External GPUs on Skylake Macs

[t0mat0]

The ability to use an external GPU hooked up via TB3 has been demonstrated.

Do you believe it's going to be offered on any Macs?
The "capability via a cable" nMac Pros currently don't have TB3. Nor do the recently released iMacs, so the next refreshed Macs seem more likely in line for this (Mac Pro/MBP seem both well suited to this).

If anyone has some general tech info on the e-GPU capability that'd be awesome too.

 

[Synchro3]

Intel did an announcement on computex:



I don't think an Apple eGPU solution will appear soon. But you don't need Thunderbolt 3 for an eGPU at all: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/building-external-gpus-on-mac-egpu.1893792/

 

[t0mat0]

Yup - Intel's Thunderbolt Marketing Director Jason Ziller has previously demonstrated it

and there was a little bit on TB3 at SIGGRAPH too. I'm not too concerned about an Apple eGPU solution vs 3rd party, just that that feature may be enabled. Whilst an 5K Apple Cinema Display that did eGPU may be a pipedream, it'd be great if Apple didn't squash the capability of TB to do eGPU.

Yes it was hackable to do on TB, but the doubling of rate and the feature being advertised publicly does offer some hope. Hacking KEXTs isn' something many would do.

A dock or chassis would help a lot of the Mac portable lineup. Heck, even a chassis would help desktop Macs - be it computation or for graphics performance for gaming (natively, in VM or in Bootcamp).