much more in the background =)

Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning.

 

[ChrisA]

man whats next 32 cores?

You can buy a 32 core machine today. Sun sells them. They are not cheap. I'm waiting for the day when we see "kilo-cores" and people add them like RAM, a thousand cores at a time.

 

[eXan]

Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning.

And exporting videos to iPod format

 

[i3iz]

old news...check this webpage:http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=6

"We grabbed a pair of 2.4GHz Clovertown samples and tossed them in the system, and to our pleasure, they worked just fine. Our samples used a 1066MHz FSB, although we're expecting the final chip to use a 1333MHz FSB, but the most important part of the test is that all 8 cores were detected and functional. "

 

[iMeowbot]

Thanks. That's not particularly encouraging... I'm not in the habit of 'doing stuff in the background' when I'm working, unless it's disk-burning.

The situation with Illustrator is particularly maddening, because it's just the sort of thing that could do really well on a pile of CPUs if it was written to take advantage of them

 

[mahonmeister]

You can buy a 32 core machine today. Sun sells them. They are not cheap. I'm waiting for the day when we see "kilo-cores" and people add them like RAM, a thousand cores at a time.

Thats an interesting concept but I think someone is a bit ahead of themselves.

I've heard that processors have reached some sort of theoretical limit and I'm guessing that multiple cores is getting around this. But why aren't these chips at higher clock speeds? I really don't milti-task that much so I would be more interested in raw power rather then power in numbers. If the prices on the current processors drop I think I'd get the quad 3GHz rather then a 8 core 2.66GHz. But if they had a dual 6GHz that would be even better.

 

[2ndPath]

I wonder whether Apple will keep the two Woodcrest quad-core configuration, or whether they introduce a new single CPU quad-core one for the new low end. When Apple switched to the dual-core G5, they replaced the dual CPU lower end systems by single CPU dual-core systems, which was suspected to reduce the building cost of the system.

 

[Marx55]

So, first it was the number of transistors per processor, then they coupled that with higher clock speeds (MHz) and now with multi-cores inside multi-processors.

Is there a limit to such growth with the current technology?

Anything after that? The optical computer that works with light instead of electricity and thus does not heat soo much? Any roadmap?

Thanks.

 

[Eastend]

Thats an interesting concept but I think someone is a bit ahead of themselves.

I've heard that processors have reached some sort of theoretical limit and I'm guessing that multiple cores is getting around this. But why aren't these chips at higher clock speeds? I really don't milti-task that much so I would be more interested in raw power rather then power in numbers. If the prices on the current processors drop I think I'd get the quad 3GHz rather then a 8 core 2.66GHz. But if they had a dual 6GHz that would be even better.

If you look at where all the manufacturers were about 5 years ago, then you could speculate that 6GHz is within the realm of possibilities, but it could be even more than Quads or beyond ones wildest dreams?

Brian

I meant to add in the next 5 years to that post.

Brian

 

[generik]

I think beyond a certain level all these Cores are only going to be good for building up your ePeen, speaking of which where can I get one?

Nevermind they are only 1.66Ghz each, there are 8 of them!

 

[Macnoviz]

My bet? Specialized cores. You've got some that are optimized for floating point, some for application logic, some for media. This is where Cell gets it right, I think-- they're a step too far ahead for now though.

Biggest problem is getting the system to know what threads to feed to what core, and to get application writers to specialize their threads.

The Cell ? You mean we'll have to switch BACK to PowerPC ?