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Kaby Lake points to new Mac Pro Tower

Well, we know nothing about the next Mac Pro (if Apple will ever make one), but we can be very sure that it won't be based on Kaby Lake, as Intel doesn't even have a Kaby Lake-EP workstation-class CPU on their roadmap. There's Skylake-EP for next year and Cannonlake-EP for 2018, nothing in between.

On the other hand, a "high end workstation" maxing out at a quad-core consumer CPU would fit into Apple's current lineup perfectly. Should be enough for handling some emoji bars. 😀
 
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cohen777 said:
Apple isn't going to release a new Mac Pro Tower until Kaby Lake Xeon is ready. Skylake doesn't support USB-C natively and hand-in-hand with the Mac Pro are the new dual USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 connectors.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16...ential-2017-imac-mac-pro-kaby-lake-processors
Click to expand...
Maybe you could explain what this has to do with a potential new Mac Pro, assuming they stick with Xeon-EP, which is a completely different platform/chipset than the Kaby Lakes discussed in the article you linked to?

p.s. Skylake does "natively" support "USB-C" as it's actually USB3 (3.1 Gen1/2) w/ a Type-C connector. Apple does use the Alpine Ridge controller in the new Skylake MBP's for TB3 (so obviously compatible with Skylake as well). I'm not sure what the state is of TB3 on the Xeon-EP platform at the moment, whether the current Alpine Ridge controllers can be used or a different controller is needed.
 
Flint Ironstag said:
I think we can be pretty sure that whatever comes next won't be a tower, either. Schiller said the tube is the form factor for the next 10 years.
Click to expand...
A tower can be tubular...

round_glendalough.jpg
 
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cohen777 said:
Apple isn't going to release a new Mac Pro Tower until Kaby Lake Xeon is ready. Skylake doesn't support USB-C natively and hand-in-hand with the Mac Pro are the new dual USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 connectors.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16...ential-2017-imac-mac-pro-kaby-lake-processors
Click to expand...

Ad click bait. Very little of substance there.

Xeon E3 ... not a candidate for the Mac Pro. If keeps the dual GPUs can't even drive those let along the TB , SSDs , etc you'd need. It isn't viable.

The desktop Gen 7 parts. There are rumors, info, etc. about those elsewhere. Yeah the Intel doc drop is a signal that shipping to system vendors probably has started ( or will start in weeks ). But desktop roadmaps are already out.

No particular good reason for the iMacs to skip them. Especially the 21" retina models with no discrete GPU.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
Well, we know nothing about the next Mac Pro (if Apple will ever make one), but we can be very sure that it won't be based on Kaby Lake, as Intel doesn't even have a Kaby Lake-EP workstation-class CPU on their roadmap. There's Skylake-EP for next year and Cannonlake-EP for 2018, nothing in between.

On the other hand, a "high end workstation" maxing out at a quad-core consumer CPU would fit into Apple's current lineup perfectly. Should be enough for handling some emoji bars. 😀
Click to expand...

I'm confused on this a bit. If Apple is abandoning dual processor machines, what would be the harm in just throwing in a top-end i7? Yes it's not as good as a 12 core xeon (6700k is 11,000 passmark vs 12 core xeon 17,000) but I bet they don't sell a lot of those anyway.

Also, they hardly need the PCIe lanes for their crap video cards.


Anyways I was sure I heard something about Mac pros being updated this month... or was it at the last apple event?... or was it last year? I don't remember.
 
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slughead said:
I'm confused on this a bit. If Apple is abandoning dual processor machines, what would be the harm in just throwing in a top-end i7? Yes it's not as good as a 12 core xeon (6700k is 11,000 passmark vs 12 core xeon 17,000) but I bet they don't sell a lot of those anyway.

Also, they hardly need the PCIe lanes for their crap video cards.


Anyways I was sure I heard something about Mac pros being updated this month... or was it at the last apple event?... or was it last year? I don't remember.
Click to expand...

May be because of ECC RAM
 
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the linked article is about as relevant to the Mac Pro as any "standing in front of the Whitehouse" Wolf Blitzer segment. the relevant Xeon E5 V5 parts are expected to drop mid 2017. if there is to be an updated Mac Pro, it will be then. the other question is AMD. considering Apple's track record, expect GPUs based on Polaris 10 Radeon Pro WX and not the soon to be release Vega.

or Apple could drop the pretense (and the price) and switch to the i7 extreme CPUs in the Mac Pro. the Skylake version of that may be up to 12 cores by then. release date is likely similar to that of the Xeon.

I wish I know exactly what about the Xeon was better for a workstation (if the machine is only to be a single die). the Extreme edition i7s are basically the same chip minus the Xeon only features. I know ECC RAM is a good thing. but a good thing for what? outside of all the things that don't happen on a Macintosh (back-end servers, statistical modeling, scientific supercomputers...) what does it help on a Mac?
 
slughead said:
I'm confused on this a bit. If Apple is abandoning dual processor machines, what would be the harm in just throwing in a top-end i7? Yes it's not as good as a 12 core xeon (6700k is 11,000 passmark vs 12 core xeon 17,000) but I bet they don't sell a lot of those anyway.
Click to expand...
Personally I'd be totally happy with a fast consumer-grade machine (in fact that's everything I ever wanted since I sold my trusty PowerMac G4; I didn't get it until Hackintosh became a thing).

I highly doubt Apple will go this route though, from their perspective they're already serving this segment with the top-end iMacs. The changes in their lineup during the last years clearly show that they're trying to avoid cannibalization as much as possible, so the Mac Pro has to be placed above the iMac.

The only technical reason I can imagine is the number of PCIE lanes, which will be necessary for providing lots of TB3 ports. I'm not sure how much FCPX depends on PCIE bandwidth, might be beneficial to provide the GPUs with a full x16 link (but you're right, they're most likely not going to be high-end anyway.)
 
The pieces are in place for a spec bump (newer Xeons, ports, WX versions of AMD's graphics), but nothing specifically points to a new MP arriving soon - or ever, including this article. And no, Apple will not "free" Mac-OS.

The Mac community has reasonable expectations of some sort of iMac bump early to middle of next year. If a new nMP arrives along with it, great: the 'Pro will live on for another 3 years. If the iMac is bumped (I suspect a design refresh is in the works, actually) but not the Pro, then the latter is dead. Even Apple would likely be embarassed by it by then, and it ought to finally be axed.

Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing to see. Wait, move on, or make your plans to do so. But don't expect the rumor mill to be more than an echo-chamber of baseless hopes and sheer speculation.

(I've mitigated the wait by having some fun with the highly-customizable and rather slick Manjaro Linux / KDE Plasma 5.8 on a one-click 4.6GHz Skylake, GTX 1070, etc.)
 
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h9826790 said:
Personally I'd be totally happy with a fast consumer-grade machine (in fact that's everything I ever wanted since I sold my trusty PowerMac G4; I didn't get it until Hackintosh became a thing).

I highly doubt Apple will go this route though, from their perspective they're already serving this segment with the top-end iMacs. The changes in their lineup during the last years clearly show that they're trying to avoid cannibalization as much as possible, so the Mac Pro has to be placed above the iMac.

The only technical reason I can imagine is the number of PCIE lanes, which will be necessary for providing lots of TB3 ports. I'm not sure how much FCPX depends on PCIE bandwidth, might be beneficial to provide the GPUs with a full x16 link (but you're right, they're most likely not going to be high-end anyway.)
Click to expand...

I don't think FCPX needs that much BW, generally lane bottlenecks are with quick back-and-forth such as with higher framerates from what I've seen. However 16 lanes of PCIe was a super overkill either way for the 7970 er I mean the 280x Er I mean for the D700. On the other hand, the D700 is only about 3tflop and The 1080 is 9 tflop. Even then though, I think 8x PCIE 3.0 is probably enough to only see a < 5% drop in performance but I could be wrong. PCIE3.0 4x had very minimal effect on the 3 tflop cards though.

Regardless though, the TB3.0 chews up lanes pretty quick, even TB 2.0 on the new Mac Pro was switched between the ports to distribute bandwidth.

Edit: yeah, 8x doesn't seem to take away from the GTX 1080 compared to 16x
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/608355-gtx-1080-pcie-30-x8-bottleneck/
4x showed a 20% drop in performance with the GTX 1080, IIRC but I'm not going to dig up the source right now
 
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Fl0r!an said:
I guess even that 20% drop from 1080 performance would be 200% faster than a downclocked HD 7970. 😀
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Yes, it would totally slaughter it.

The 7970 was 2 years old when Apple crammed it in the trash can 3 years ago. I'm sure it was a great card back in 2011!
 
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Fl0r!an said:
Personally I'd be totally happy with a fast consumer-grade machine (in fact that's everything I ever wanted since I sold my trusty PowerMac G4; I didn't get it until Hackintosh became a thing).

I highly doubt Apple will go this route though, from their perspective they're already serving this segment with the top-end iMacs. The changes in their lineup during the last years clearly show that they're trying to avoid cannibalization as much as possible, so the Mac Pro has to be placed above the iMac.

The only technical reason I can imagine is the number of PCIE lanes, which will be necessary for providing lots of TB3 ports. I'm not sure how much FCPX depends on PCIE bandwidth, might be beneficial to provide the GPUs with a full x16 link (but you're right, they're most likely not going to be high-end anyway.)
Click to expand...

Intel has a line of high end i7 processors that all have the same 40 PCIe lanes as the E5 Xeons.
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79318/Intel-High-End-Desktop-Processors#@Desktop
these currently have up to 10 cores. the lastest of these are based on Broadwell E. Intel will likely release the Skylake version of these parts in late Q2 2017.
 
Yes, those "enthusiast" i7's are pretty similar to their Xeon brothers (you could also install some old i7's from this class into the cMPs). The enthusiast chipset (X99) is virtually the same as the workstation chipset (C612), it just lacks ECC support and doesn't support dual sockets. Don't know if there's any other notable difference.

I'm sure Apple prefers the Xeon brand for marketing reasons though. Sounds way more expensive, same reason they chose to rebadge those old Radeons with a "Fire Pro" label. 😉
 
thats all folks said:
Intel has a line of high end i7 processors that all have the same 40 PCIe lanes as the E5 Xeons.
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79318/Intel-High-End-Desktop-Processors#@Desktop
these currently have up to 10 cores. the lastest of these are based on Broadwell E. Intel will likely release the Skylake version of these parts in late Q2 2017.
Click to expand...

by comparison, the xeons in the 2013 Mac Pro also have 40 lanes. Thanks for the info. Again, for people who don't need dual processors or ECC, the consumer CPUs aren't bad.

on a side note: I still don't think there will ever be a "next" mac pro
 
thats all folks said:
Intel has a line of high end i7 processors that all have the same 40 PCIe lanes as the E5 Xeons.
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79318/Intel-High-End-Desktop-Processors#@Desktop
these currently have up to 10 cores.
Click to expand...

and cost just as much as the Xeon E5 1600 series. So there is no cost lowering here. Chipset PCH. Same. So the notion that going i7 will dramatically lower the Mac Pro price point is antiquated and deeply flawed. It won't. ( ECC versus non ECC RAM? After Apple slaps their 30% mark up on everything it isn't going to be that big of a difference. Apple's mark up will swamp minor DRAM pricing difference. )


Falling back to mainstream core i7 would make some difference. If pull the Mac Pro back into parity with the iMac in terms of CPU you can shave some costs. The point of that would be what? Same PCIe lane budget throttled. Same max memory limitations.

the lastest of these are based on Broadwell E. Intel will likely release the Skylake version of these parts in late Q2 2017.
Click to expand...

Skylake-X probably will get to market a quarter or so before Skylake-W. -W will probably have a higher top end core count. If Apple is waiting that long another quarter or so is approximately just as ridiculously late.
 
deconstruct60 said:
and cost just as much as the Xeon E5 1600 series. So there is no cost lowering here. Chipset PCH. Same. So the notion that going i7 will dramatically lower the Mac Pro price point is antiquated and deeply flawed. It won't. ( ECC versus non ECC RAM? After Apple slaps their 30% mark up on everything it isn't going to be that big of a difference. Apple's mark up will swamp minor DRAM pricing difference. )
Click to expand...

Except for the fact that the same socket could accommodate a far less expensive i7--say a quadcore. Yes Apple will markup the ram price, but presumably the Mac Pro still won't solder in RAM like the MacBOOK "Pro." Pros could theoretically upgrade the RAM... you know, like the good ol' days before Apple said "Pros don't do that."

edit: looks like the LGA2011V3's slowest processor is a 6 core ?? anyways it's $400 instead of $1100. The 6 core i7-5820K has a passmark of 12,000, top end i7 LGA211V3 is passmark of 20,000, this is a decent range.

deconstruct60 said:
Falling back to mainstream core i7 would make some difference. If pull the Mac Pro back into parity with the iMac in terms of CPU you can shave some costs. The point of that would be what? Same PCIe lane budget throttled. Same max memory limitations.
Click to expand...

Well in that case, as opposed to the iMac, the point would be having decent GPUs and a bunch of "expandability"*, which as you know can be 90% of the compute power of an editing rig. It wouldn't have nearly enough lanes to feed Apple's imaginary thunderbolt accessory market though, as you pointed out.


deconstruct60 said:
Skylake-X probably will get to market a quarter or so before Skylake-W. -W will probably have a higher top end core count. If Apple is waiting that long another quarter or so is approximately just as ridiculously late.
Click to expand...

Personally I think they're waiting until 2030 and are going to do some kind of quantum computer. Maybe they're waiting for cybernetic implants.

*I put expandabilty in quotes because thunderbolt still hasn't panned out in over 3 years since all the fanboys on this forum said it was the next great thing. Still no eGPU for OSX, the options are super limited compared to PCIe, still buggy. But still, Apple's banking on this for their Macbook "Pros" et al.
 
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