The quote from Gurmans letter is better stated on 9to5mac: ”
Gurman says the machine has two spare SSD slots, in addition to slots for graphics, media and networking.
”
So it is not actually a quote. It is a paraphrasing. The macrumors rephrasing will certainly generate more ad views. *sigh*.
That seems substantively different. Spare SSD slots sounds more "empty by default". Empty by default. If those are M.2 standard slots that is a huge shift. Either Apple is trading the two SATA connector for standard NVMe SSD connectors. Or adding both to the revised logicboard. If so that might placate some folks put off by the missing DIMM slots. They are trading 'type' of slot to play/interact with. (e.g.., if dropped the MPX four x4 PCI-e v3 provisioning for TB controllers then throwing two x4's at M.2 would be very reasonable thing to do. Could toss them on the backside of the logic board where the DIMM slots dissapeared from. Same side as the proprietary SSD models and cooled the same way. )
Also a retreat from the Apple arrogance that only they can properly implement a SSD. (which is kind of ridiculous).
In 2023 , user workstation logicboard that do not have a M.2 slot on them is somewhere close to zero. It is detached from contemporary market dynamics.
And that would open the door for a somewhat cheesy 512GB SSD Mac Pro entry model at a lower price. ( Instead of matching the 1TB norm of the Mac Studio). If the "i hate apple SSD' crowd could simply just pop in a m.2 drive with no adapter. Those folks will be even happier.
So, if this is true (gpu!)the machine might be worth it. Personally I just need 128 ram and solid upgradable gpu that renders stuff in similar speeds as a PC.
If folks are goofing on missing adjective like 'spare' in what is being communicating that is a substantial 'if'. If there is an "AUX power" connectors on the board some folks may just be filling in the blank with 'gpu' when technically those are not necessarily the same thing. For example, a board with a M2 Max on it would need more than 75W bus power. Or some other compute accelerator that went past bus power limits.
I really do hope that there is an “extreme ” variant after all so even cpu bound loads that need more ram is catered for. 48 cores and 384 ram could be a world leading cpu perf workstation.
If there is no ECC the farther they get into the triple digit GB range the more dubious that gets.
The plain M2 maxes out at 24GB. 8* 24GB is 192GB. Folks who have a 128GB workload now would have another 64GB to "grow into" over time if by the max configuration. They are also only 64GB over the 128GB debarkation line that most folks historically have used for making ECC a requirement.
384GB and no ECC is definitely in the dubious zone. At least for folks who care about data integrity.
Unless Apple completely refactored how they were doing memory controller layout, the 4 die extreme probably wasn't going to scale the same on RAM capacity. Certainly not "double" at the same bandwidth increase rates. And if Apple layered a memory controller ECC ability on top the end user usable capacity would drop.
When Apple introduced the M1 Ultra they said that 128GB was something like "an incredible amount of RAM". There is a good chance that Apple looked at the deployed user configurations and saw that 128GB was at the edge of the land of capacity outliers.
A crown that would be cool to have for Apple. (Higher ST perf than all other high core count cpus)
A crown that almost nobody wants to buy isn't much of a crown.