They've over-stepped the line as far as thin is concerned. They should have learnt by now that less space = more heat, a-la Mac Pro. If they keep the current form factor, they're idiots! The 8,1 iMac was the best compromise between aesthetics and practicality in my book - I would have no problem with it if it reverted back to that thickness, although I'm hoping it might be something in between that and the current shape. For a laptop, where size and weight matter, it's an issue worth persuing although I still think that laptops have become unnecessarily compact; when I look at the 2015 (albeit standard sized) PC laptop we have in the house and my still-working 2002 Powerbook G4, the 'Book is less than half as thick with their lids closed. Trouble is we've been spoilt with thin - it's all about the looks. Lets get back to reality - the New New Mac Pro is going to be a radical departure from the trashcan - hopefully. we'll see some of that with the New iMac.
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Intel Rumored to Debut Basin Falls Platform in May, Launch Coffee Lake Chips in August
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They've over-stepped the line as far as thin is concerned. They should have learnt by now that less space = more heat, a-la Mac Pro. If they keep the current form factor, they're idiots! The 8,1 iMac was the best compromise between aesthetics and practicality in my book - I would have no problem with it if it reverted back to that thickness, although I'm hoping it might be something in between that and the current shape. For a laptop, where size and weight matter, it's an issue worth persuing although I still think that laptops have become unnecessarily compact; when I look at the 2015 (albeit standard sized) PC laptop we have in the house and my still-working 2002 Powerbook G4, the 'Book is less than half as thick with their lids closed. Trouble is we've been spoilt with thin - it's all about the looks. Lets get back to reality - the New New Mac Pro is going to be a radical departure from the trashcan - hopefully. we'll see some of that with the New iMac.
The VS toolchain just doesn't take that much advantage of it. Roslyn is largely single-threaded.
Most apps take poor advantage of multi-threading, and languages are in part to blame. Things like async/await may eventually make this better, but we're still in the stone ages as far as good multi-threaded language concepts go.
If Microsoft sucks at multi threading it is irrelevant.
The mainstream is in the stone age. You could program parallel processors in Occam in the eighties.
Pretty sure C# isn't "irrelevant".
Oh, aren't we hardcore. So you write everything in Erlang, I assume?
What's your point? Just trying to insult someone? The reality is that increased core amount offers diminishing returns, and I'd probably benefit much more from added RAM than added CPU cores.
You can program multithreaded apps that use all cores in .NET . It is not really difficult.
If Erlang offered everything that I need for a certain project, I would be happy to use it instead of the usual junk.
You have a biased perspective. How much you can profit from multiple cores depends on the task at hand.
I guess the Roslyn team must be idiots, then.
Ya, no ****. This is also true of… oh, I dunno, any single performance improvement that's conceivable. How much do you benefit from a higher clock rate? Depends on the task at hand. More RAM? Depends on the task at hand. Higher IPC? Depends.
Dreaming for this:
12 core iMac, Nvidia graphics, Screen at 32 inches with an 8k screen, up to 64GB RAM, 3 USB-C, 3 USB 3.0 ports, 512GB SSD as a minimum, video-in to use the screen as a stand alone monitor, minimal bezels and a smaller bottom lip. Integration between the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil at the OS level. Apple, give me the option of that, even as BTO and I'll give you the money!!
12 core iMac, Nvidia graphics, Screen at 32 inches with an 8k screen, up to 64GB RAM, 3 USB-C, 3 USB 3.0 ports, 512GB SSD as a minimum, video-in to use the screen as a stand alone monitor, minimal bezels and a smaller bottom lip. Integration between the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil at the OS level. Apple, give me the option of that, even as BTO and I'll give you the money!!
No, they're doing a pretty good job.
It's just, unlike you, they're not wizards and geniuses at multi-threading.
Intel's Skylake-X series features 140W processors with 6, 8, and 10-core architectures, while Kaby Lake X-series features a 112W quad-core processor. Intel also plans to release a 12-core Skylake-X processor in August. Intel's Basin Falls platform could potentially be used in future Mac Pro machines and the rumored high-end server-grade iMac.
The iMac needs to be ticker, these won't fit in there.
The iMac needs to be ticker, these won't fit in there.
believe it when I see it. I desperately want a mac mini but since there have been no rumors on that front.... 
There are cheap Intel chips and expensive Intel chips. Apple may be only buying five percent of the chips, but they tend to buy the more expensive ones.
If they do a new high-end model to replace some of the Mac Pro's purpose, which they said they're going to, it makes sense for that model to be a little thicker. Doesn't require the other models to be changed.
Ummm - what about good ol' multi-tasking? Most single apps may not benefit that much from more cores, but a bunch of them in heavy multitasking may do very well.
As well a use case as the one that benefits better from more Ram. I'd expect Apple to have a good idea of the distribution percentages of the various use cases, so they should be able to suit their machines accordingly.
Plus, I think that - from a marketing perspective - a higher core count is easier/better to "sell" than more Ram. And Apple is a lot about marketing ...
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As iMacs seem to generally struggle with heat, it may not only make sense, but be absolutely required.
Depends. A dedicated housing takes away from economies of scale (tooling, design, testing, logistics, spares etc.) and would make such a dedicated iMac even more expensive than it probably already will be. The added material consumption of the lesser iMacs may not be big enough to counter that.
Though, without knowing Apple's internal calculations, there's a lot of room for guesswork and interpretation.
Absolutely, which is why virtually everyone benefits from dual-core — you always have plenty of background processes running. But at four or six cores, you get diminishing returns.
I think that depends on the use case. With all the crap littered websites these days, you nearly need (!hyperbole!) 1-2 cores already only for browsing (normal users often tend to not know or care about ad blockers). Or if someone is into gaming and likes to stream his games, 4 cores can be the minimum. Anything multimedia (that is properly programmed) can utilize more cores easily. Now what if someone renders his latest video and wants to play a game to bridge the time gap?
And with the upcoming AR/VR wave, the OS itself may become even more resource-hungry. If I understand correctly, with "Grand Central Dispatch" Apple is already well prepared for a multi-core (if not massively-multi-core) scenario.
Besides - perhaps it's a chicken-egg-problem here: With only 2-4 cores usually available in mainstream machines, software development to improve on multithreading may not have been seen economically viable enough. If 6 cores would become entry-level, that prio may shift up.
Additionally, with CPU's hitting a barrier in terms of clockspeed and constantly shrinking devices preventing complex cooling solutions, (massively) multi-core and multi-threading could become a sensible way to further improve on performance.
Note that JS, too, is basically entirely single-threaded. You can still separate some of the responsibilities, like putting CSS layout on a different core than JS execution, but that's nonetheless quite a bottleneck that adding cores is not going to solve.
Yup.
Right, GCD is the kind of form of facilitating threading that I was talking about. It still requires considerable effort on the developer's side.
This is true, too.
It'll easily take another decade or so for multi-threaded programming concepts to become more prevalent, though.
Yes, absolutely. I'm not arguing that more cores is bad. It just doesn't as easily yield performance improvements as the 1990s-era's increased clock speed used to.
Unless Apple decides to completely turn things around, there's no chance in hell these chips will be used in Macs - iMacs are using good-enough the H/K mainstream chips, while the Mac Pro is using Xeons.
These are chips for high-end gamers, a market that's not particularly attracted to Macs for lack of game titles, top of the line GPUs and lack of customization capabilities.
These are chips for high-end gamers, a market that's not particularly attracted to Macs for lack of game titles, top of the line GPUs and lack of customization capabilities.
Apple specifically said that they're going to introduce higher-end iMac configurations this year.
"Apple will be introducing new iMacs this year with unspecified spec bumps that will make them more attractive to those pro users."
Intel lowered their prices (if memory serves they cut some prices by almost 50%) to compete with AMD on this...but the fact that AMD has competitive chips for the first time in years instigated that...
I'd like to see Apple use AMD chips just to encourage competition in the CPU market - Intel has been giving very small performance increases with new generations and on 14nm for how long?
Mac Mini's and low end iMac's would be a great spot for AMD chips - quad or 6 core mini's no problem. Keep Intel on the laptops and high end iMac's for the time being.
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