I mean, fine, if you have Carole Baskin's sense of taste, that's just you man.
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Apple Working on Redesigned Mac Pro With Smaller Form Factor and Apple Silicon Chip
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Yes please.
Well, specifically, I'm hoping for a Mini-ish ASi machine for a moderate CPU performance bump but a dramatic improvement in the GPU (since the current MM is pretty low end, in that capacity), combined with improved thermals.
Plus, I'd love if a "Pro" machine would allow for a little easier, and no-warranty issue RAM upgrades. They got close with the current Mini, it's "user upgradable" but there's conflicting language in the warranty, and they could've engineered it to be a little easier - and even if the OEM storage is soldered, add one internal slot so I can drop in my own (2nd) NVMe drive (I realize this is a bit of a pipedream, and there's always external, which is what I'm doing now with a TB3 drive).
Pick up a spare here for less than $1000! I mean, if your needs are met by an old system, why even bother with something new?
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Isn’t the point of the Silicon chip to have soc’s (taking over the work of the dedicated GPU) and integrated memory on a chip.So how would a GPU work? And if there is no GPU support then why have expansion bays unless it is for storage which could be done externally. I could be really confused about how this new architecture could work but if I am not I don’t see the new Mac Pro mini working in the way people assume it would work.
The point of the Apple Silicon is to improve performance and control their roadmap, not to have SoC’s. There will doubtless be versions with the GPU in the CPU package (perhaps on the SoC, perhaps not). But you can also use unified memory and still have the GPU be in a separate chip package.
Bring it. I'm all for a smaller, lower spec'd, less expensive MacPro. I have one at work and because of it I have NO intentions on bringing home something that large and expensive.
Snow Leopard continued to be awesome for PPC for quite a while.
Man, I miss my white PPC iMac. That was a great machine.
Clearly they wouldn't have released it if they didn't think it would sell in reasonable volumes. My guess is the Mac Pro hasn't sold very well for a long time. The iMac Pro was a fairly strong indication they were giving up on workstation type machines. It was only after a lot of complaints from a few noisy individuals in the Mac community that they changed direction.
I also wonder whether they can even achieve similar performance to the Intel chips in the Mac Pro, that is a long way from where they are with todays products. I know we were promised a transition within two years but I don't think they said anything about specific products coming or going.
Again I don't think it's going to see the light before at least 2 years. Remember when Apple OFFICIALLY announced that they're working on a modular Mac Pro? that was in 2017
Apple Says All-New Modular Mac Pro With Apple-Branded High-End Pro Display Coming After 2017
Apple today reshuffled its Mac Pro configurations and pricing, marking the first "update" to Apple's pro-oriented desktop computer in...www.macrumors.com
This is substantively easier to do than that if they simply reuse most of the work done on the Mac Pro 2019 enclosure and also reuse a SoC that was developed for the iMac that had some decent I/O planned into it all along.
Remove 1 MPX bay and several PCI-e slots would simply be throwing out the middle fan and everything "behind" it. That is a 1/3 right there in one big swoop. If trying to get to 'half' size only have 1/6th left to weed out. ( wouldn't be too hard if shrank the CPU 'zone' fan a bit and got rid of the ability to put a two x 3.5" drive cage in the upper section.
Reuse the MPX Bay design for the remaining slots. Remove six or more DIMM slots on the back side. The build in I/O ports are all on break out boards. So they could be just smiply moved to a new location. And basically done.
Same fancy CNC holes in the front just over a smaller area. Could keep the same "twist off and lift" outer cover over just a shorter "space frame" ( again how hard is it to just make the frame shorter by about 8 inches. )
The more a Apple Silicon needs a SoC package that isn't present in any other Mac the longer it will probably take. But cutting the Mac Pro "in half" likely means that they are walking this smaller system back to the SoCss in the rest of the Mac line up. ( lower I/O bandwidth and capacity. Smaller package and pins outs. ) If they chop it all the way down to just one slot then probably pretty high overlap with what they came up for the upper end of the iMac ( iMac Pro) part of the market. If walk back to somewhat being just a "headless iMac" then wouldn't take extra ordinary time at all to finish. ( probably won't be the often requested xMac in terms of price though. )
If Apple's objective of "half the size" was shrinking all three dimensions smaller. to get to "half" the volume. Half the width and depth as well as the height then yeah that would probably take a longer time. Several basics of the frame and case design would need more work and probably would get caught in "Industrial Design" limbo for a longer amount of time. The graphics cards would be even more proprietary and custom.
i've bought 8 mac pros in the last year, dont feel bad for us.. they are 4x faster than our previous machines. They have already paid for themselves. We'll get 3-4 yrs out of them easily.
Apple doesn't hate money.
I can see the machine having a lower entry price, but it's not suddenly gonna' be the xMac people dream of. If people are lucky it'll go back down to $4 or 5K, not 6.
Given how relatively niche the product line is, I don't really know what to make of this rumor. I don't think Apple needed to go as high-end a workstation as they did, but I don't think making a smaller version does much to address their problems. If you've got a big box with slots, that's a pretty simple product to keep updated. Especially when thermal performance actually matters for a machine like this, shrinking it down because their chips aren't gonna' run as hot as Intel doesn't seem like a smart decision. They've been burned by chips getting hotter, not cooler, in later revisions (the tube Mac Pro.)
Pros have mostly been asking Apple to keep updating their hardware on a regular schedule. I don't think a lot of people are eager to see Apple try and "shake things up" more than they have because that way leads to disappointment for many of them.
It's no different than Intel CPUs containing integrated graphics. For a mobile device, the SoC is all you want. If it's a desktop enclosure, might as well put slots on the system bus and let people add graphics cards.
That’s stupid. You think it’s much cheaper hiring hundreds of chip designers and paying for wafer starts vs paying Intel to do it? Suggest you get a few degrees in semiconductor engineering and then revisit.
Going to Apple silicon & Apple GPUs; the only real need for full-size PCIe slots would be the audio guys...
But I would think TB4 could handle a LOT of that need by then, either from faster "breakout boxes" or straight-up PCIe expansion chassis; Apple could do an "Applified" PCIe expansion chassis that bridged several TB4 ports together for increased bandwidth...?
So yeah, back to the "expansion by cable" method, tied & true in the finest of Trashcan ways...! But hey, is that not also the same model as the entire laptop & iMac line-ups have; expansion by cable...?!?
Actually, my idea of a new Mac Cube (see below) DOES have expansion...
It's just, well, proprietary expansion...! Yay...! Daughtercards...!
So the MPX-C (Compact) is not really like the "additional slot dealio" of the current Mac Pro, it is an Apple proprietary super duper high speed interconnect, because you can only get daughtercards from Apple (for now)...! ;^p
Enjoy...!
Mac Pro Cube
48 P cores / 6 E cores / 96 GPU cores - CPU & GPU Chiplets on interposer / System in Package (SiP) design
HBMnext Unified Memory Architecture - 64GB / 128GB / 256GB / 512GB
NVMe SSDs (dual NAND blades) 2TB / 4TB / 8TB / 16TB
Eight USB4 / TB4 ports (plenty of expansion ports for external drives, displays, a/v interfaces, control surfaces, etc.)
Two 10Gb Ethernet ports
One HDMI 2.1 port
Four MPX-C slots (for use with asst. MPX-C expansion modules)
Apple MPX-C Expansion Modules
NVMe RAID Storage Module (Quad NAND blades) 4TB / 8TB / 16TB / 32TB
GPU / GPGPU Module (96 cores)
FPGA Module (audio/video)
Neural Engine Module (AI/ML)
The perfect personal workstation for a wide variety of tasks...!
Imagine the below, big flow thru heat sinks on all the needed bits, massive 200x30mm Noctua fan on the front, chugging air thru the system; just like the three fans on the current Mac Pro do...
A modified pic of the 2019 Mac Pro:
But I would think TB4 could handle a LOT of that need by then, either from faster "breakout boxes" or straight-up PCIe expansion chassis; Apple could do an "Applified" PCIe expansion chassis that bridged several TB4 ports together for increased bandwidth...?
So yeah, back to the "expansion by cable" method, tied & true in the finest of Trashcan ways...! But hey, is that not also the same model as the entire laptop & iMac line-ups have; expansion by cable...?!?
Actually, my idea of a new Mac Cube (see below) DOES have expansion...
It's just, well, proprietary expansion...! Yay...! Daughtercards...!
So the MPX-C (Compact) is not really like the "additional slot dealio" of the current Mac Pro, it is an Apple proprietary super duper high speed interconnect, because you can only get daughtercards from Apple (for now)...! ;^p
Enjoy...!
Mac Pro Cube
48 P cores / 6 E cores / 96 GPU cores - CPU & GPU Chiplets on interposer / System in Package (SiP) design
HBMnext Unified Memory Architecture - 64GB / 128GB / 256GB / 512GB
NVMe SSDs (dual NAND blades) 2TB / 4TB / 8TB / 16TB
Eight USB4 / TB4 ports (plenty of expansion ports for external drives, displays, a/v interfaces, control surfaces, etc.)
Two 10Gb Ethernet ports
One HDMI 2.1 port
Four MPX-C slots (for use with asst. MPX-C expansion modules)
Apple MPX-C Expansion Modules
NVMe RAID Storage Module (Quad NAND blades) 4TB / 8TB / 16TB / 32TB
GPU / GPGPU Module (96 cores)
FPGA Module (audio/video)
Neural Engine Module (AI/ML)
The perfect personal workstation for a wide variety of tasks...!
Imagine the below, big flow thru heat sinks on all the needed bits, massive 200x30mm Noctua fan on the front, chugging air thru the system; just like the three fans on the current Mac Pro do...
A modified pic of the 2019 Mac Pro:
Last edited:
This might be a dumb question.. Are there any systems with dual socket ARM processors? Also.. When these processors access ram is it the same process like a CPU x86? Dual socket systems for example need 128gb of ram on each CPU for a total of 128GB for the system. Am I way off?
It will be:
- the best Mac Pro they've ever designed (as everything)
- extremely overpriced (as everything)
- impossible to fix (as almost everything)
- impossible to upgrade (as almost everything)
And it will have:
- beautiful eco packaging, so small that the power cable won't fit in and you'll have to buy it in a separate eco packaging and pay extra eco shipping costs
- no ports (all accessories will have to be connected via separate extensions, all of them will be very expensive and will be send to you in separate eco packagings and you will pay for it)
- special eco sign of pure narcissism
engraved into it
💩
- the best Mac Pro they've ever designed (as everything)
- extremely overpriced (as everything)
- impossible to fix (as almost everything)
- impossible to upgrade (as almost everything)
And it will have:
- beautiful eco packaging, so small that the power cable won't fit in and you'll have to buy it in a separate eco packaging and pay extra eco shipping costs
- no ports (all accessories will have to be connected via separate extensions, all of them will be very expensive and will be send to you in separate eco packagings and you will pay for it)
- special eco sign of pure narcissism
engraved into it💩
I think super micro has dual socket ARM processor board. And yeah, both processors access all the system RAM. There was only one system that I know of that had dedicated resources for each processor and it ran Plan 9.
A sense of interior decoration ain’t gonna affect a P3 colour gamut and pixel resolution.