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Gurman: All-New Mac Pro Still in Testing, But 'M2 Extreme' Chip Likely Canceled
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The M1 , M1 Pro , and Max are monolithic , single dies . They are nor fused ( or physically literally Chopped smaller than their wafer scribe lines ) . The M1 Ultra is not fused anymore than any other die is ‘glued’ / attached to its package. Your are confusing Apple’s marketing name , “UltraFusion” for an actual technological class. UltraFusion is TSMC’s Info-LSI , 3D packaging technology. It is in the same class as EMIB . Both layer two or more dies on top of an limited size interposed the uses dramatically smaller than normal pads/bumps to route signlas between the two packages. TSMC has a bit smaller pads but it is generally the same technique that uses three dies in the Apple set up .
If go with a pedantic definition that a chiplet has to be functionally incomplete then the M1 max dies in an Ultra are not chiplets. However pragmatically once set into Ultra context they are not independent technically the Max cannot provision the same set of port ( a Max Studio does not have same front ports as an Ultra Studio. So thr Max version is somewhat functionally incomplete if actually need a front facing Thunderbolt port .)
They are ‘design once ‘ and ‘drop the number you need into the package’ fashion that is representa of a chiplet . The M1 Max is too chunky to be an effective scaling chiplet. It has too much stuff ( baggage) to scale past two without wasting die space . So it is not great chiplet design, but it is being used that way.
Those of us that used Mac Pros actually pushed the system as hard as we could. As a 3d artist, I would peg my CPU for hours at a time. I am sure I could still surf the 'net & do light tasks with my (now long retired) 1,1. But real work is out the window.
Apple abandoned the 3D market years ago with the trashcan and the refusal to sign off on the Turing class GPUs.
The cheese graters were actually affordable, Allen. They were general purpose desktop workstations that were priced within a couple hundred dollars of their Dell and HP counterparts. Any Apple user could afford them because they weren't actually that much more than an iMac.
Which is why I dumped the Mac Pro & went with a Ryzen based system.
3d Art - my system will use all of the cores, ram, and video cards I can throw at it - and ask for more. I had a hot rodded 4,1 (see sig) for the work, and a separate render farm (multiple HP Z210's) for the rendering portion.
And I am a hobbyist, using bottom of the stack software.
There is nothing to "update"; every subsystem in the 7,1 was obsolete the day it was launched. Apple would have to start all over.
When did Apple say soon? Apple said ‘later’ . That is effectively not soon. It is end user chatter that turned that into ‘just a couple of months’ and reoccurring every year ‘ gotta be Mac Pro at WWDC’ broken analog clock. ‘Later’ more likely meant that they did not know at that point what the timeline would be. Appears they still juggling wafer allocation.
which it is why a something in the ultra class size was always likely on track for the next Mac Pro as an option.
The “Dual M2 Ultra“ is effectively exactly what this report says is canceled . I would not slap any “real soon now” or ‘coming in 2023’ on that for purchase planning decisions .
Big.Liittle ? Apple gets up and preaches a Perf/watt sermon on every m series SoC introduction.
apple also said they want to win the iGPU performance space ( again no dGPU means higher Perf/W. )
the are also focused on fixed or special function cores ( NPU , video en/decode , etc ) which also deliver higher Perf/W metrics.
They are focused on Apple GPU specific optimizations and the hints are clear that Intel code is not a good very long term plan. The software optimization heavy push would impede dGPU work . Having driver optimized apps is more critical than trying to cover every GPU possible in attempt to be everything for everybody.
Similar for non homogenous RAM that can cause app changes . Easier ports of software between iOS / iPados and macOS helps Apple more than it hurts in the big picture .
They likely use the same core complexes building blocks across thr line up but how the sub elelements are going to get combined onto which die probably will hit more in future design iterations. Probably wrong to think they are just glob on more cores and and IO complexes with to just an even bigger die .
probably not . At least for Mac SoCs. For analog and memory Moorse law is completely stalled. SRAM ( cache ) on TSMC N3 is about same size as N5. N3E is even closer to N5 . So the caches are stuck and connections to external memory ( LPDDR ) connections infrastructure in a similar boat.
It is going to a bigger juggling act just to keep the Apple main computational dies connected to the RAM that can’t get smaller let alone bring in somethhing else that cannot shrink anymore.
for some types of circuits Moore’s law is over. That is going to cause hiccups because it isn’t over for others. Different parts of a SoC are going to be on different tracks of advancement.
NAND storage has gone to 3D stacking to drive more capacity. .
Something like the watch SoC is so physically constrained that it is already in one shrink wrapped mini board that Apple lables with a single SoC name. But the storage is going to bevrltively constrained there also.
Apple is still selling the 2018 Intel Mini ( and the Mini 2014 for 4 years before that ). They sold the MP 2013 for six years . Thr iMac Pro for 5 years . Really think they are going to have fear of selling the 2019 MP far into 2023 ? Probanly not.
This ignores that Apple is moving Intel Mac onto to Vintage/Obsolete list as fast as they can ( 5 years after stop sales …. Sooner for the Rip van Winkle MP 2013 they slept on for too long .). Apple is likely trying to decommission macOS on Intel over next 5 years or so . The transition was suppose to be over at this point. 2023 very likely starts the final countdown clock even if they are shipping/selling comatose Intel macs .
There was a window in late 2020 - Q3 2021 where if Intel and AMD had something ready Apple might have done one , last gasp , new Intel Mac Pro. At this point after the ‘about two years for the transition ‘ announcement that is not likely at all. That OS branch is ‘dead man walking’ in 2023. Apple will do upgrades but have penciled in the end of service. So less and less effort will go into to those upgrades over time
very similar for GPUs . Apple dropping from buying 2-3M dGPUs per year from AMD down to a level about two orders of magnitude lower is not going to be a huge motivator for new driver development. Pretty good chance BestBuy bauys more GPUs from AMD than that and they don’t need any special drivers. third party GPU driver development was primarily driven by the entry-middle of the Mac line up for the last 10-14 years not the far upper fringe
The Mac Pro got W6000 series GPUs updates last year . That got an update already.
Changing x86-64 horses to AMD after Apple announced leaving the platform is even less likely.
The T2 is getting rather old at this point. Apple probably not keen on making those for new machines either. There is no T3 coming .
Gimme a break.
The reference was to Apple stating the Mac Pro was the final computer to transition to SoC. Obviously I had no expectation that the Mac Pro was coming in the near term and that's why I stated in my post I bought a Mac Studio to hold me over.
Please refrain from further responding to any of my posts as I don't want to get into pedantic nit-picking debates.
It seems M2 extreme is far behind Appls expectations besides mentioned problems with manufacturing.
The products you watch or play, are a balanced equation between available production devices and media player devices. So it takes the maximun amount of time budget and present tech allows.
In example, a Pixar movie in 1996 took around 300 days of render by one contemporary machine, in 2018, it took also around 300 days of contemporary computer to render. The difference is th 2018 Pixar movie is far far better quality than the 1996. But there isnt money enough on Earth for afford a render of a 1996 movie with the quality of 2018. You could, sure, using 4000 computers of 1996 for a year, or using a 1996 computer for 4000 years....
Your argument is similar to the famous (but misunderstood) quoute of Bill Gates "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" You are jsut loooking at your needs, and at what Netflix-Palystation-iPad-orwhatever is offering you today.
And sorry if I'm unable to explain myself better.
Once again, Mark Gurman doesn't know squat.
This is a GUESS on his part. Since the Mac Pro hasn't materialized yet and he's been writing about the chip it will have for 2.5 years, he guesses that it must have been cancelled, and postulates that it must be too expensive to create.
Funny how it never it occurred to him in the last 2.5 years that such a chip would be too expensive to create.
It's all BS. Apple is no hurry to release ANY particular Mac, and hasn't been for decades. The sooner people realize and accept this, the sooner the mass confusion can end.
All the bupkis about the M2 Extreme...we already heard the same about the M1 Ultra. We were all told repeatedly by multiple self-proclaimed CPU experts how the M1 Ultra could not happen and all the myriad of reasons why it wouldn't. And, then it did.
This latest from Gurman is garbage, like everything else he has written since joining Bloomberg.
This is a GUESS on his part. Since the Mac Pro hasn't materialized yet and he's been writing about the chip it will have for 2.5 years, he guesses that it must have been cancelled, and postulates that it must be too expensive to create.
Funny how it never it occurred to him in the last 2.5 years that such a chip would be too expensive to create.
It's all BS. Apple is no hurry to release ANY particular Mac, and hasn't been for decades. The sooner people realize and accept this, the sooner the mass confusion can end.
All the bupkis about the M2 Extreme...we already heard the same about the M1 Ultra. We were all told repeatedly by multiple self-proclaimed CPU experts how the M1 Ultra could not happen and all the myriad of reasons why it wouldn't. And, then it did.
This latest from Gurman is garbage, like everything else he has written since joining Bloomberg.
This is why the Mac Pro doesn't make sense to me as a product, at all. If the Mac Pro user is one who is going to peg their CPU for hours or days at a time, then what you're really in need of is raw performance at the expense of everything else. Time is money, and nothing else should matter except how long that CPU needs to be pegged. You should be looking for the absolute fastest way possible that you can afford to grind through that process. And that's almost never going to be a Mac, because as fast as a Mac can be, there are always other priorities for the system that is being packaged and sold other than just raw performance. Always.
The M1 Ultra is fast enough for probably 80% of professional users, and the M2 Ultra sounds like it will be fast enough for 90%+. The remaining class who are all about pegging super computers for content production or whatever it is you're doing...need not to be looking at brands.
If not raw CPU grunt, its everything else a desktop package offers over a enclosed box like a Mini or Studio.
DGPU that can be swapped out with adapting workflows, TONS of internal storage options, PCIe cards, BIG ram, don't want a dongle chain to use something older, etc.
Oh and don't worry the people that used the Mac Pros of yore have either held on hard or moved onto other brands. Heck, I moved on when I needed a truck of a computer instead Apple's sports car computers.
But this is always the case though. Apple's computers are packages...they are systems. There is always going to be more to it than just raw CPU, and someone who needs raw CPU needs to be looking for that regardless of who it comes from. It seems to me that there some pros that need the raw CPU but still want to try to get away with using a Mac Pro because they just prefer using the Mac, and then complain when the package isn't ideal for them.
There is also MacOS. I took over a year to ween myself off it because it is literally all I used at home for years.
Some people just can't not use MacOS or are tied to it for Logic or FCPX still.
"If" Apple does release a updated Mac Pro, using Apple Silicon; it will be dead on arrival if there are no PCIe slots, no way to upgrade RAM, no way to add more internal HD storage, and no support for external GPUs (Apple branded or otherwise)
Apple learned a painful lesson with the cMP (Trashcan), let's hope they learned; but I am not holding my breath.
Without the above, there is no way Apple can compete in the workstation space with a straight face.
Another possibility is blade cards that each are SoCs. Although with a 64 thread limit in OS X, that does not make a whole lot of sense either.
Or they can just say they were wrong and keep the Mac Pro on intel until they "overcome" whatever the hold up is.
Apple learned a painful lesson with the cMP (Trashcan), let's hope they learned; but I am not holding my breath.
Without the above, there is no way Apple can compete in the workstation space with a straight face.
Another possibility is blade cards that each are SoCs. Although with a 64 thread limit in OS X, that does not make a whole lot of sense either.
Or they can just say they were wrong and keep the Mac Pro on intel until they "overcome" whatever the hold up is.
I remember when even an upgraded model was affordable, I.e. under $4k.
As a user of the iMac Pro, I was a candidate for the new Mac Pro, but opted instead for a Studio with the M1 Ultra and upgraded memory. It’s not upgradable, but it does everything I wanted the Pro for and then some. I echo the question asked by others — Whois the new Mac Pro going to be for, apart from the same movie production shops with deep pockets who might have bought the current Mac Pro? I was hoping the new Pro might be a bit more affordable than the Intel one, but it sounds like that’s a pipe dream. In any case, I couldn’t wait and am happy with my Mac Studio. I guess that makes me small fry. 🐟
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I still have and love my Quicksilver. It's beyond any reasonable lifetime for the machine, but thanks to it's slots and general expandability, it has an upgraded dual 1GHz G4 (I could source a 1,7GHz G4 if I really wanted), NVIDIA 7800, 1,5GB of RAM, 2 SSDs via a SATA card, FireWire 800, lots of USB 2.0, and Bluetooth. It's capable of playing up to 720p video files, edit in Adobe apps just fine, can even play Youtube videos (144p on the site, up to 480p and sometimes 720p, using apps that download and re-encode in real time), and upgraded quieter fans. It still runs hot and uses more power than modern machines, but it works, and looks great doing it lol.
My wife has a Dell Windows 10 AIO with an Intel Xeon and it’s a beautiful piece of hardware, BUT not only have I had no end of nightmares with the software —especially connecting and operating external devices like printers, faxes and scanners—I’m also ultra-p!see that this gorgeous (never a problem with hardware!) won’t be supported for Win 11 and Win 10 will soon be deprecated with no support for bugs and exploits. I can easily install the required new security firmware, but still Win 11 won’t support it!
My bride will never leave Microsoft, but there is NO WAY I will abandon MacOS for the buggy, cludge-y, planned-to-be obsolete garbage that Microsoft passes off as an operating system. By contrast, MacOS hums along like a dream on my Nac Studio. Apple’s support has it all over Win and I’ve never had a problem I couldn’t fix all my myself with help from Cupertino’s or Mac users.
Ironically it’s far easier for me to scan documents on my Mac Studio, then fax them over my network on MY WIFE’S multi-printer than it would be to try the same with her PC. Apple has also always been great with legacy support, while Windows leaves me twisting in the wind. I may have to start running Linux on my wife‘s slick machine after Microsludge trashes Win10. But I’ll still have to buy her a new AIO!
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Yes - otherwise it will really be a tough sell against the Mac Studio
Interesting you say that.
I went from a 2018 Mini to a Dell Workstation in my art studio where I work with and archive physical media. At the moment I have 3 different scanners (film, letter, and legal size), 2 Canon Pro-100 printers, and a smaller 4x6 Canon Selphy printer for smaller projects all hooked up at the same time. I have another letter size scanner and older Sony 4x6 printer that are occasionally plugged in for various projects.
All scanners are using Vuescan although I used to use Silverfast but post-processing advances made it a kind of moot point.
Obviously they all aren't on all the time but I have yet to have any issues with my Dell unlike the nightmare that was the little Mini.
USB interference, random dropouts, unsafe ejects (aren't external disks great?!), and just refusal to work at times were just a few of the fun issues I used to have on MacOS. I'm not even talking about the drivers for my Sony and Canon Selphy that stopped working in Mojave but kept humming on Win10.
There are workarounds to get 11 on unsupported hardware, I'm doing it for a relative who has a Haswell computer I donated to her years ago when 10 is officially EOLed.
Just some musings..
Those of us that bought single processor MacPros and PowerMac's seem to get along just fine with the Mac Studio, perhaps it's because we've moved our storage out of the machine, or maybe we never really needed everything the MacPro provided. The dual processor folks are the who's been left behind and I'm not sure how apple is going to serve that market.
Please don't skewer me these are just my musings from surfing the MP and seeing many of the same user names in the Mac Studio forum.
Those of us that bought single processor MacPros and PowerMac's seem to get along just fine with the Mac Studio, perhaps it's because we've moved our storage out of the machine, or maybe we never really needed everything the MacPro provided. The dual processor folks are the who's been left behind and I'm not sure how apple is going to serve that market.
Please don't skewer me these are just my musings from surfing the MP and seeing many of the same user names in the Mac Studio forum.
What is your definition of "professional"? Does it include anything outside of Logic & Final Cut Pro users?
I am guessing you weren't in the Mac Pro space during the cheesegrater era. The 1,1 through the 5,1 were very powerful general purpose workstations that were price competitive with HP & Dell. A dedicated hobbyist could afford one.
We DID have what was fast enough for 100% of professional users. There literally wasn't anything faster available.
Then we got the trashcan. This is when Apple changed their definition of "professional" to "people that use Logic or Final Cut Pro and need to look cool".
Apple has abandoned entire markets that used to be mostly Mac based.
Then we got the final FU to the prosumers with the 7,1. A machine that was obsolete on the day it was released.