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Apple Silicon Mac Pro Configurations: Everything We Know

azentropy said:
Apple originally said it would be a 2 year transition to AS. Some people took that as 2 years from the announcement, others took it as through 2022. Either way the Mac Pro and the high end mini (and IMO a larger iMac) are all that is left to do.
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When Apple made that statement I don't think they were anticipating the depths of the massive supply chain disruptions that would occur over the next two years, especially in the semiconductor industry. Either way you slice it I think they're doing pretty good with the hand they've been dealt in terms of getting these products out!
 
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Amazed that people still find it funny to make jokes about the wheels, more than two years later.
 
I wonder when the HP Z8 G4 will get its next major redesign. That is the main competitor in that market. The Z8 offers up to 56 cores, up to 3TB of RAM, up to three graphic cards and a lot of slots for storage. It left the current Mac Pro pretty much in the dust.

I also wonder if it would be possible to still have a Xeon CPU next to the Apple Silicon for software that is not optimized for Apple Silicon yet.
 
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TheYayAreaLiving 🎗 said:
Probably too expensive for even Apple to put it out there for the general public. Honestly, I've seen it on Apple Stores but it is not too common.
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The old Mac Pro cheese grater and trash can were always in Apple stores, everyone I ever went to had them on display. But none of the new cheese grater models have been on display. So I'm not sure about the too expensive argument of older models we're always shown?
 
MacRumors said:
Previously, reports about a smaller Mac Pro model placed somewhere between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro made it difficult to know what to expect from the future of the high-end Mac Pro line, but it is now clear many of these rumors related to the Mac Studio, clarifying what is expected from the next-generation Mac Pro.

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The current Mac Pro is available with up to 1.5TB of memory, a $25,000 configuration option available to $11,999 and $12,999 Mac Pro models with 24- and 28-core CPUs. Since Apple silicon Macs use a shared pool of unified memory rather than the conventional DDR4 ECC memory sticks used in the current Mac Pro, it seems probable that it will be available with considerably less memory.
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On one hand it'd be strange for Apple to release a new Intel Mac Pro alongside a new Apple Silicon Mac Pro since the goal is to complete the transition to Apple silicon as soon as possible, but there does seem to be room for Apple to release a smaller Apple Silicon Mac Pro focused on raw speed and a new full-size Intel Mac Pro focused on flexibility and expandability with support for much larger amounts of RAM (up to 4TB) and PCIe cards. References to Intel Ice Lake Xeons and next-gen AMD RDNA 3 GPUs have been found in Apple's code so they seem to have tested a new Intel Mac Pro internally, but that doesn't mean it'll actually be released of course.
 
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cocky jeremy said:
But it's still just speculation. Nothing is 100% known. Like you said, it's just a guess based on the past. We got the same "What we know" articles about how we "know" the Apple Watch 7 will have flat edges and we all know how that turned out.
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Well, sometimes what you know, turns out to just be wrong doesn't it.
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Given the Studio, the market for these must be miniscule to the point of not being worth it for Apple. Unless it has some unique feature pros like.
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Indeed... I also think that any "Apple Silicon Mac Pro prospects" have gotten a Mac Studio Ultra by now, so even those that might have spent the extra $$$$$$ on the Pro already have the Studio.

I wonder what Apple will be doing with the Studio. Not sure an M2 Ultra Mac Studio fits in the lineup next to a Mac Pro M2 Ultra.
 
ruka.snow said:
Each MPX slot takes a M2 Extreme board with its own RAM, CPU cores, and GPU cores then it all just magically works together is what I imagine. I can’t imagine Apple putting out dedicated cards when they believe all the component parts should scale together so a big box of compute blades seems the most logical and Apple way of doing things.
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I love the idea, as long as it scales properly: 1 (Max) -> 2 (Ultra) -> 4 (Extreme) -> 8? (Super Deluxe++), if we were given the option to add blades too (one can dream).
 
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I’m having a hard time imaging a use for those specs (I’m sure there is one) paired with home my M1 Max studio crushes through my workflow.
 
Moonjumper said:
The M1 Ultra is two M1 Max chips on a single die, and the Extreme is like to be 4 Max chips, so we already have a dual CPU setup, and likely more. Intel rules don't apply here.
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Yeah but here's the problem. They could connect two M1 Max chips together because each M1 Max chip devotes an entire edge of its die to an interface that can pair up with another M1 Max chip.

How are they supposed to connect four Max chips to each other when each chip can only connect to one other chip?

And why isn't this the very first question that anybody is asking?
 
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NLLV said:
I wonder if there will be a place where there is "enough ram" for a ten year period, meaning that because the SSD is super fast, and the CPU is super fast, that a pro user will not feel the need to upgrade.

On that note, perhaps this will be that time where Apple does not launch a new product to replace it for say, 7+ years and that does not matter so much because the last model is still THAT GOOD.

According to MacRumors, its been 981 days since the last refresh, but maybe that won't matter if the next model is that good.

On the flip side, perhaps the days of a fully specced Mac Pro costing $15,000+ are gone, because I know if they are looking to refresh that every 2 years or so, it is not realistic for even a full production studio to spend that investment that often.
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As it looks; it could be $40,000-$50,000 for a maxed out Mac Pro every 3 years - so that's not good. 😆
 
DrEGPU said:
It'll be interesting to really know how much RAM will be available. Some types of work benefit from more RAM. I use multiple GPU's and have 320GB of VRAM. I could definitely use more!
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Ummm, don't you mean you have 320GB of RAM? What combination of video cards gives you that much VRAM, and is this a system not listed on your signature?

As far as I know, the most VRAM you can have under MacOS would be a 2019 Mac Pro with a pair of W6800x Duos, for 128GB of VRAM.
 
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I think they will announce a M3-based Mac Pro, but it won’t ship until early next year. The M2 does not offer a big enough performance bump.
 
I have no evidence that such a configuration is possible, but I'd be really interested to see a Mac Pro with some sort of SOC expansion card architecture. Want more CPU, GPU, Memory ... slide in another card with an M2 Extreme on it. I hope this would allow Apple to keep offering highly variable CPU and Memory configurations maybe even up to the 1.5TB of RAM supported by the current Mac Pro.
 
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Sure hope they fix the GPU performance scalability issues with the M2 Ultra and Extreme. The MS Ultra almost isn't worth the upgrade over the Max because of it.
 
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