Agree with everything you wrote. If they offered a range of processors, Xeon's for heavy lifting and iX for moderate use for those who need an upgradable, headless system, I'm certain it would do very well. How about the Ivy-Bridge EX processors?
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Apple Tells Reseller New Mac Pro Is Arriving in Spring 2013
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Agree with everything you wrote. If they offered a range of processors, Xeon's for heavy lifting and iX for moderate use for those who need an upgradable, headless system, I'm certain it would do very well. How about the Ivy-Bridge EX processors?
This is EXACTLY what I suggested and envisioned. Similar to the G4 Cube in form. Run a thunderbolt cable to your display(s), HID's at your station(s), tuck the system away. USB 3 and Thunderbolt for adding drives/other externals, room for 2-3 PCIe slots (someone mentioned needing more, so make it four
), 2-3 SATA III bays, of course processor(s) and RAM. Even though I do use my LG Blu-Ray burner on my 5,1 12-Core, I could live with an external ODD.----------
lmao :d
And who's saying that Apple will only have 1 version of Mac Pro?
Single non-xeon CPU outperforms the current single-xeon cpu 4 cores so why can't a possible low-end Mac Pro use a non-xeon CPU?
According to Passmark CPU benchmark, a xeon 1620 (Sandy Bridge) is 186 points behind a 3770..
9295 vs 9481
E-5 1620 40 PCI-E lanes
i7 3770 36 PCI-E lanes
E5 supports ECC RAM, not for the 3770
E5 Supports 375GB RAM 3770 32GB
Where again does the Ivy out perform Sandy Xeon?
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And if there are two different daughtercard designs, they could still have one that takes two xeons and one that takes one i7. When they have two models that are that different, there's not much reason they'd have to use the same CPU.
I give up, who's saying that, since you just brought it up? How about you actually come out and say what you mean instead of the wiseass questions. So are you saying they will use dual cpus, and they will use xeons?
Of course the low end doesn't have to use xeon. But unless there's a major shift in the product, the high end would still use xeon. And dual cpus.
ECC RAM, if your talking 1155/1150 4 extra PCI-e Lanes, no 6 core availability would be the big reasons..this is a workstation not the xMac...
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Yeah!!! This made my day.
My ideal:
Small form factor a la the ill fated "G4 Cube"
- SATA III
- 2-3 internal HDD/SSD bays
- 2x PCIe slots
- Processor(s) - 1-2 processor configurations (Xeon or Ivy-Bridge EX processors for heavy lifting, or i7 for light needs)
- USB 3.0
- Thunderbolt ports (perhaps for additional non-PCIe graphics box)
- Of course RAM
Run a Thunderbolt cable to a workstation for display(s) and HID's, leave it stashed out of sight. Would lower costs, allow for low to high end configurations, upgradability/expandability, use of non-Apple displays and HID's, and smaller form factor would benefit shipping footprint and ease of use. Bring it.
A bit of a long shot, but Apple should add SLI/crossfire capabilities. And I like the way the i7 is only for light needs, despite being very powerful.
Ridiculous. It's like saying the Mac Mini is only meant for short people; or they have to wear a short skirt; or drive a certain type of (ex) British car.
It almost smells of elitism - I hope that's not what you meant.
Cheers,
Ray
False. The current Mac Pro has the CPU-Northbridge-RAM on a daughtercard. The motherboard is exactly the same.
And those things are much less of a factor on an entry level mac pro - they already provide fewer ram slots.
But the point is the same - it's not the same machine just with one CPU instead of two. Whether the motherboard or a daughterboard is different, the fact is that Apple already does two different designs - the notion that single and dual versions are "a single product" still isn't true. And the idea that making the low end version i7 requires Apple to have two different designs holds less water when Apple has two different designs already.
4 Thunderbolt sockets require two controllers. The Mac Pro isn't on an extreme budget for motherboard space but that is a bit much. Balancing the display port outputs across two controllers has tradeoffs also. Nor is it useful in the single package configuration at all (that's an extra x4 lanes it simply doesn't have).
If the growth volume of Mac Pro sales (or lack there of ) is on of the primary sources of Mac Pro R&D investment problems then splitting the design into two different R&D projects isn't going to help. Pragmatically the single and dual options are likely fused. There is a deep re-occurring trend in general Mac design to reuse parts and effort across product lines. Forking the Mac Pro into two subproducts could cause as many problems as it solves.
Note as the laptop market cools off the number of laptops is likely going to collapse to. This isn't a "Mac Pro hater" thing. It is a basic strategy to adjust product offerings to market conditions.
Frankly a derivative "big" Mac Pro that required two E5's would be far more forward looking to use some "extra" PCI-e lanes for two 10GbE sockets rather than 2 Thunderbolt ones. With wireless creeping up on the 1Gb/s range wired Ethernet is going to have to get faster and more commonly used in Mac Pro user contexts to remain on the box. 1GbE has been standard on Macs for at least a whole decade now. It is time to move forward. Everything else has. (except for FW and see where it is going. )
Make the 10GbE socket FCoE capable (running Fiber Channel protocols) and could extend some life into XSan also.
Antenna inside of military grade thick aluminum that is meant to partially contain EMF emissions? How effective do you think they are going to be? (e.g., classic PowerBook problems with Wifi reception... remember those? ) With the iMac and mini and other Mac products they are moved either to the edges close to some point that isn't max case thickness or to the Apple logo which is plastic window to the outside world.
It isn't hard, but would likely mean some visible external changes. (e.g., use the facade of a former ODD slot to place an antenna for external access. )
No.
Says you..
KISS
Release everything on 2011..1620 quad 1650/60 hex..8 dim slots 128GB max..DP's get 26 series 16 DIMM slots and 256GB..
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hmmm
In spite of what has been said soo far, Europe is just about to rule out energy saving bills and regulations....I wonder what Apple will do about that...and the Mac Pro and other lines are facing problems...
Add that to the already discussed rumor that the line (that is the Mac Pro, of course) might disappear...
In spite of what has been said soo far, Europe is just about to rule out energy saving bills and regulations....I wonder what Apple will do about that...and the Mac Pro and other lines are facing problems...
Add that to the already discussed rumor that the line (that is the Mac Pro, of course) might disappear...
DIMM slots like PCI-e slots scale with CPU packages. In fact going forward CPU is more and more of misnomer. As the CPU packages integrate more I/O controller functionality single is a limiting factor for far more than just 'cores'.
Apple avoids dual ranked memory controllers. Frankly, that is 100% aligned with the direction Intel is going with the Xeon basic design. There are now 4 memory controllers to match the 4 slots of a single package Mac Pro. When the E5 class transitions to Haswell reportedly there will be a shift to DDR4 memory. Again, multiple ranks on controllers is not a core design direction. Higher memory densities with faster transfer times is.
With two E5's it is the same memory. It is the same IOHUB ( for sandy or ivy bridge class E5 it would likely both be C602 chips... which happen to be on the shared motherboard). All you are introducing is gratitutious component differences for no impact on user prices. ( there is a very marginal difference in ECC RAM but since Apple prices move in $100 increments, end in '99', it isn't larger). If anything you trying to boost Apple's profit margins even higher by given less functionality.
You are completely missing the point of the daughterboard. Component and design reuse. You are throwing that away. If only have a limited number of R&D resources can put on the product they increasing complexity and thinning out resourcses for no real gain.
The only "gain" would be to make it easier later to axe the dual configuration after shrink its volumes and increased its costs to the point to cut it loose. Frankly both subproducts are in the effectively the same boat.
Putting them in separate smaller boats isn't necessarily going to help.
It isn't going to be "low end". Unless trying to invoke the backdoor xMac argument of mainstream i7 ( the headless iMac ). No. Apple isn't likely going to create a product with miniimal differentiation to needlessly fraticide the iMac market. If turn it into a contest of what Mac is more "important" iMac or Mac Pro to overall market market... Mac Pro will loose. To survive the Mac Pro has to be going after a different segment of users than the iMac. ( embedded LCD panel or not is not a significant difference for most of the market. )
I have no problems at all with the current design, though the handles could be less hand-hurty. But, as long as no functionality is sacrificed I don't mind a redesign. Functionality definitely includes 4 full sized hard drives in the box. I think, just for the Mac Pro, that at least one optical drive is still justified. If they do eliminate the optical drives altogether, I wouldn't cry, as there are certainly external optical drives available.
People begging for a redesign, though, there's a reason why it's the way it is. All that space means the computer runs cool and quiet even when strained. Now the G5 was a very hot chip, so maybe that's not needed quite so much anymore with modern Xeons, but there's more to computers giving out heat than just the CPUs. It keeps the GPUs cooler, keeps the many hard drives from getting too hot, and cools the high performance RAM.
People begging for a redesign, though, there's a reason why it's the way it is. All that space means the computer runs cool and quiet even when strained. Now the G5 was a very hot chip, so maybe that's not needed quite so much anymore with modern Xeons, but there's more to computers giving out heat than just the CPUs. It keeps the GPUs cooler, keeps the many hard drives from getting too hot, and cools the high performance RAM.
No.
The 3770 is a mainstream derivative design. There is only x16. ( x20 if used a E3 1200 equiv model. )
http://ark.intel.com/products/65524/Intel-Core-i7-3770S-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/65523/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
You would be looking for something in the i7 3800 series (or 3900 ) which as the same 40 as the 1620 (although also a bit capped on max RAM). If comparing Apples to apples (i.e., based on the same core design. )
If the Mac Pro can pull down more workloads that used to go to clusters onto a single box then it shouldn't be a problem. The single machine at about the same energy consumption is likely less than what those multiple machines + networking gear required. The net energy consumption at that place of business would go down.
Similarly when no workload is running the new Xeon and GPUs tend to run much more energy efficiently (far more able to turn off unused subsystems). But folks who buy a Mac Pro to primarily do nothing but idle for a substantially large fraction of the day have a "product-need mismatch problem".
That says:
PCI Express Configurations
1x16, 2x8, 1x8 & 2x4
so 16+16=32
thats 32 Lanes so both my math and yours are off...
and 2011's have 40..I Posted that somewhere here..
Huh?? That says you can either have one x16 (= 16) or two x8 (= 16 ) or one x8 and two x4 ( 8 + 4 + 4 = 16 ) . Configurations is plural so there must be more than one there. They are grouped by the commas.
P.S. not sure why they mucked up the 3770. Check out.
http://ark.intel.com/products/64891/Intel-Core-i7-3720QM-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
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My reading says 1x16 and either 2@8 or 1@8 and 2@4
AHH never mind..it's 16 total lanes