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Apple Planning 'Something Really Different' for New Mac Pro
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It'll be a cube with thunderbolt 3 supporting 4k video and data. Some special top of the notch graphic-card, everything easily upgradable, high end material, sleek design, perfect cooling system, super quiet and low on energy consumption. Also possible is a built in battery that runs the system for another 1-2 hours in case of power outage. These are all factors needed to make this a successful (new) product that will re-hit the consumers' hearts.
Good luck apple
Good luck apple
"Something really different".
Stunningly thin design. Ultra fast memory(1). With amazing integrated GPU for playing Witcher 2 smoother than ever(2). The all new Mac Pro Mini. Comes with a free copy of Angry Birds!
1) Not user upgradable
2) At lowest settings
Stunningly thin design. Ultra fast memory(1). With amazing integrated GPU for playing Witcher 2 smoother than ever(2). The all new Mac Pro Mini. Comes with a free copy of Angry Birds!
1) Not user upgradable
2) At lowest settings
"... and no optical drive."
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This is so excellent. A tower with no optical drive. I realise that the optical drive doesn't have the same importance that it once had, but its still an essential feature for plenty of people, not least because plenty of professionals buy very expensive software that they can't afford to update every year and still have on disk. Obviously an optical DVD drive doesn't really cut it any more but a UV drive would be nice, even if it is one of the highest failure rate parts. The ONLY way that I could accept this oversight is if it is some sort of modular design - think Mac Mini supercomputer where you can pull out and shove in all the addons you like. Say what you like about the Xeon and Sandy Bridge E chips but for some tasks you want cores and many many of them. There's a team at Southampton who made a supercomputer from 700MHz single core Raspberry Pis.
EDIT: iSee is bang on the money. Modular designs are the way forward. Ultimate customisation and, with any luck, it could lead to to user upgrades outside of Apple in a BIG way - with an Apple endorsed CPU in one small cube it opens the door to allowing users to pick the rest of the components whilst keeping inside of Mac End User Licensing rules.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This is so excellent. A tower with no optical drive. I realise that the optical drive doesn't have the same importance that it once had, but its still an essential feature for plenty of people, not least because plenty of professionals buy very expensive software that they can't afford to update every year and still have on disk. Obviously an optical DVD drive doesn't really cut it any more but a UV drive would be nice, even if it is one of the highest failure rate parts. The ONLY way that I could accept this oversight is if it is some sort of modular design - think Mac Mini supercomputer where you can pull out and shove in all the addons you like. Say what you like about the Xeon and Sandy Bridge E chips but for some tasks you want cores and many many of them. There's a team at Southampton who made a supercomputer from 700MHz single core Raspberry Pis.
EDIT: iSee is bang on the money. Modular designs are the way forward. Ultimate customisation and, with any luck, it could lead to to user upgrades outside of Apple in a BIG way - with an Apple endorsed CPU in one small cube it opens the door to allowing users to pick the rest of the components whilst keeping inside of Mac End User Licensing rules.
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Oh I do hope they don't scrap the optical drive in the only machine that doesn't need to be made thinner and lighter...
Fair enough, CD's are going out of fashion as software is becoming more download-able. I like the concept. But what about media producers who need to burn discs, and would like to do so conveniently and directly on their Mac Pro ?
'£65 and you can have your (external) superdrive back!'...
Modern GPUs are PCIe x16 Gen2 devices.
Thunderbolt is x4 Gen2.
In other words, yes, you can stuff on Thunderbolt, but it's a bottleneck: it has a lot less bandwidth than the PCIe needed for a SINGLE GPU.
It's good for driving GigE or even 10GigE. It's good for external storage. But not "lots of stuff all at the same time".
Yup, it can. Look up eGPUs to see it in action. This is one of the things that most excited me about Thunderbolt when I first heard about it. PCI-e on a wire could be a great, great thing.
The one downside, and the one thing that makes me think this won't be what the new Pro will be built around, is that Thunderbolt doesn't currently offer nearly enough bandwidth to run top of the line GPUs to their full potential. Like if you wanted to play games on an Ultrabook, and need a little more horsepower, then Thunderbolt eGPUs are perfect for you. But running a full on Nvdia Quatro and expecting it to perform as well as it would running right from the internal PCI-e bus? That ain't happening. At least not yet.
I keep thinking there are going to do something modular. Almost like stacking mac minis on each other. So you have the cpu component, the storage component and the video component. You can add more of any or all by just stacking on more. Or if you wanted to upgrade just swap out the module you want to upgrade.
edit: dalupus, our posts overlapped but same ideas
Think of a backplane switch where you can plug in X number of boxes.
CPU Box
GPU Box
Memory Box
IO Box
You decide how many of each based on how you use your machine.
I'm thinking most storage will be external. The IO Box will come in several flavors: TB only, USB3 only, FW800 only, Legacy
Think of a backplane switch where you can plug in X number of boxes.
CPU Box
GPU Box
Memory Box
IO Box
You decide how many of each based on how you use your machine.
I'm thinking most storage will be external. The IO Box will come in several flavors: TB only, USB3 only, FW800 only, Legacy
Even if they shrink it's footprint significantly, it's not like there would be no space for expandability, FireWire or optical drives. Why would they remove these features, considering this machine is aimed at the PRO market.
Hope these are unfounded rumors.....
Can we quote you and laugh at you if they do release something really different
Here's my wild prediction:
The "Mac Pro" isn't a single desktop machine at all. Instead it comes in a series of modular units what connect together via thunderbolt (hopefully, they click together like lego).
You pick a CPU module, a "base" module (w/the basic platform: mobo, power supply, 1 drive bay), one or more graphics card modules, extra storage modules, etc. You might even be able to click multiple machines together that with automatically configure themselves into a grid.
Took the words right out of my mouth, on both counts.
Looks like they are going to F$&K it up. No internal expandability and no optical drive. Yea, that's a real pro level machine right there!
Just because it can't be housed internally, doesn't mean it's not expandable. Think Thunderbolt expansion chassis, Thunderbolt RAID.
Need an optical drive? Buy one. Get a LG USB 3.0 Blu-Ray burner for $150. Or a DVD burner for $50.
All this stuff makes the Mac Pro big. And heavy. And expensive. And not suited for rack mounting.
New Mac Pro Made in the USA from fresh Alcoa, sign us up immediately. Seriously hoping for heavy artillery, not an internet appliance.
Isn't it just wonderfull to see a picture of a Mac Pro on the front page of MR?
Puts a smile on my face every time
(Shame I just read the thread on reduser before I saw it here though, hoped it was something different)
Puts a smile on my face every time
(Shame I just read the thread on reduser before I saw it here though, hoped it was something different)
As at least a couple other commenters stated - yes. You will, however, lose about 10-20% of a modern graphic card's performance due to bandwidth constraints (which could still be plenty fast for most uses).
As I predicted a couple of years ago and following SJ's passing, we will finally see the unveiling of the fabled headless xMac - in other words, a return to 1990s Macs.
Mac mini pro?
No internal expandability=Mac mini pro. Which, I'm sorry, is effing lame if it happens.
If the Mac Pro ends up being like this, apple will officially not be a real computer company anymore and finally complete its transformation into a peddler of expensive, stylish toys.
No internal expandability=Mac mini pro. Which, I'm sorry, is effing lame if it happens.
If the Mac Pro ends up being like this, apple will officially not be a real computer company anymore and finally complete its transformation into a peddler of expensive, stylish toys.
If they were to make a mac-mini-esque chassis (or slightler larger), they really wouldn't have any problems as long as they included multiple thunderbolt channels (3-4). Each thunderbolt channel can support the bandwidth of 16 lanes of PCI express (v2.x compatibility). People really don't typically use more than 2 PCI express slots on a computer for expansion, and usually one is for a dedicated GPU. So basically, Apple could sell a really attractive stackable/chained case system and you could use as many or as few as you want/need, up to the max thunderbolt channels on the main computer. I think that's actually a pretty sexy idea, and one that does not require you to surrender anymore $$ or desktop/floor space than you absolutely need. Third parties already sell PCI express enclosures that do this now. Why not have Apple provide one that actually has a design that meshes with the main unit??
Pretty smart, if you ask me.
Pretty smart, if you ask me.
"No internal expandability" means the new Mac could be Mac Mini-sized boxes that can Thunderbolted together if you need more CPU power, or graphical processing, or storage options or external, at last, Blu Ray player, lol! They might go modular. They might merge the Mac Mini & Mac Pro line together (gasp!!) and just call it "Just Mac"