Apple Developing 'Mac Studio,' Described as a Mac Mini and Mac Pro Hybrid

[DeepIn2U]

I wouldn't bet on that. The problem sizes expand to fill the available hardware.

Yet the volume of space mostly taking up in the current Mac Pro is mostly by fans and ducts, and expansion cards inserted vertically, not storage, not ram, or anything else.

place expansion cards horizontally, and with fans and all else, you get a wider foot print, yet a much smaller height in the case. As stated cooling may not be heavily needed going to apple silicon in the design archectecture. Power consumption also will drop, significantly even if compared to the latest Intel & best of NVidias video cards. If apple can match on both fronts of what the competition could launch this year into middle of next year then they’ll have a winner.

 

[Boil]

Yet the volume of space mostly taking up in the current Mac Pro is mostly by fans and ducts, and expansion cards inserted vertically, not storage, not ram, or anything else.

place expansion cards horizontally, and with fans and all else, you get a wider foot print, yet a much smaller height in the case. As stated cooling may not be heavily needed going to apple silicon in the design archectecture. Power consumption also will drop, significantly even if compared to the latest Intel & best of NVidias video cards. If apple can match on both fronts of what the competition could launch this year into middle of next year then they’ll have a winner.

You might want to go over to the Apple website and look at the Mac Pro page for a bit...

There are three axial fans up front & one blower fan on the backside of the mobo, these items do not take up a great deal of space in the Mac Pro chassis...

All expansion cards are horizontal, none are vertical...

 

[ACD30"]

I saw another rumor that the alleged 'Mac Studio' will simply be the new high-end Mac mini whose renderings we've seen (unless, of course, those renderings are of the new low-end Mac mini). If that's the case, it means Apple will be attempting to fit a high-end variant of their chip into it. I wonder what thermals will be like.

 

[Boil]

I saw another rumor that the alleged 'Mac Studio' will simply be the new high-end Mac mini. If that's the case, Apple will be attempting to fit a high-end variant of their chip into it. I wonder what thermals will be like.

Rumors are that it will replace the high-end Intel Mac mini, leaving a newly designed smaller Mac mini with a Mn SoC as the entry-level headless desktop Mac...

Thermals for a dual M1 Max SoC model should be just fine in a chassis with the dimensions of the G4 Cube (9.8" x 7.7" x 7.7" - H x W x D)...

 

[DeepIn2U]

You might want to go over to the Apple website and look at the Mac Pro page for a bit...

There are three axial fans up front & one blower fan on the backside of the mobo, these items do not take up a great deal of space in the Mac Pro chassis...

All expansion cards are horizontal, none are vertical...

sorry I shouldve stated placing the motherboard horizontally.

You’re forgetting the HUGE blower fan opposite the video cards.

That said on both our parts my original idea of the Mac Studio still stands:
the need for HUGE fans front or side will not be needed, probably just one BIG one laid out horizontally much like the Mac Mini’s.
Video Card(s) laid out vertically on a horizontal mobo, front mounted fan could cool all components, OR, horizontal fan could cool all components as well. All depends on the layout of the internals. On that Mac Pro the RAM and huge Radeons and that huge blower takes up most of the volume.

With Apple Silicon the need to cool the cpu no longer needed = 1 big blower fan down.
Video cards probably not needed as a second generation ASI (Apple Silicon) has imbedded video capabilities that’s 2 big front mounted fans no longer needed.
that large side mounted blower fan definitely not needed. Now just expandable ram and storage and ASI just 1 fan.

I just hope expansion via TB4 (x2) can be combined to take full advantage of current and future powerful NVidia/Radeon cards is possible. And there no more Big Mac Pro.

 

[v3rlon]

Mac Pro Max

Mac Mini Max

 

[throAU]

Apple Silicon doesn’t actually need much space or cooling. 9to5Mac calls this “primarily Mac Mini based”. What if we get a new Mac Mini that is Apple TV-sized with M1, and the Studio is basically the existing Mac Mini size but with M1 Pro/Max/Ultra?

Could do something like a Mac cube totally passively cooled inside a cube enclosure with a fin stack about 3-4 inches tall using an M1-Max or similar SOC. Or more than one of them.

 

[throAU]

The M1 max is already pretty big (for a 5mm manufacturing process). I doubt they are going to make such a big core which will be almost twice as big.
Unless they are going to split it into 2 chips (CPU and GPU), but I'm not sure that is their plan.

Or simply two SOCs on the same board.

 

[jjcs]

Not talking about most users. I’m speaking about persons with the need for HPC systems which probably includes many of Apple’s own hardware engineers.

Doubt they're using any Apple products for that level of work.

 

[jjcs]

Yet the volume of space mostly taking up in the current Mac Pro is mostly by fans and ducts, and expansion cards inserted vertically, not storage, not ram, or anything else.

place expansion cards horizontally, and with fans and all else, you get a wider foot print, yet a much smaller height in the case. As stated cooling may not be heavily needed going to apple silicon in the design archectecture. Power consumption also will drop, significantly even if compared to the latest Intel & best of NVidias video cards. If apple can match on both fronts of what the competition could launch this year into middle of next year then they’ll have a winner.

So … do we still NEED a large, tall tower that in a Mac Pro when a Mac Studio is capable of even THE most top end users’ needs??

Considering the SOC-approach with limited memory, this "Mac Studio" isn't going to be able to meet "THE most top end user's needs". Not without significant changes to the system architecture.

 

[Realityck]

Considering the SOC-approach with limited memory, this "Mac Studio" isn't going to be able to meet "THE most top end user's needs". Not without significant changes to the system architecture.

Example of what apple utilized in the past?

https://www.apple.com/server/docs/Xgrid_TB_v10.4.pdf

• Anyone needing to perform CPU-intensive calculations can run a single job across multiple computers at once, dramatically improving throughput and responsiveness.

Imagine a room with several of this rumored Mac that all could work in a distributed OS scenario.

I wonder if Apple ever thinks about multiple separate M1 Max based computers all operating from a single chassis in a rack or desktop?

 

[docbop]

Apple is working on a "Mac Studio" device that seems to be a cross between a Mac Pro and a Mac mini, according to a report from 9to5Mac that cites an unspecified source with knowledge of Apple's plans.

The device is "in addition" to the rumored Mac mini and Mac Pro, but primarily based on the Mac mini. It will feature "much more powerful hardware" and there are two versions in development. One machine will use the same M1 Max chip introduced in the 2021 MacBook Pro models, while the other will use an Apple silicon chip that's more powerful than the M1 Max.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously described a new version of the Mac Pro that will feature a smaller chassis to be sold alongside the larger-sized Mac Pro, and it sounds like the "Mac Studio" could be this smaller-sized Mac Pro.

Gurman has previously said that the smaller Mac Pro would have up to 40 CPU cores and up to 128 GPU cores.

The Mac Studio is known internally by the codename J375, and 9to5Mac says that while the naming could potentially change, it is aimed at professional users and will be sold alongside a 7K "Apple Studio Display" that Apple also has in the works.

There's no word on when the Mac Studio might see a launch, but prior rumors have suggested that it could be introduced sometime around WWDC before launching in the fall.

Article Link: Apple Developing 'Mac Studio,' Described as a Mac Mini and Mac Pro Hybrid

Smaller size could be a issue. Many (a past Mac Pro user) were doing pro-level audio or video work that require full size slots for 3rd party audio and video boards. The film and recording studios which is the big part of the Mac Pro buyers. So I could see a half-height Mac Pro but not a Mac Mini on steroids size box. Smaller project studios the Mac Mini on steroids would interested in. That is a growing market and I can see a super Mini at the right price being a big seller.

 

[jjcs]

Example of what apple utilized in the past?

https://www.apple.com/server/docs/Xgrid_TB_v10.4.pdf

• Anyone needing to perform CPU-intensive calculations can run a single job across multiple computers at once, dramatically improving throughput and responsiveness.

Imagine a room with several of this rumored Mac that all could work in a distributed OS scenario.

Cobbling together desktops tends to be very inefficient compared to conventional commodity supercomputers with a real high-performance switching fabric and parallel filesystems. That and memory/node is going to be meager with a SOC.

Apple isn't in the HPC market. They don't make that sort of hardware. If they have HPC needs, they either buy time on other people's systems or buy hardware from elsewhere.

 

[richinaus]

Considering the SOC-approach with limited memory, this "Mac Studio" isn't going to be able to meet "THE most top end user's needs". Not without significant changes to the system architecture.

it won't - I will still be keeping the PC for GPU rendering.

In regards size, I hope they go more a cube size and nail the cooling, so that it is whisper quiet with amazing performance. It sounds like a dream tbh.

 

[Realityck]

You do know this isn't remotely new and wasn't remotely developed by Apple, right? Cobbling together desktops tends to be very inefficient compared to conventional commodity supercomputers with a real high-performance switching fabric and parallel filesystems. That and memory/node is going to be meager with a SOC.

Apple isn't in the HPC market. They don't make that sort of hardware. If they have HPC needs, they either buy time on other people's systems or buy hardware from elsewhere.

I know its not new, but with this transition to ARM, seems like servers/workstations could make use compactness of the devices to stick a lot of processing power in a regular mid size workstation. The big question involves the significant system architecture changes to allow that to happen. Ever since we been discussing a Mac Pro with Dual M1 Max or Quad M1 Max I been wondering how this will all be implemented that is not horribly expensive?

 

[jjcs]

I know its not new, but with this return to ARM, seems like servers/workstations could make use compactness of the devices to stick a lot of processing power in a regular mid size workstation. The big question involves the significant system architecture changes to allow that to happen. Ever since we been discussing a Power Mac with Dual M1 Max or Quad M1 Max I been wondering how this will all be implemented that is not horribly expensive?

It's going to need to be equipped with far more memory and, being Apple, it'll be horribly expensive.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

Neither, at least with the M1. They could add support for PCI expansion options in future generations, but I don’t think Apple believes they’ll need it.

Maybe not for now, but if they want this to replace the Intel Mac Pro, they'll need some kind of dGPU. Doesn't have to be a third-party one over PCIe, could be in-house, but needs to be big (literally, in size) either way. M1 Max GPU performance is supposedly comparable to a GTX 1660 Ti, which doesn't cut it for some creative pros.

That and all the PCIe-based sound cards and other various expansions some people need.

 

[Boil]

Considering the SOC-approach with limited memory, this "Mac Studio" isn't going to be able to meet "THE most top end user's needs". Not without significant changes to the system architecture.

LPDDR5X should alleviate that problem once it becomes available...

• Pin-compatible with LPDDR5
• Chip density up to 64GB
• 33% faster
• 20% less power usage
• M1 Max - up to 256GB
• Dual M1 Max - up to 512GB
• Quad M1 Max - up to 1TB

Smaller size could be a issue. Many (a past Mac Pro user) were doing pro-level audio or video work that require full size slots for 3rd party audio and video boards. The film and recording studios which is the big part of the Mac Pro buyers. So I could see a half-height Mac Pro but not a Mac Mini on steroids size box. Smaller project studios the Mac Mini on steroids would interested in. That is a growing market and I can see a super Mini at the right price being a big seller.

Sonnet has some great products that handle three full-length single slot PCIe cards nicely, with desktop or rackmount variants...

Mac Studio should be the machine that fills the price gap from the Mn Mac mini to the PCIe slot-enriched Mac Pro...

Mac Studio = Cube 2.0 = super Mini

In regards size, I hope they go more a cube size and nail the cooling, so that it is whisper quiet with amazing performance. It sounds like a dream tbh.

Cube with feet, bottom intake w/180mm fan, vertical mobo to one side of chassis, PSU to the other, big honking heat sink in between, top exhaust w/180mm fan...

That should do the trick for cool and quiet...!

 

[sudo-sandwich]

Example of what apple utilized in the past?

https://www.apple.com/server/docs/Xgrid_TB_v10.4.pdf

• Anyone needing to perform CPU-intensive calculations can run a single job across multiple computers at once, dramatically improving throughput and responsiveness.

Imagine a room with several of this rumored Mac that all could work in a distributed OS scenario.

I wonder if Apple ever thinks about multiple separate M1 Max based computers all operating from a single chassis in a rack or desktop?

Xgrid is for a different class of tasks that wouldn't make much sense to do on a single PC. I've wondered more if they can put two or four M1 chips in a NUMA configuration, making it still a single PC with the familiar multithreaded setup but capable of handling somewhat more scalable tasks until you have to start thinking about a cluster.

 

[sublunar]

Not talking about most users. I’m speaking about persons with the need for HPC systems which probably includes many of Apple’s own hardware engineers.

But they will continue to have an Intel Mac Pro going forward at least the rest of this year. Part of the reason behind the stratospheric price of that is in part down to the price of the CPU which is in the multiple thousands (you only have to look at the Intel Ark site).

The M1 max doesn’t cost anywhere near that amount as you can see from specifying a 14” MacBook Pro with one.

it stands to reason that even a mythical M1 max duo can’t cost even a fraction of the processor budget in the Mac Pro.

so Apple may be rightly creating a ‘middle of the range’ product, firstly to succeed the remaining i5 intel Mini but also to address the fact that they can’t sell that M1 Pro or M1 Max SKUs for more that the MacBook Pro’s For obvious reasons.

Consider the possibility that an M1 Max Duo product might allow 6 Thunderbolt 4 ports due to having double the SoCs (if that’s how it works).

Thats where you can then allow for an ’M2’ mini to get the smaller case redesign to address Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issues whereas the high end mini replacement gets bigger case and probably a new name. It’s probably going to outperform The trash can, iMac Pro 2017, any iMac, and the base models of the 2019 Mac pro.

On geek bench figures alone you need a higher model Mac Pro 2019 to create daylight between that and a humble MacBook Pro with M1 max. And Barefeats shows that M1 Max is only significantly behind in metal scores (GPU).

the coup de grace is the price, a fraction of the price of the Mac Pro. And it clearly sips power.

so imagine M1 Max Duo being launched into a desktop product and it still costs less than a base model Mac Pro which it will probably comfortably beat in bench marks?

I suspect the Apple don’t want to replace the Mac Pro just yet but they are happy to cannibalise it with a ‘studio machine’ for the following reasons:

The studio machine is going to seriously undercut it except maybe in GPU raw performance and expansion capacity. They simply can’t produce an ARM Mac at the Pro price points until at least a quad cpu product comes along.

They want to keep the pro up as an option to prevent hard core high performance compute guys from concluding that Apple really don’t care about them.

They may even be willing to invest in an Intel Mac Pro refresh at a loss to keep that impression up (a refresh would theoretically commit Apple to continue supporting intel at OS level for a further 5 years)

 

[throAU]

They may even be willing to invest in an Intel Mac Pro refresh at a loss to keep that impression up (a refresh would theoretically commit Apple to continue supporting intel at OS level for a further 5 years)

Thing is there's very little that actually gives an appreciable performance improvement in the Mac Pro's CPU segment from intel available.

Alder lake is better performance per clock, but we're barely into Ice Lake in high end Xeon workstation/server CPUs; Alder lake workstation/server Xeons if they ever eventuate are way off.

I do not see Apple doing an intel Mac Pro bump, maybe a cost cut or storage/base memory improvement but outside of that.... not much for them to upgrade to from intel that matters at the moment, and not much on the horizon before their transition is supposedly complete.

Plus as above, it would commit to the intel platform for another 5 years and I really don't think they're too interested in that. Carrying dead-end hardware forward is just not the way Apple operates.

 

[sublunar]

Thing is there's very little that actually gives an appreciable performance improvement in the Mac Pro's CPU segment from intel available.

Alder lake is better performance per clock, but we're barely into Ice Lake in high end Xeon workstation/server CPUs; Alder lake workstation/server Xeons if they ever eventuate are way off.

I do not see Apple doing an intel Mac Pro bump, maybe a cost cut or storage/base memory improvement but outside of that.... not much for them to upgrade to from intel that matters at the moment, and not much on the horizon before their transition is supposedly complete.

Plus as above, it would commit to the intel platform for another 5 years and I really don't think they're too interested in that. Carrying dead-end hardware forward is just not the way Apple operates.

I think Apple would need to see a large percentage of the total user base switched to ARM before ending Intel MacOS support.

Bear in mind that the clock can’t really start ticking till the Mac mini upper SKU and the 27” iMac are discontinued. I imagine that Mac Pro will be the big one that will see Apple going above and beyond the usual 5 years post EOL And they could easily continue that line by restricting macOS to Xeon CPUs when the non Xeon products have been 5 years post EOL.

part of this will be down to major software going ARM native so Apple will be hoping that Microsoft, Adobe etc have enough time to finish converting their software over to ARM.

Intel will happily continue to supply old Xeon CPUs for a few years yet so the 2019 Mac Pro might continue lingering for a number of years but the optics on that look increasingly poor without a reason for users to disregard the traditional Pro.

This is clearly what the ‘Studio’ model must be for, it offers users who think they need the pro a chance to get that performance for a fraction of the price.

 

[TracerAnalog]

You don't really want products that compete against each other. Too much overlap is a bad thing and producing a bunch of overlapping products that mostly differ in looks, not function, would be inefficient. So, basically having a mini sold as currently and also offering a mini in essentially just a different case, wouldn't be a good idea.

If you look at Apple’s line up, it is about price categories, and luring you into a higher categorie than you initially want. If Apple knows one thing, it’s pricing. Capabilities are in function of pricing, not the other way around. If you analyze it, the overlaps are deliberate.

 

[theluggage]

So, basically having a mini sold as currently and also offering a mini in essentially just a different case, wouldn't be a good idea.

The M1 Mini starts at $700.
The most you can pay for the M1 Mini is $1800, and $1400 (with 'only' 2TB SSD) is a more more realistic comparison.
An intel Mini with 6-core i7 and 32GB is $1900

The rumour seems to be that the "Studio" will start with a M1 Max (which currently also implies a minimum of 32GB RAM) - the cheapest M1 Max machine so far is the 14" MBP which starts at $3300.

I'm not going to try and predict the exact price of a M1 Max Studio from that (Apple have enormous flexibility in how they choose their starting prices) but it would be pretty optimistic to expect it to be significantly less than $2000. If I have to guess I'd say $2500 - $3000, the old Mac Pro starting price range... but if we're dealing with the geniuses behind $700 wheels, who knows?

So there's going to be plenty of price differentiation between the M1 Mini and the lowest priced Mac Studio. It's a pity if they're not going to do a M1 Pro Mini, for those who just want the extra ports, 32GB RAM and/or display support.

 

[George Dawes]

Reminds me of the G4 cube ….