Gurman: All-New Mac Pro Still in Testing, But 'M2 Extreme' Chip Likely Canceled

[cocoua]

if there isn't a M2 Extreme because tech limitations/cost .... this is very bad news for Apple Silicon reputation.

Intel must be very relieved

Common people loves long lasting Apple's portables, but PC are getting there also, maybe not so powerful, but gamers, 3D creators and video editors love as much as power as you can give to them, and they are the ones who impulse PC world. (common people are just happy with 10 years old CPU and 500MB/S SSD)

Im happy with my M1Max, no noise, no heat... but if Intel is already beyond the Ultra, next X86 would be even better. Of course at 500W cost... but again... who cares ~100USD more of power bills cost a year when it is saving tons of time. Time is beyond money by far.

 

[Boil]

Yes, as you noted in one of your other posts, that was due to supply shortages perhaps— and, more of a runway given to first two M1 machines (MBP & MBA 2020) to give developers lead time to write for the new architecture.

2020 M1 Mac mini was also part of the initial Apple silicon Mac launch...

There was a rumor that there was a "one slot wonder" Mac Pro prototype.

First was a quad M1 Max-based Mac Pro with a single PCIe slot...

Next came the dual M2 Max-based unit with six PCIe slots...

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Their whole Rip van Winkle attitude toward their desktop products makes it look like they are going the Scrooge McDuck route and spend as little as possible on desktop ( and keep smoking that 'laptop SoC works' crack pipe. ). Putting a M2 inside of a Mini is 'hard' for Apple to do how? It jkust looks like intentional laziness. And lazy isn't going to produce a next tier over Ultra.

Most of their customers are buying systems with their laptop SoC’s, though. Apple likely sees dollars spent on desktop pursuits having a total lower ROI than mobile ones. If they didn’t put an M2 in a Mini, I’d say it’s because it just makes more financial sense to put it in a laptop.

 

[Edgecrusherr]

As much as I’d like to see discrete GPUs and RAM slots, I really don’t think that’s the way they’re going. Apple’s platform is going to be hyper-focused on the big.LITTLE philosophy. They’re pretty much just going to start with a smaller SoC for base lower end computers, then scale up for higher end—with the goal of keeping as much inside the SoC as possible. I would not be surprised if they move the storage inside the SoC in the next 5-10 years, and advertise it as their latest way to increase performance and power savings.

 

[Edgecrusherr]

I think we all remember when a lot of Apples devices were affordable.

My first (and, as of right now) last Mac was my MacBook Pro from 2010 and it was $1200. And upgradeable. A couple of upgrades kept it working as my daily for 12 years.

If I wanted an equivalent MacBook today, being forced to pay Apple’s upgrade prices? Probably about $2,000.

Your $1200 MacBook Pro would be $1,638 in today's money (inflation is really crazy), so $362 isn't great, but not too bad, but you make a solid point about upgradability. The problem is the updates have to be done day 1, not a little down the road when you may need it; and they have to be Apple's premium cost, not cheaper, but adequate 3rd parties. My Mac Pro 2010 came with 32GB of RAM, I took it 64GB around 2016, then to 96GB in 2020. Each RAM upgrade was the same price or cheaper than the previous one, thanks to the prices coming down with the memory technology got older. We're now forced to go all-in upfront, and it sucks.

I wish at the very least we'd get to have upgradable storage. The Studio and Mac Pro do have upgradable storage, but it has to be done by Apple for so much money that you might as well had gotten more when you bought the computer.

 

[_Spinn_]

Well this is disappointing. The Mac Pro is basically going to be the Mac Studio with expansion capabilities? I was really looking forward to seeing the M2 Extreme.

 

[Edgecrusherr]

View attachment 2130219
For what they were, they were affordable.

Just for some context, that's a sale ad from 1998, and in today's money, that's a $2,372 sale price on a $2,920 MSRP.

The big problem is that Apple starts the towers at the very high end, and doesn't offer a tower that's more basic for around the $1500-$2000 range. They want you to get the Mac mini for the power to low-mid range, then Studio for the low-mid to mid-high end.If they had a $2000 M1 Pro tower, I'd buy it right now. I need the expansion slots more than I need the power of the M1 Ultra or Max.

 

[theorist9]

The M2 Ultra chip is destined to have some serious specifications for professional users, including up to 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores and the ability to top out the machine with at least 192 gigabytes of memory.... the Mac Pro is expected to rely on a new-generation M2 Ultra chip (rather than the M1 Ultra) and will retain one of its hallmark features: easy expandability for additional memory, storage and other components.
--Mark Gurman

I don't know what this means. Does the its refer to the Ultra or the Mac Pro? If the latter, Is he saying that the Mac Pro will offer the same 192 GB max unified RAM that's expected for the M2 Ultra but, unlike the Studio, will have secondary RAM that is expandable beyond that?

 

[falainber]

Wrong! During single-core benchmarks there is no heat coming from the other cores, so the number of cores is absolutely irrelevant. And despite it's higher TurboBoost frequency the Intel Xeon core is still slower than a Firestorm core, because the ARM core is calculating more per cycle.

And in multi-core benchmarks where the 28-core Intel Xeon has indeed a theoretical core count disadvantage against the 20-core M1 Ultra, a 20-core Intel Xeon would be even slower. Because you not only lose the heat from 8 fewer cores, but also the performance from 8 fewer cores.

You simply can't built a competitive CPU on x86 architecture, because of its inherent inefficiency. It doesn't matter wether the M1 octa-core has more cores than all the dual-core, quad-core and six-core i3, i5 and i7 it replaces or if the M1 Ultra has fewer cores than the highest Intel Xeon. arm64 is always better than x86 period. All the extra energy is turned into heat, not performance.

But the M1 Ultra is a chiplet architecture. Two M1 Max chips fused together! So what are you trying to say?

M1 does not have a chiplet architecture. It has two fused dies. This solution does not scale. For it to scale, one needs a fast interconnect. AMD uses Infinity Fabric. Intel uses EMIB.

 

[HunterW]

I was hoping for M2 Ludicrous.

I was hoping for M2 Infinity.

 

[urib2]

Im happy with my M1Max, no noise, no heat... but if Intel is already beyond the Ultra, next X86 would be even better. Of course at 500W cost... but again... who cares ~100USD more of power bills cost a year when it is saving tons of time. Time is beyond money by far.

You really don't know how fast Intel processors are?
Let's take the popular software Photoshop, the fastest and most equipped Mac Studio achieves a result of 1113 points while an Intel processor achieves a result of 1660 points without overclocking.
Another popular After Effects software, again Mac Studio 1249 points.
Intel processor 1722 points.
And it's only about CPU, you don't want to know what the 4090 card is capable of doing...

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

 

[PauloSera]

if there isn't a M2 Extreme because tech limitations/cost .... this is very bad news for Apple Silicon reputation.

Intel must be very relieved

Common people loves long lasting Apple's portables, but PC are getting there also, maybe not so powerful, but gamers, 3D creators and video editors love as much as power as you can give to them, and they are the ones who impulse PC world. (common people are just happy with 10 years old CPU and 500MB/S SSD)

Im happy with my M1Max, no noise, no heat... but if Intel is already beyond the Ultra, next X86 would be even better. Of course at 500W cost... but again... who cares ~100USD more of power bills cost a year when it is saving tons of time. Time is beyond money by far.

Lmao. Dude. Apple Silicon is important because the products that use it have more power than the user will ever need, while also having unreal battery life and being totally silent and cool to the touch. Intel can't deliver that. Those are products. Not just chips. Raw performance stopped being important a long, long time ago. There isn't anything we can't do. It's just a question of doing a small set of tasks slightly faster.

 

[HunterW]

Are we going to get M2 Mac Pro Ultra Wheels as well?

Yes, with a NASA grade rocket engine on the side.

 

[PauloSera]

Most of their customers are buying systems with their laptop SoC’s, though. Apple likely sees dollars spent on desktop pursuits having a total lower ROI than mobile ones. If they didn’t put an M2 in a Mini, I’d say it’s because it just makes more financial sense to put it in a laptop.

Apple hasn't put an M2 in a mini because it wouldn't sell a single additional unit beyond what will already sell with an M1. Even a modest update like that costs Apple money, and Apple isn't interested in doing it unless there is money to be made. Not just for the public image of products being "updated".

 

[therunningman]

Are we going to get M2 Mac Pro Ultra Wheels as well?

$200/wheel

 

[atonaldenim]

You really don't know how fast Intel processors are?
Let's take the popular software Photoshop, the fastest and most equipped Mac Studio achieves a result of 1113 points while an Intel processor achieves a result of 1660 points without overclocking.
Another popular After Effects software, again Mac Studio 1249 points.
Intel processor 1722 points.
And it's only about CPU, you don't want to know what the 4090 card is capable of doing...

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

Puget’s benchmarks are not Apple Silicon native, they are Intel code. I have run the Premiere benchmark on my Mac Studio and I had to run Premiere in Intel Rosetta mode for the benchmark to work.

I wish Puget would make Apple Silicon Mac compatible benchmarks, it would be very useful! But as they are in the business of selling custom Windows systems, I think they are in no hurry to optimize for Apple Silicon, the price-to-performance comparison with their own products would be too embarrassing.

 

[cocoua]

You really don't know how fast Intel processors are?
Let's take the popular software Photoshop, the fastest and most equipped Mac Studio achieves a result of 1113 points while an Intel processor achieves a result of 1660 points without overclocking.
Another popular After Effects software, again Mac Studio 1249 points.
Intel processor 1722 points.
And it's only about CPU, you don't want to know what the 4090 card is capable of doing...

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

that's what I'm talking about!! maybe my English is not good enough, sorry about that.

 

[Gudi]

M1 does not have a chiplet architecture. It has two fused dies. This solution does not scale. For it to scale, one needs a fast interconnect. AMD uses Infinity Fabric. Intel uses EMIB.

Apple’s M1 Ultra chip uses chiplet architecture to make Mac PCs faster

I'm not an expert, but experts tell me the way how one M1 Ultra is made out of two M1 Max is called chiplet technology.

 

[cocoua]

Lmao. Dude. Apple Silicon is important because the products that use it have more power than the user will ever need, while also having unreal battery life and being totally silent and cool to the touch. Intel can't deliver that. Those are products. Not just chips. Raw performance stopped being important a long, long time ago. There isn't anything we can't do. It's just a question of doing a small set of tasks slightly faster.

well, I think we are different profiles, I have to export movies 12 hours long, I need to do renders at night. In the 2000 I did wait 12 hours for a 30 second render in After Effects at 480 and now the projects are 4K, so the quality its far far better than before, but computers get better, and the media we created gets better quality, the thing here is, my renders are never go down to a few second, because what we create is just limited about the technology we have.

So, even if I got a M8 at 16GHZ with 2TB of RAM, my renders would be 12 hours long because the resolution of the final movie, probably would be 25K for dual screen and "Ultra VR ready" or whatever.

NOW, if you only surf web, and are happy with 10 tabs, office, the calculator and spotify playing a song, yes, my 10 years old white Macbook is what my daughter uses for school, 8GB RAM and a 500MB/S SSD makes the core Intel duo fast enough to do such task.

In the meanwhile, there are lot of users who needs all the power the final quality and the public demands.

Apple is top notch personal computer company, not having a on pair with competition workstation SOC is catastrophic.

 

[deconstruct60]

I don't know what this means. Does the its refer to the Ultra or the Mac Pro? If the latter, Is he saying that the Mac Pro will offer the same 192 GB max unified RAM that's expected for the M2 Ultra but, unlike the Studio, will have secondary RAM that is expandable beyond that?

I read that as the 'its' is the Mac Pro's features of some expandability. I suspect RAM being tossed into the other two since the older Mac Pro's have it. But I suspect it is not good expectation management. Decent chance it is sizzle so that more folks click on the article. (modular RAM is back ...it is not quite as bad as it sounds.)


If the Mac Pro offer's several PCI-e slots though they really do need a slightly different Ultra though. Eight x1 PCI-e v4 lanes isn't going to pass muster for provisioning out any decent backhaul for some full sized slots. Neither is dripping out x4 PCI-e v3 out of an 'extra' Thunderbolt controllers.

Wouldn't be too hard to put an enhanced I/O silicon chip block between the UltraFusion connectors.

[ M2 ][ MP PCI-e controller][ M2 ] where the cores of the M2 'Max' on either side just talked through the relatively much smaller chip in the middle.

When the studio didn't need the MP PCI-e controller could just direct connect them if willing to build a different package. It would be a slightly different Ultra.

 

[PauloSera]

well, I think we are different profiles, I have to export movies 12 hours long, I need to do renders at night. In the 2000 I did wait 12 hours for a 30 second render in After Effects at 480 and now the projects are 4K, so the quality its far far better than before, but computers get better, and the media we created gets better quality, the thing here is, my renders are never go down to a few second, because what we create is just limited about the technology we have.

So, even if I got a M8 at 16GHZ with 2TB of RAM, my renders would be 12 hours long because the resolution of the final movie, probably would be 25K for dual screen and "Ultra VR ready" or whatever.

NOW, if you only surf web, and are happy with 10 tabs, office, the calculator and spotify playing a song, yes, my 10 years old white Macbook is what my daughter uses for school, 8GB RAM and a 500MB/S SSD makes the core Intel duo fast enough to do such task.

In the meanwhile, there are lot of users who needs all the power the final quality and the public demands.

Apple is top notch personal computer company, not having a on pair with competition workstation SOC is catastrophic.

How long is a 4K render taking you now on an M1 Ultra? I assume that's what you're using since it is the fastest thing Apple offers, and you seem very concerned about the M2 Extreme.

If it were me I would be using whatever hardware exists to cut that render time down, regardless of who it comes from. I would just do whatever work I can on the Mac (for sanity) and then use whatever renders fastest for that part.

Of course, if you're resigned to overnight renders and don't really care if it takes 5 or 8 or 12 hours...then your options broaden and it doesn't matter so much.

 

[theorist9]

I read that as the 'its' is the Mac Pro's features of some expandability. I suspect RAM being tossed into the other two since the older Mac Pro's have it. But I suspect it is not good expectation management. Decent chance it is sizzle so that more folks click on the article. (modular RAM is back ...it is not quite as bad as it sounds.)


If the Mac Pro offer's several PCI-e slots though they really do need a slightly different Ultra though. Eight x1 PCI-e v4 lanes isn't going to pass muster for provisioning out any decent backhaul for some full sized slots. Neither is dripping out x4 PCI-e v3 out of an 'extra' Thunderbolt controllers.

Wouldn't be too hard to put an enhanced I/O silicon chip block between the UltraFusion connectors.

[ M2 ][ MP PCI-e controller][ M2 ] where the cores of the M2 'Max' on either side just talked through the relatively much smaller chip in the middle.

When the studio didn't need the MP PCI-e controller could just direct connect them if willing to build a different package. It would be a slightly different Ultra.

Offering an abundance of external PCIe slots, like on the Intel Mac Pro, does seem like the minimum they need to do to differentiate this from the Studio. But expandable RAM and GPU would really help, since that's where it would really fall short compared with other workstations.

Well, maybe processing power as well: An M2 Ultra should have GB MC ~30,000, as compared with ~27,000 for the 64-core Threadripper and ~38,000 for top-of-the-line Sapphire Rapids Xeon Platinum 8480 scores—though if we're talking Mac Pro pricing, we should be comparing with a 2x 8480, which would be ~72,000.

 

[InuNacho]

Just for some context, that's a sale ad from 1998, and in today's money, that's a $2,372 sale price on a $2,920 MSRP.

The big problem is that Apple starts the towers at the very high end, and doesn't offer a tower that's more basic for around the $1500-$2000 range. They want you to get the Mac mini for the power to low-mid range, then Studio for the low-mid to mid-high end.If they had a $2000 M1 Pro tower, I'd buy it right now. I need the expansion slots more than I need the power of the M1 Ultra or Max.

Oh I know the call of expansion slots. My art studio PC has a multitude of different scanners and printers hooked up to it and back before I sold my 2018 Mini, MacOS was complaining all the time about USB devices plugged into hubs and docks and giving me ejection errors left and right. If it wasn't just crapping out, it was causing major interference with other devices.
Before the Mini I had a fully specced out 2010 Pro with 12 cores, 64 GB of ram, tons of storage, etc.
My processing needs are content on my art studio's i7-8700, the Quadro's 8GB are great for the big Affinity files I create, and 64GB of ram is plenty. I may get a newer single slot card for when I start backing up analog video again. I have a BlackMagic card in my tower ready to go.


On to that G4, I actually bought a used low-end AGP Sawtooth back in the early 2000s and kept it up to 2008 before retiring it. I maxed out ram, put in a new graphics card, and even found a second hand CPU upgrade for it. All in all it wasn't a bad experience.

 

[NY Guitarist]

I was ready to buy a Mac Pro until Apple announced the Mac Pro would soon transition to SoC.

As I waited for the updated Mac Pro I picked up the Mac Studio Ultra last summer and push this machine hard. It always delivers.

As happy as I am with the Studio I want/need expansion so I'm still waiting for the MacPro. Who knows, maybe we'll get a Dual M2 Ultra!

 

[darthaddie]

Feb 2023.

Gurman: All-New Mac Pro now in hand of select devs, 'M2 Extreme' Likely Coming despite earlier claims...​