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Mac Pro Reportedly on 'Back Burner' and 'Largely Written Off' at Apple
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Not sure what you mean here.
He just may have to do that. Doesn't change the fact he would like to get an AS version of what he already has. I know he's not alone. Why can't Apple offer it?
I want a Mac Pro priced about the same than a Mac Studio, guess what, apple doesn't cares, they will overcharge for the case and the PCIe slots.
He means that any pro buyer knows that needs more than 8/16 GB RAM for their work.
Finally, Apple comes to its senses, scrapping the overpriced, overweight Pro for both the Mac Studio AND an M5 Ultra chip- woo hoo!
Next, dump the Vision Pro until it's the size of a Walkman headset.
Best as always,
Loren
Next, dump the Vision Pro until it's the size of a Walkman headset.
Best as always,
Loren
Not Mac Pro buyers. The answer inadvertently shifted from Mac Pro to pro.
But the M2 Ultra has 32 lanes (same as the Power Mac G5 and first Mac Pro) with 8 dedicated to the internal SSD. The other 24 lanes are available to the PCIe slots which actually can use up to 64 lanes but have to share those 24 lanes. So it is like the older Mac Pro's and Power Mac's of yesteryear except PCIe 4 speeds instead of v1 speeds.
I think this is why they were planning and betting on the Extreme chip for the Mac Pro which would have this all taken care of for sure.
With the M2, if you run one card in x16, you can have full PCIe 4 speeds and still have 8 left over for other less demanding cards. Not ideal but a lot better then what you were saying above of having zero left over. Edit: Also, if a card is not currently in use, it uses zero lanes. With the Apple Card in, it appears 88% is used up.
I would be hoping that the M5 Ultra will solve this problem, just like future Mac Pro's improved and eventually solved that situation over time. Edit: But the Mac Pro 2019 also only had 64 lanes and had more x16 slots available so also had the same pool situation just more lanes were available overall and there was nothing more than that at the time.
Mac Pro 2023 PCI info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/104947
Also, another resource to explain the PCIe compared to 2019: https://softron.zendesk.com/hc/en-u...-Ultra-Limits-and-possibilities-of-PCIe-slots
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the Mac Pro 2019 was in some respects an experimental lab for several things Apple wanted to work on for Apple Silicon.
1. GPUs hooked together with a high speed bus. Vega DUO , W6800 DUO. two W6800 with a bridge. I don't think Apple was looking for a 'distant' bridge for Apple Silicon, but just getting more graphics library suppose in case there were more NUMA artifacts in the solution they chose. ( an 4 * Max was going to be far more likely to have those than the 'DUO' Ultra would).
In short, wanted apps to spread out over more cores relatively somewhat seamlously .
2. Afterburner in retrospect is a 'public trial' of their ProRes decoding logic. FPGA so easy to fix as went to market. (also to possible tap dance around legal 'drama' if that popped up . ). Make it more mature before folding it into the die of the whole line up. The 'plain' M1 didn't get ProRes. That likely was in flux for a while (in addition to consuming more space. ).
3. modest PCI-e Backhaul fan-out through a large 'sever' PCI-e switch. The Ultra was very likely going to have limited lanes ( smaller than the Xeon W class ).
4. Mostly unified graphics and Thunderbolt. ( a step toward integrated TB. ). Nominally,
Somewhat less 'experiment' but somewhat new to this particular product. MPX wasn't 'moot' it was a test harness to try out the concept.
Similarly the "Apple I/O" card which also evolve into the Apple Thunderbolt PHYS card (once finished integrating
controllers in the SoC).
5. T-series. ( like the rest of the mac line up. The iMac was very oddly very late to this, but 'T' was pretty obviously for 'Transition'. The Xeon W series lacking QuickSync (since no iGPU) would make the Mac Pro an odd-duck where MBP 15" would slice and dice standard video formats faster. ( Apple had issues with AMD video en/decode ) .
Again Intel QuickSync was replaced largely in full by Apple's own implementation in Apple Silicon ( Apple dragged their feet on AV1 support , H.264/H.265 integrated. )
The real likely stumbling block that illuminated that the iMac Pro had some of same limitations as the Mac Pro 2013 would the trajectory that GPUs had of extremely power hungry. AMD/Nvidia were in a pissing match where power consumption didn't matter. Intel was also fumbling where the workstation roadmap was for "even hotter" chips of hiccuping fab process. The iMac Pro largely had the same max power envelope limitations that the MP 2013 had.
The iMac Pro was hobbled in part for updates because Intel didn't have anything substantively better for the thermal constraints in 2018-2020 anyway.
Intel and AMD were doing lots of stuff that Apple though was 'wrong' in terms of efficiency. So Mac Pro 2019 is more a stop gap until they could step off. If AMD got their act together a bit Apple could add some more 'stop gap' MPX updates. If Intel bungled until the end they could coast on the 2018-19 offering.
It isn't just low volume. It is also higher cost for the major components. And no other products to put them in. The plain 'Mn' processor gets a 'hand me down' to the iPad Air and also fans out into the iPad Pro. The M5 Pro is in the MBP 14/16" and Mini "Pro". The Max is reused in the Ultra (so far). The Ultra has what "hand me down" ? Not really. Some are hand waving at Private Cloud Compute (PCC). That seems likely to be temporary. If the Apple made the Mac Pro get a 'hand me down' Ultra 3 when the Studio get a M5 Ultra .
The Ultra SoC is too expensive to develop only to throw it into the trash can every 12 months. Even if Mac Pro unit volumes were 10x higher that likely still would be the case. Apple doesn't throw throw the 'Max' away every 12 months because the Studio and Mac Pro are committed to consume them for longer.
As long as the Ultra is composed of two "Max" dies it likely would not result in a lane count expansion. Apple might move to 24 PCI-e v5 lanes. That still give the ability to assign one x16 bandwidth assignment through the PCI-e switch to some slot, but leaves a bigger budget for 'the rest' to share. That really didn't completely solve the problem from the purest viewpoint of direct point-to-point connect to SoC for a single x16 slot.
Apple is probably going to so with a 'fan out' after get off the die. Apple's "poor man's HBM" approach to memory controllers demands lots of lanes to provision larger memory bandwidth. That is extremely likely is a higher priority than PCI-e lane count bragging rights.
Is Apple going to go the PCI-e v5 just for the Mac Pro ( the PCI-e lane provisioning for the Studio ultra is moot. 'road to no where' in that system. If they are not super motivated by numbers, then I wouldn't hold my breath. It would likely help , but some commentary from Apple is about looking backwards in time at the PCI-e cards they are targeting, not forward.
There is lots of propaganda about the PCI-e provisioning in the Mac Pro 2023.
I'll start with the Xeon comment and then more forward for context.
The 2019 Intel option for a Xeon W CPU only had 64 lanes. (in some years prior to 2019 it was less)
Intel® Xeon® W-3225 Processor (16.5M Cache, 3.70 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
Intel® Xeon® W-3225 Processor (16.5M Cache, 3.70 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
www.intel.com
The 2021 Intel option for a Xeon W CPU only had 64 lanes.
Intel® Xeon® W-3323 Processor (21M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
Intel® Xeon® W-3323 Processor (21M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
www.intel.com
in 2023 the W5 only had 64 (yes the W7 and W9 had more, but that is a higher minimal system cost. This W5 ~ $800 list )
Intel® Xeon® w5-2445 Processor (26.25M Cache, 3.10 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
Intel® Xeon® w5-2445 Processor (26.25M Cache, 3.10 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
www.intel.com
in 2024 the W5 has 112 but the price has jumped to $1699. ( same microarchitecture family just upclocked and bigger to try to be more competitive with AMD).
Intel® Xeon® w5-3535X Processor (52.5M Cache, 2.90 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
Intel® Xeon® w5-3535X Processor (52.5M Cache, 2.90 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
www.intel.com
Apple announced they were going to dump Intel in 2020. So this > 100 lane solution didn't exist until 3-4 years after Apple said they were leaving. Whose is dealing in deception here? macOS on Intel goes largely comatose in 2026 (It has been anounced). If Apple had introduced a new Intel Mac Pro in 2023 and then said updates were dead in 2026 that would be closer to 'a lie' that it was a viable , long term platform for support.
Every Intel Mac Pro has a PCI-e switch in it. 2006-2019. That the 2023 Mac Pro has a PCI-e switch in it is much more continuity than a 'lie'. The Mac Pro 2019 introduced the "Expansion Slot Utility" app which allowed user control of how the server grade, dual input PCI-e switch allocated bandwidth.
The change with the Mac Pro 2023 was , relative to MP 2019, Apple tossed out MPX slot 1 and MPX slot 3.
The backhaul to the server class PCI-e switch went from x32 PCI-e v3 to x24 PCI-e v4 ( equivalent of x48 PCI-e v3).
The PCI-e for the Thunderbolt is embedded in the TB controller. There are no discrete TB controllers in the M-series. TB controllers are integrated into the die and that PCI-e root is on the internal bus that function units communicate with. Similar to what Intel does with its die embedded TB controllers. It is far more energy efficient.
As other post noted the PCI-e 'diversion' is for special case use for SSD controller to NAND communications.
Which brings to the Mac Pro 2023 'lie'.
The Mac Pro 2023 has 6 slots ( no counting the half Apple I/O slot).
two x16 slots
four x8 slots
I/O slot ( half x4)
The Mac Pro 2019 had 7 slots ( no counting the half length Apple I/O Slot).
[ collapsing the MPX bays into just slot count ]
four x16 ( 1 from MPX bay 1 , 2 from MPX bay 2 , 1 above bay 2)
three x8 ( 1 from MPX bay 1 , 2 above bay 2 )
I/O slot ( half x4 ) four x16 slots
Mac Pro (2019) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support
So the Mac Pro 2023 has fewer slots.
Pragmatically Apple dumped the two 'primary' x16 MPX slots. (along with the additional TB provisions that loaded down that PCI-e switch). the CPU to GPU bandwidth on die in M-series is a major uplift from from PCI-e 3,4 ( or 5,6). The thinning out of bandwidth for TB disappeared also.
With 'old' Slot 1 and Slot 3 dropped, it is a net uplift. "But I could put in a GPU card to drive the GUI in Slot 1 or 3 " ... on macOS on Apple-Silicon there are no GPU drivers for 3rd party GPUs. Apple never promised they were going to make one. (in WWDC 2020 was totally empty on the matrix . This is before shipping any M-series Macs. ). If there is no software to run a video card in a slot, why would Apple provision a video card slot? The 'lie' there is that there is an option to it when it doesn't work. Which Apple did not do.
The 'lie' is in the denial that 'old' Slot 1 and 3 were not removed. Apple never said there were there. Coaching that as a 'lie' is propaganda at best. The count of x16 slots went down two in the specs and discussion of the system.
This is why, if they are designing the new Ultra chips separately from the Max chips, this might improve (I am holding out some hope!) but all we have are some rumours that they are doing that. The only confirmed parts we have is the new chiplet CPU tech coming to the M5 Pro, Max and Ultra and that is why the delays for the M5 Pro and Max.
All around great posts above! Greatly appreciate the details.