M1 Ultra, and it's not even the Mac Pro Yet...

[Pezimak]

I think that their will be a new iMac 27", but it will just be the same as the 24" but bigger and will keep costs down.

They will not make a new iMac Pro as it's pointless next to the Studio.

As for the Mac Pro who knows? Quad M2 Max chips? How will they approach user upgradability, or will they just give the current machine a spec bump.

 

[Pezimak]

Or as they said the Ultra was the last M1. What if Apple makes a separate unique processor for the Mac Pro? Think about it, cost is almost neither here or there as the Xeon is so expensive anyway. And it could be a special design Apple silicon to allow that ability to add cards or RAM etc. sure it'll be expensive but if it offers the same or better performance then the Ultra chip and gives that expandability and uses less power is anyone going to complain? Don't answer that...

 

[zephonic]

I shudder to think what a 150W Apple CPU could do...

Surely PCIe slots alone wouldn't be enough to justify the continuation of the Mac Pro.

 

[weaztek]

Here's my first observations: base model should have a 1 TB SSD. We all know those retail for about $100 and for a $2000 machine that's a no-brainer. I think the guts of the base model/s could have easily been incorporated into the existing Mini design considering how cool the M1 stuff runs. I'm not complaining about that, just noting it. I think the larger, new thermal design opens up a lot of possibilities for putting monster next-gen chips in there. It's a throwback to the G4 cube, but with more robust materials-I'm a fan.

 

[iPadified]

Should be interesting. Apple has shown the flex they have, and it looks like sky’s the limit for them. I’m thinking the future Mac Pro will retain upgradability, but probably with a twist — maybe a subscription system or packages that can be purchased.

Also, why wouldn’t they have a rack version? With all of this power and efficiency, I would imagine that these could be used for cloud services on a large scale — or am I completely delusional on this point?

No not at all. The current Mac Pro must be for something more than the Intel/AMD Macs. Far too good engineering. Especially the MPX modules are over engineered. As most video editors will be happy with the Studio, the new Mac Pro will be for another clientele. Possibly science, 3D rendering or indeed servers. Is Apple ambitions other markets than video/music? Multi-M1 ultra in the Mac Pro is a possibility. Exactly how multi-M1 Ultra will communicate will be interesting. Some supercomputer tech?

 

[JMacHack]

Or as they said the Ultra was the last M1. What if Apple makes a separate unique processor for the Mac Pro? Think about it, cost is almost neither here or there as the Xeon is so expensive anyway. And it could be a special design Apple silicon to allow that ability to add cards or RAM etc. sure it'll be expensive but if it offers the same or better performance then the Ultra chip and gives that expandability and uses less power is anyone going to complain? Don't answer that...

I’m willing to bet money that the Mac Pro, whatever it looks like, will not have expandable RAM or a separate GPU. Part of what makes Apple Silicon so efficient is the unified architecture, separating that from the die would just slow it down.

 

[MarkC426]

That is what concerns me.....
I'm not comfortable shelling 2-3k (on a Studio) on something with zero upgrade/replace options.

Especially considering the increased read/write to ssd.
It would be interesting to know how people's original M1 mini's are performing after a year.

 

[januarydrive7]

I’m willing to bet money that the Mac Pro, whatever it looks like, will not have expandable RAM or a separate GPU. Part of what makes Apple Silicon so efficient is the unified architecture, separating that from the die would just slow it down.

The rhetoric around the launch of the latest tower mac pro makes this a bit suspect, though. They were gushing to pros about modularity (after purchase), expandability, etc. I feel it would be too soon to abandon this rhetoric, but I could be surprised. Looking forward to whatever comes, for sure.

 

[JMacHack]

The rhetoric around the launch of the latest tower mac pro makes this a bit suspect, though. They were gushing to pros about modularity (after purchase), expandability, etc. I feel it would be too soon to abandon this rhetoric, but I could be surprised. Looking forward to whatever comes, for sure.

Looking forward to it as well, but Apple seems to have a different definition of “modular” than the rest of us.

 

[tigo013]

June is round the corner for WWDC, - I reckon they'll unviel something then to be available at the end of hte year. It'll surely be a good few $$$ - if the spec'd Studio is above AU$9K, then going into the Mac Pro entry level prices - the AS Mac Pro will push the entry level price to the AU$15K and go beyond. It'll all be done under the banner of "our most powerful Mac ever made" a special engineered crafted marvel of art.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

No not at all. The current Mac Pro must be for something more than the Intel/AMD Macs. Far too good engineering. Especially the MPX modules are over engineered. As most video editors will be happy with the Studio, the new Mac Pro will be for another clientele. Possibly science, 3D rendering or indeed servers. Is Apple ambitions other markets than video/music? Multi-M1 ultra in the Mac Pro is a possibility. Exactly how multi-M1 Ultra will communicate will be interesting. Some supercomputer tech?

That’s exciting to think about. Since they are not bound to another chip maker, I think they could truly go after high data markets. They are such a minority in this space, but that should change.

 

[m1maverick]

It would be interesting to know how people's original M1 mini's are performing after a year.

I can't speak to an M1 Mac Mini however my Z620, Z440, Latitude laptop, 2010 Mac Pro, 2013 Mac Pro, my dad's 2011 MBA all have SSDs and they're performing just fine after years of service. I see no reason why they won't continue to do so.

 

[edanuff]

I think you end up seeing a similar architecture for the Pro to what we see in the Studio, just super-sized. I expect the core of the system is a CPU board that's basically a Studio-on-a-card. All CPU, GPU, and primary memory is on that card and it can be upgraded separate from the rest of the system. I'm sure there's something beyond M1-Ultra available as an option and it's performance is glorious. Storage is a bank of NVMe slots, probably with some sort of intelligent controller that multiplexes lanes across the slots to maximize performance. Some sort of secondary memory on DIMMs, but probably accessed by the CPU more slowly than the primary memory on the CPU board. PCIe slots for specialized I/O like Blackmagic. No support for a GPU except possibly for general purpose GPU compute use cases like specialized ML. Basically, the performance story is completely separate from the expansion story. All performance starts and ends with the Apple Silicon.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

I think you end up seeing a similar architecture for the Pro to what we see in the Studio, just super-sized. I expect the core of the system is a CPU board that's basically a Studio-on-a-card. All CPU, GPU, and primary memory is on that card and it can be upgraded separate from the rest of the system. I'm sure there's something beyond M1-Ultra available as an option and it's performance is glorious. Storage is a bank of NVMe slots, probably with some sort of intelligent controller that multiplexes lanes across the slots to maximize performance. Some sort of secondary memory on DIMMs, but probably accessed by the CPU more slowly than the primary memory on the CPU board. PCIe slots for specialized I/O like Blackmagic. No support for a GPU except possibly for general purpose GPU compute use cases like specialized ML. Basically, the performance story is completely separate from the expansion story. All performance starts and ends with the Apple Silicon.

ram disk swap ram may work or why have chip ram and fast ram?

 

[kennyman]

Finally, getting to see some technical data, looks like the TDP of the CPU (20-Core) is rated at 60 W and GPU (64-Core) is 120 W with 8192 shading cores. Max video display frequency is still 60 Hertz. No ECC support, and Geekbench is slightly higher than the current Intel Xeon 28-core from Mac Pro.

So far, I see that the base entry Studio Desktop model does not have Thunderbolt 4 (only USB-C) on the front compare to the 20-Core Ultra model. The weight is also different from the base model to ultra model, could be because of the heat, it requires better cooling.

Still, very impressive but I will wait for real world tests, compare to an actual W6800X to see GPU performance.

 

[ADGrant]

Studio Display running iOS ? That wasn't a moment of clarity either. I don't think that parenthetic comment about smaller Mac Pro was a moment of clarity. More spitballing that objective reporting.

The studio display has an A13 embedded in it so it probably does run a variant of iOS. The T2 Macs run something called BridgeOS on the A10 based T2 chip. That is probably also based on iOS.

 

[ADGrant]

Finally, getting to see some technical data, looks like the TDP of the CPU (20-Core) is rated at 60 W and GPU (64-Core) is 120 W with 8192 shading cores. Max video display frequency is still 60 Hertz. No ECC support, and Geekbench is slightly higher than the current Intel Xeon 28-core from Mac Pro.

So far, I see that the base entry Studio Desktop model does not have Thunderbolt 4 (only USB-C) on the front compare to the 20-Core Ultra model. The weight is also different from the base model to ultra model, could be because of the heat, it requires better cooling.

Still, very impressive but I will wait for real world tests, compare to an actual W6800X to see GPU performance.

The extra weight is because they use copper for the heat sinks in the Ultra model.

 

[Acorn]

Given how powerful the ultra is what is Mac Pro suppose to do run NSA from your bedroom. One thing is certain, it will be a buy a computer or buy a car moment.

 

[dapa0s]

The Mac Studio is amazingly powerful, literally just what I needed. I don‘t know why people in this thread are dissapointed. The Mac Pro will be aimed at an entirely different demographic obviously and probably will be much more expensive.

 

[deconstruct60]

I was referring to a rack version of a future upgradable, modular Mac Pro. Besides the ability to add a network card, what else would hold it back?

What holds it back for general purpose cloud services? The fact that the device is design primarily to run macOS and only boot macOS. Unless talking about delivering macOS remote user , Xcode developer intergrate/build (CI/CB) , or mac app specific services. Apple isn't going to dump their iCloud/Messaging/etc services for this that primarily run on Linux and high availability VM images .


For what it is good at (running macOS)? It depends upon how large it is. The current size rack case isn't hyperscaler targeted. It is more targeted at the A/V "appliance" rack in numbers of 1-5 or so ; not 100's or 1,000's. However, the more you shrink it down the more the "I want a big container for lots of stuff" folks are less happy. (that is one reason why the current one is 'big'. ). As an "appliance" box getting the new System Extension drivers built and deployed is a hold up.

If it turns out to be about half as tall ( in tower orientation ) that would help. Rotate it 90 degrees and could get two into a custom bracket where just one fit before. But it still would be way off where the Studio density would be (or the Mac Pro 2013 has been).

Some folks have tried to project "half size" into chopping slightly on all three dimensions. ( so have to chuck full length cards because reduce deep the box would go into the rack, but a smaller literal desktop footprint. That probably buys a whole lot of nothing in the rack configuration. And getting into a literal footprint competition with the Studio is likely a loose at Apple. ).

The other factor would be how many slots. a network and storage card would be a minimal( at least two ).

Finally, macOS drivers to higher end Network cards is poor. 25GbE and up the pickings are slim. ( in part because there are so few that need them. Chicken and egg situation. )


I doubt Apple would do a "rack" specific logic board. It will probably still be same board deployed verticle (tower ) and horizontal (rack). The number of Mac Pro's in total isn't going to be all that big (compared to the rest of Mac liine up). Rent-a-Mac-Pro means less folks have to buy one if only need it occasionally.

 

[deconstruct60]

I think that their will be a new iMac 27", but it will just be the same as the 24" but bigger and will keep costs down.

They will not make a new iMac Pro as it's pointless next to the Studio.

iMac Pro may not be pointless if has a substantially better screen than the Studio Display ( which baseline is the same old 5K display with another 100nits tacked on. It's scope isn't "junior XDR" display. )

If iMac Pro is $1500 cheaper than Studio + XDR with very low drop off in image quality. That is a market.

If Apple does a. M1 Pro Mini (and Max? ) . Then the Mini or Studio + either Studio display or 3rd party monitor basically covers that lower end iMac 27" with crippled-like-the-24" thermals.

The M2, M3 , etc. iMac 24" will get better over time. If it just screen real estate folks want to buy just let them buy it modularly. Apple concentrates on the. 10"-24" range and some super expensive. > 30" range.


The iMac Pro 2017 had a 400W power supply and some thermal challenges inside. A heft chunk of the Studio's height is fans. If can spread those fans out behind a 30+ " screen ( not falling into "ever thinner" trap of the iMac 24") they could put an next gen Ultra in a iMac (if don't paint themselves into a thermal design corner. It has basically been done with the Xeon + Pro Vega before. )

As for the Mac Pro who knows? Quad M2 Max chips? How will they approach user upgradability, or will they just give the current machine a spec bump.

Mac Pro probably some M2 different-variantion than Max chips in dual and quad. They need a couple of dies that are incrementally different than a Max. The Max's approach probably isn't going to scale up to Quad as a "one whole" GPU. They used a whole entire edge of the chip just to get "dual" to work right. If trying to connect to three other chips.(additional two more) .. there are not two more sides to use. Two sides went off to feeding the Memory bandwidth and the third is on external I/O. So which one (or two ) do you throw away? They'll like have to introduce more NUMA into the set up and that probably will require changes from what doing in the rest more "monolithic" chips.

 

[chfilm]

it’s gonna be really interesting how much faster than my current 16c 2xVegaII the studio is.. probably already quite a bit 😢 then the question arises what a Mac Pro will cost later this year or spring 2023 and if that’s really gonna be another doubling of the Studio’a performance (probably will be). What will be the right moment to give up the 7.1 when it still is good enough for most work is gonna be the big question, because I’m sure prices are gonna dump once the new one comes out, if not already!

 

[deconstruct60]

it’s gonna be really interesting how much faster than my current 16c 2xVegaII the studio is.. probably already quite a bit 😢 then the question arises what a Mac Pro will cost later this year or spring 2023 and if that’s really gonna be another doubling of the Studio’a performance (probably will be).

Probably not uniformly double on all aspects. Single threaded won't. Workloads that high stress the die interconnect probably won't if go past two dies. GPU performance has gone up perfectly linear across all workloads from. M1-> Pro -> Max so likely won't for anything in a Mac Pro ( Ultra and "better than Ultra")

Can look at the Studio's marketing page on Apple site in the graphics performance benchmarks they cover.

https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/

GPU

Final Cut Pro : 5/3.5. -> 1.42
Compressor. : 12.6/7.5 -> 1.68
Affinty Photo: 4.5/3.4 -> 1.32
Borris. : 2.6/2.0 -> 1.3
Maxon : 2.6/2.2 -> 1.18
Blackmagic : 2.3 / 1.3 -> 1.77

CPU
vectorworks : 1.6 / 1.3 -> 1.23
affinity photo. 1.5/ 1.4 -> 1.07
NASA TetrUS 5.3/2.7. -> 1.96. ( a codebase from decades long supercomputer optimized legacy )

The Ultra doesn't uniformly double the Max. More does likely lead to more partial flattening hiccups for some codebases.

What will be the right moment to give up the 7.1 when it still is good enough for most work is gonna be the big question, because I’m sure prices are gonna dump once the new one comes out, if not already!

Folks say that and it tends not to happen. Many folks are on a depreciation schedule or a fixed budget or both. Tend to let go of machines mostly on a schedule so no "panic" dumping of those systems. Others are on "buy when need it" schedule. Vast majority of those who bought a MP in 2021 isn't going to dump it fast (unless it is a problem and would dump it anyway).

Macs tend to hold their value over time because the demand/supply for used system is pretty balances most of the time. Mac Pro tend at a relatively slow rate to the rest of Mac systems that retailers (and Apple) don't have massive warehouses full of 'toxic inventory' to dump at product transitions. Discounts? yes, but panic selling? no.

 

[chfilm]

Probably not uniformly double on all aspects. Single threaded won't. Workloads that high stress the die interconnect probably won't if go past two dies. GPU performance has gone up perfectly linear across all workloads from. M1-> Pro -> Max so likely won't for anything in a Mac Pro ( Ultra and "better than Ultra")

Can look at the Studio's marketing page on Apple site in the graphics performance benchmarks they cover.

https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/

GPU

Final Cut Pro : 5/3.5. -> 1.42
Compressor. : 12.6/7.5 -> 1.68
Affinty Photo: 4.5/3.4 -> 1.32
Borris. : 2.6/2.0 -> 1.3
Maxon : 2.6/2.2 -> 1.18
Blackmagic : 2.3 / 1.3 -> 1.77

CPU
vectorworks : 1.6 / 1.3 -> 1.23
affinity photo. 1.5/ 1.4 -> 1.07
NASA TetrUS 5.3/2.7. -> 1.96. ( a codebase from decades long supercomputer optimized legacy )

The Ultra doesn't uniformly double the Max. More does likely lead to more partial flattening hiccups for some codebases.




Folks say that and it tends not to happen. Many folks are on a depreciation schedule or a fixed budget or both. Tend to let go of machines mostly on a schedule so no "panic" dumping of those systems. Others are on "buy when need it" schedule. Vast majority of those who bought a MP in 2021 isn't going to dump it fast (unless it is a problem and would dump it anyway).

Macs tend to hold their value over time because the demand/supply for used system is pretty balances most of the time. Mac Pro tend at a relatively slow rate to the rest of Mac systems that retailers (and Apple) don't have massive warehouses full of 'toxic inventory' to dump at product transitions. Discounts? yes, but panic selling? no.

Your‘re probably right. It‘s not like the Mac Pro is gonna become slow all of a sudden.. only the personal desire for more POWER is gonna take over eventually Plus the generational change from Intel to Apple Silicon just makes it really tempting to bite the bullet once more when a new Mac Pro comes out and then hopefully stick with THAT one for more than 3 years. Sigh.

 

[Pezimak]

iMac Pro may not be pointless if has a substantially better screen than the Studio Display ( which baseline is the same old 5K display with another 100nits tacked on. It's scope isn't "junior XDR" display. )

If iMac Pro is $1500 cheaper than Studio + XDR with very low drop off in image quality. That is a market.

If Apple does a. M1 Pro Mini (and Max? ) . Then the Mini or Studio + either Studio display or 3rd party monitor basically covers that lower end iMac 27" with crippled-like-the-24" thermals.

The M2, M3 , etc. iMac 24" will get better over time. If it just screen real estate folks want to buy just let them buy it modularly. Apple concentrates on the. 10"-24" range and some super expensive. > 30" range.


The iMac Pro 2017 had a 400W power supply and some thermal challenges inside. A heft chunk of the Studio's height is fans. If can spread those fans out behind a 30+ " screen ( not falling into "ever thinner" trap of the iMac 24") they could put an next gen Ultra in a iMac (if don't paint themselves into a thermal design corner. It has basically been done with the Xeon + Pro Vega before. )





Mac Pro probably some M2 different-variantion than Max chips in dual and quad. They need a couple of dies that are incrementally different than a Max. The Max's approach probably isn't going to scale up to Quad as a "one whole" GPU. They used a whole entire edge of the chip just to get "dual" to work right. If trying to connect to three other chips.(additional two more) .. there are not two more sides to use. Two sides went off to feeding the Memory bandwidth and the third is on external I/O. So which one (or two ) do you throw away? They'll like have to introduce more NUMA into the set up and that probably will require changes from what doing in the rest more "monolithic" chips.

Have you seen how thin the new iMac is? They would have to make a new iMac Pro thicker to squeeze in this cooling solution you mention and use an external power supply, if they wanted an internal one and an Ultra chip then it would be significantly thicker.
Also you've ignored the fact with the Studio you can buy what ever monitor you like, and upgrade it whenever you want. It means you can buy a 200 dollar monitor for the Studio and get a high quality one later. With the iMac Pro that outlay is at the beginning and you can't upgrade it later.
I still stand by my opinion the iMac Pro is dead.