Apple Working on High-End Mac Mini With Additional Ports and More Powerful Chip From Next-Gen MacBook Pro

[fischersd]

how does this work? I thought discreet GPUs are a must for higher power capabilities. Its about the only thing Nvidia sells.

Apple knows they have to do something for the Mac Pro market. I'm sure they have teams working on a multi M2 or M2X project to address that. That's the advantage of designing their own silicon and system boards - they can design something truly innovative. I hope they come up with something that surprises everyone.

 

[EugW]

how does this work? I thought discreet GPUs are a must for higher power capabilities. Its about the only thing Nvidia sells.

Apple's entry level M1 Macs have 7 GPU cores.

The Bloomberg report states that the Mac Pro design would get up to 128 of such GPU cores. That would be pretty damn powerful. No need for third party GPU chips.

BTW, ironically, Nvidia actually owns Arm.

NVIDIA & ARM

Creating the premier computing company for the age of AI

arm.nvidia.com

 

[cmaier]

Apple's entry level M1 Macs have 7 GPU cores.

The Bloomberg report states that the Mac Pro design would get up to 128 of such GPU cores. That would be pretty damn powerful. No need for third party GPU chips.

BTW, ironically, Nvidia actually owns Arm.

NVIDIA & ARM

Creating the premier computing company for the age of AI

arm.nvidia.com

Not yet they don’t.

 

[EugW]

Not yet they don’t.

You are correct sir. I see they are getting a fair bit of resistance, esp. from the UK.

 

[Genkakuzai]

Some random points:

1) Nobody has 10 Gigabit internet access, but people are now getting close to 2 Gbps internet access. However, that's besides the point anyway. The point is that home intranets are now viable at 2.5 Gbps or even 10 Gbps. This is especially important because home office NASes >1 Gbps support now exist for reasonable cost.

Perhaps USians don't, but in other countries we've certainly got access to it. I could get it at home, but there's simply no need for it. It is, however, most definitely possible to get.

 

[name99]

If you’re not using a UPS with your desktop you aren’t doing it right.

If you're not using a UPS for your house (aka PowerWall) you aren't doing it right!

Oneupsmanship -- a game the whole family can play...

 

[EugW]

If you're not using a UPS for your house (aka PowerWall) you aren't doing it right!

Oneupsmanship -- a game the whole family can play...

 

[jerryk]

If you're not using a UPS for your house (aka PowerWall) you aren't doing it right!

Oneupsmanship -- a game the whole family can play...

I am a "belts and suspenders" sort of guy. Solar + Powerwalls + UPS owner.

This too much info, but ... Actually, the UPS is still needed with Powerwalls since when the grid goes down the Powerwall cuts off solar when the Powerwall(s) get full. They do this by raising the frequency of the house power to 61+ Hz (in the 60Hz countries) which can freak out sensitive electronics like computers. Having a small True Sinewave UPS between the wall outlet and power to take over and provide 60Hz over for a brief interval (milliseconds) required to shut down solar production is the recommended solution.

 

[theorist9]

how does this work? I thought discreet GPUs are a must for higher power capabilities. Its about the only thing Nvidia sells.

This new thread includes a good discussion of the current and predicted GPUs for the M-series chips:

Rumored pro chip

So now the rumor is a 10-core chip with only two efficiency cores. If so, the efficiency cores must be quite different than the M1 efficiency cores. I continue to stand by my (not at all informed by any wine I swear) claim that these will be M2 and not M1x. Or the rumor an (nobody i swear)...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[MacBH928]

Apple knows they have to do something for the Mac Pro market. I'm sure they have teams working on a multi M2 or M2X project to address that. That's the advantage of designing their own silicon and system boards - they can design something truly innovative. I hope they come up with something that surprises everyone.

NVIDIA & ARM

Creating the premier computing company for the age of AI

arm.nvidia.com

I am extremely skeptical that Apple can release a SoC with GPU as powerful as RTX 3090 for example.

Perhaps USians don't, but in other countries we've certainly got access to it. I could get it at home, but there's simply no need for it. It is, however, most definitely possible to get.

You mean you can actually have a subscription with your ISP that gives you download speeds of 1 GigaBYTE per second? As in a 75GB game would be downloaded in 1.3 minutes ? How much does that cost? Do servers even download at that speed?

 

[MacBH928]

3) I am hopeful the form factor will change. It's not critical, but it would be a bonus.

Good point, I think it has this looks for 15 years now. A change would be refreshing.

 

[Genkakuzai]

You mean you can actually have a subscription with your ISP that gives you download speeds of 1 GigaBYTE per second? As in a 75GB game would be downloaded in 1.3 minutes ? How much does that cost? Do servers even download at that speed?

I mean that I can get 10 Gbit access at home, through the fiber-optic network 95% of my area is connected to. The vast majority of servers obviously won't get anywhere near those speeds though, but that's kinda beside the point. As for the price I haven't even looked into it, I'm currently at 250/250 Mbit, but I reckon I'll upgrade to 500/500 in a while. Other than that I can't even pretend to have any use for even 1 Gbit, but it'll still be nice to have in the future, I reckon.

 

[EugW]

I am extremely skeptical that Apple can release a SoC with GPU as powerful as RTX 3090 for example.

Remember, the GPU of M1 competes against a 1650. That is with a measly 8 cores. If the Pro chips have similar cores, then its 32 GPU cores might compete against the RTX 3060.

But remember, the Mac Pro top-of-the-line configuration is rumoured to be up to 128 GPU cores! If true, that will be a very competitive solution, with lower power utilization too.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

You could have done that 2 1/2 years ago, you know?

I was referring to an M1-based Mac mini, but thanks for picking nits. 😛

A 2018 Mac mini would not have been an adequate replacement for my Mac Pro tower (with an AMD Radeon HD 9750 Sapphire Mac Edition card) or I would’ve bought one then.

I felt I would’ve required an extra eGPU setup to exceed my present graphics card. (Checking the UHD Graphics 630 benchmarks bears this out.) Once I heard about Apple Silicon coming along, I reconsidered - thinking maybe finally the on-chip graphics would be Good Enough. The only problem was the 16 GB limit.

 

[MacBH928]

Remember, the GPU of M1 competes against a 1650. That is with a measly 8 cores. If the Pro chips have similar cores, then its 32 GPU cores might compete against the RTX 3060.

But remember, the Mac Pro top-of-the-line configuration is rumoured to be up to 128 GPU cores! If true, that will be a very competitive solution, with lower power utilization too.

I have to see it to believe, I don't think any one released a SoC before that beats a combination of a CPU and high end dGPU.

 

[quarkysg]

I have to see it to believe, I don't think any one released a SoC before that beats a combination of a CPU and high end dGPU.

Can’t wait until WWDC ‘21, which I think Apple will announce the next Mac SoC.

 

[cmaier]

Can’t wait until WWDC ‘21, which I think Apple will announce the next Mac SoC.

They will

 

[EugW]

I have to see it to believe, I don't think any one released a SoC before that beats a combination of a CPU and high end dGPU.

Few expected Apple to be able to create an ARM SoC at a fraction of the power usage that bested Intel's best desktop CPUs for single-core performance, but nonetheless Apple did it. Intel got so worried they actually started an ad campaign with cherry picked benchmarks showing how they were "better" than M1.

Anyhow, even if Apple doesn't beat Nvidia's best, it doesn't have to. All it needs to do is get close. I think the coming Mac Pro design will at least get close to Nvidia's best consumer GPUs, but also has a decent chance of beating nVidia's best too.

Note that such a Mac Pro chip design might effectively be the equivalent of 4 MacBook Pro SoCs stuck together, not one large monolithic chip design.

 

[Schismz]

Are you being serious or joking? Yes I’m old so I use a UPS. But it weighs as much as the iMac, and I’ve got other equipment plugged in to it. Moving iMac from office to the kitchen without turning it off would require keeping it plugged in to the ups and moving them both at the same time. A built in UPS would be nicer. Do young people brought up with laptops know what a UPS is?

I'm sure they don't, neither does anybody using an iPad which is the device my kid and wife both wander around with super-glued to their hand whenever they set down their phone.

OTOH I've got 3 UPS; one for Mac Pro, another for Display & Peripherals, and the 3rd for NAS.

They don’t. Nor do people who live in countries with robust power delivery (*cough*).

<Raising hand> I live in a first world country, I think the cheapest house in my neighborhood starts at around $950K, but we live in a forest in the middle of nowhere -- by choice -- and the whole-house backup generator takes roughly 10 seconds to kick in and supply power whenever the inevitable happens and a tree somewhere nearby downs a power line. Therefore, UPS? It's not really that crazy, more of a necessity. For that matter when I lived in NYC apartments it was the same thing- power is fine for your portable devices, but highly suboptimal with spikes and sags for Mac Pro, servers, etc. I honestly don't know about iMac or Mac mini, it probably doesn't draw enough power to really notice/care when there are sags or brownouts.

 

[smulji]

These aren’t firestorm/ice storm cores.

How sure are you about that? From what I know the code name for Apple's next core architecture is Avalanche.

 

[smulji]

It will be a bigger imac, not an iMac Pro. More professional colors, though.

You think this bigger iMac will debut during WWDC?

 

[cmaier]

I'm sure they don't, neither does anybody using an iPad which is the device my kid and wife both wander around with super-glued to their hand whenever they set down their phone.

OTOH I've got 3 UPS; one for Mac Pro, another for Display & Peripherals, and the 3rd for NAS.



<Raising hand> I live in a first world country, I think the cheapest house in my neighborhood starts at around $950K, but we live in a forest in the middle of nowhere -- by choice -- and the whole-house backup generator takes roughly 10 seconds to kick in and supply power whenever the inevitable happens and a tree somewhere nearby downs a power line. Therefore, UPS? It's not really that crazy, more of a necessity. For that matter when I lived in NYC apartments it was the same thing- power is fine for your portable devices, but highly suboptimal with spikes and sags for Mac Pro, servers, etc. I honestly don't know about iMac or Mac mini, it probably doesn't draw enough power to really notice/care when there are sags or brownouts.

UPS FTW. I’ve got one for my main wifi router and cable modem, and one each for two NAS’s. Last time we had a blackout, this kept my internet going for hours, while the NAS’s automatically shut down gracefully when their UPS’s were nearing the end of their juice. Luckily most of my macs are laptops. The one iMac we have just sits on a desk and isn’t used much anymore, so no UPS on that.

 

[Stephen.R]

UPS FTW. I’ve got one for my main wifi router and cable modem, and one each for two NAS’s. Last time we had a blackout, this kept my internet going for hours, while the NAS’s automatically shut down gracefully when their UPS’s were nearing the end of their juice. Luckily most of my macs are laptops. The one iMac we have just sits on a desk and isn’t used much anymore, so no UPS on that.

My only complaint is that pure dc ups’ aren’t more common.

for stuff like routers/etc that have a brick they’re much more efficient.

 

[EntropyQ3]

<Raising hand> I live in a first world country, I think the cheapest house in my neighborhood starts at around $950K, but we live in a forest in the middle of nowhere -- by choice -- and the whole-house backup generator takes roughly 10 seconds to kick in and supply power whenever the inevitable happens and a tree somewhere nearby downs a power line. Therefore, UPS? It's not really that crazy, more of a necessity. For that matter when I lived in NYC apartments it was the same thing- power is fine for your portable devices, but highly suboptimal with spikes and sags for Mac Pro, servers, etc. I honestly don't know about iMac or Mac mini, it probably doesn't draw enough power to really notice/care when there are sags or brownouts.

Well, I’m seriously middle aged and must have been decades since I’ve experienced any power outage at all lightning storms and clumsy digging included. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, or that it hasn’t happened and I didn’t notice, but just judging by forum comments (the very definition of anecdotal evidence) the grid in the US seems a fair bit less robust in general. National infrastructure here has typically been built by the government, not by private interests. UPS:s do exist here, but very, very few are owned by consumers.
Nevertheless I do think it could be a decent idea for the new iMacs or the Mini to have a small built-in battery that could power the machine for long enough to notify the user and then arrange/allow a graceful shut down. It’s no problem to pull the plug on a laptop and keep going, so doing this cheaply should be no effort at all.

 

[cmaier]

Well, I’m seriously middle aged and must have been decades since I’ve experienced any power outage at all lightning storms and clumsy digging included. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, or that it hasn’t happened and I didn’t notice, but just judging by forum comments (the very definition of anecdotal evidence) the grid in the US seems a fair bit less robust in general. National infrastructure here has typically been built by the government, not by private interests. UPS:s do exist here, but very, very few are owned by consumers.
Nevertheless I do think it could be a decent idea for the new iMacs or the Mini to have a small built-in battery that could power the machine for long enough to notify the user and then arrange/allow a graceful shut down. It’s no problem to pull the plug on a laptop and keep going, so doing this cheaply should be no effort at all.

Since it will almost always be connected to power, the battery would tend to dgrade pretty quickly. And they swell up, etc. Just one more thing to break, adds to cost, etc. And often not needed, either because you have a bulletproof grid, or you have backup generators, solar, or a UPS. Not worth the hassle.