Mac Pro Rising

[Blair Paulsen]

A smaller tower case that has 4x PCIe3 slots, internal SSD support but not 3.5" bays, under 30lbs with a handle sounds great. The 6,1 tube size/thermal envelope is certainly a limiting factor. I'd love a 19" 3RU size with a handle that could stand alone or live in a rack...

Versatility rocks.

 

[Jack Burton]

That's not the argument on the table. The argument on the table is: Has the nMP been a sales success and is it a higher profit item? No one outside of Apple can say one way or the other. That's what Jack is saying. He's even gone so far as to acknowledge he can't support his theory while the same cannot be said of you.

No, I rightly concede now that the nMP is Apple's hottest selling item and that people are taking out $12,000-$15,000 loans to buy the nMP and several grand worth of external PCI and storage enclosures. 😉

This thread has convinced me that the pro market is too small to be a priority for Apple while at the same time being full of high profit margin purchases.

I call it "Schrödinger's Mac Pro".

 

[ActionableMango]

Let's not pretend that speed has taken a step backwards. The nMP was faster in virtually every way than the cMP when comparing similar stock to stock configurations (there may be a few corner cases that are exceptions). The next version (if any) will be faster in almost every way again.

The cMP is now obsolete in a majority of ways (PCIe-2, older SATA, slower memory bandwidth, USB-2, no TB, etc.). It is not some holy shrine of ever-lasting superiority, and a typical gaming PC can easily be far faster and have far more expandability.

Well of course an Ivy Bridge computer is faster and has some better I/O than a Westmere computer.

We're not asking for Westmere cMPs to be sold forever. What we were asking for in 2013 was an updated cMP with Ivy Bridge, USB 3, Thunderbolt, etc. That is what was wanted in all the speculation discussion back then. And that would have met everyone's use cases here.

What's embarrassing for the 2013 nMP is that the 2009 cMP is still faster in any way at all, and it is. PCIe is faster I/O than Thunderbolt, there are drives faster than the nMP's SSD, and there are GPUs faster than the D700.

So while the cMP is obsolete now by most measures (yet still faster by some measures), the nMP will become obsolete far more quickly.

it's time to face the music and leave Apple behind

Yes I agree. The 2010 Mac Pro is my last.

 

[linuxcooldude]

That's not the argument on the table. The argument on the table is: Has the nMP been a sales success and is it a higher profit item? No one outside of Apple can say one way or the other. That's what Jack is saying.
He's even gone so far as to acknowledge he can't support his theory while the same cannot be said of you.

I've never claimed the Mac Pro was a success or a flop, so saying I can't prove him wrong is not relevant. I only asked for evidence of a flop.

 

[Jack Burton]

I've never claimed the Mac Pro was a success or a flop, so saying I can't prove him wrong is not relevant. I only asked for evidence of a flop.

LOL. Asked and answered.

You've dodged my honest question: can you show it's a success?

 

[Reticuli]

Heh, ok, whatever you say. I'm sure it's been a smash success.

There's honestly no way either of us could know.

 

[linuxcooldude]

LOL. Asked and answered.

You've dodged my honest question: can you show it's a success?

Its not an honest question since we both know that accurate data is not there. But not being able to show proof of the Mac Pro success does not make your statement any more correct.

 

[Jack Burton]

Its not an honest question since we both know that accurate data is not there. But not being able to show proof of the Mac Pro success does not make your statement any more correct.

It was a yes or no question, and still you dodged. I'm not asking you to say I'm right and you're wrong, and still you dodged. Instead you say it wasn't an honest question. I say you are incapable of a simple answer.

At least Reticuli had an honest response.

There's honestly no way either of us could know.

This, I respect. Reticuli and I can disagree without mental gymnastics and tiresome semantics.

The best estimates I have seen (based on some anonymous source) put the nMP at less than 1% of mac sales.

http://architosh.com/2016/06/if-jobs-failed-twice-why-would-ives-team-succeed-rip-new-mac-pro/

Does that prove me right? No. Does it prove Linuxcooldude wrong? No. But so far, the only info out there (admittedly questionable and in no way proven reliable) leans toward the nMP being a sales flop.

 

[rGiskard]

The nMP was faster in virtually every way than the cMP when comparing similar stock to stock configurations (there may be a few corner cases that are exceptions). The next version (if any) will be faster in almost every way again.

The cMP is now obsolete in a majority of ways (PCIe-2, older SATA, slower memory bandwidth, USB-2, no TB, etc.). It is not some holy shrine of ever-lasting superiority, and a typical gaming PC can easily be far faster and have far more expandability.

The proper comparison is the performance of the Tube against a cMP with the same generation Xeons and chipset.

So consider an Ivy Bridge-EP dual socket cMP versus an Ivy Bridge-EP single socket Tube. The cMP would feature 24 physical cores and twice as many PCIe lanes. It would offer internal PCIe slots and the same TB connectivity as the Tube. The cMP could house two full power GPUs, not downclocked.

In short, there would be no comparison, the Ivy Bridge cMP would dominate the Tube in every way. The cMP also has a smaller footprint than a Tube with a 4 bay external HDD enclosure and Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure.

My feeling is that if Apple do not introduce some sort of pro tower to replace the Tube then they should simply discontinue the Xeon line. If a job is worth doing then it is worth doing well - only a loser goes about things in a half-arsed way.

 

[Ph.D.]

What's embarrassing for the 2013 nMP is that the 2009 cMP is still faster in any way at all, and it is. PCIe is faster I/O than Thunderbolt, there are drives faster than the nMP's SSD, and there are GPUs faster than the D700.

So while the cMP is obsolete now by most measures (yet still faster by some measures), the nMP will become obsolete far more quickly.

My claim was stock against stock at the time it was introduced, not stock against flashed (hacked) GPU's, etc. But yes, the present nMP is obsolete too!

Early buyers of the nnMP ought to be quite happy for 3-5 years, after which the normal depreciation of a computer is about zero anyway. My 3,1 is worth 5-10% of what I put into it if not less.

 

[rGiskard]

Perhaps it's reasonable to assume they're trying to come up with a different form factor?

• They already have experience making traditional desktop, so they can't have decided to go back to that; it wouldn't take them 3 years to develop.
• It couldn't take them 3 years to develop a new machine with the existing form factor surely, otherwise that sounds like a disaster.

Surely the only logical conclusion is that, perhaps like the Apple Cube, the 2013 model was an experiment but it hasn't worked out as they'd like.

Unfortunately there is another possibility: they have decided to EOL the Xeon line and now aim to milk Apple's loyal pro customers for all they can.

Bean counters and and a third-rate designer now seem to run Apple, and that is what bean counters do, is cash in on pre-existing reputation and products. The third rate designer is there to beautify the milking apparatus.
[doublepost=1468435329][/doublepost]

View attachment 640094

So I thought i'd try my hand at what I thought a redesign could look like/function. this is a super dirty, quick render in sketchup, so nothing fancy (i'm not that good with that 3D stuff) but i think the main points are there. You'll REALLY have to use your imagination. Basically it's back to a "tower" albeit only 8 in wide by 12 inch deep by 12 tall. So smaller than a cMP, but maybe still portable. It had to come in all the popular colors (haha) and needed a handle so i thought there'd be a sort of cutout in the top vents that when pushed, popped up a handle to carry around (just quickly sketched in there on the pic).

it's essentially bottom to top cooled, like the current nMP, but with two fans at the top (approx 120mm). the large part of the box is taken by the "unified thermal core" where on the facing side, you see 2 PCIe slots. currently they hold two GPUs, but one could swap out the bottom for another type of AIB if one wanted/needed. now, i haven't figured out HOW, but these are standard off the shelf GPUs that could be upgraded. My thinking (and it's not very user-friendly) is that there would be some sort of adjustable adapter, like a copper block that could move to where the actual chip is located on different boards. i guess you'd have to thermal-paste both sides of the copper block to transfer the heat to the core. I don't know, i didn't think it through a whole lot, just tried to get two GPUs with an option to open one for a standard slot.

I didn't get around to the other side or back of the machine, but you can use your imagination to fill in the rest. i'm thinking TWO CPUs on the other side. TWO (maybe 4?) PCIe SSD slots and there may even be room on the other side for a drive bay or two. Obviously RAM slots would be there too. The back would be filled with all your standard, up-to-date port fanfare for external expansion, etc.

So yeah, this is just me thinking out loud. I KNOW there are a thousand reasons why this wouldn't work and why Apple would never dream of doing something like this, but i think it would address SOME of the complaints around here and is sort of a "meet-in-the-middle" compromise. Anyways, again, just for fun. thought maybe it'd light a spark in the thread. let me know what you think!

It still relies on a thermal core and must use proprietary graphics cards, thus adding far more R&D expense.

Better for both Apple and users to go back to a conventional tower design like the cMP. Apple can regularly update the GPUs with a simple firmware rewrite and perhaps an Apple specific cooler design, so minimal R&D expense. Drop in new Xeons every 18 months, and redesign a new logic board around the latest Xeon chipset every 3 years (possibly longer now that Intel have gone to a Process-Architecture-Optimization cycle).

Actually I suspect the Mac Pro will never again use off-the-shelf graphics cards. Apple want's their cut of every GPU sale, and the ebay Mac Pro video card market probably kept the Apple bean counters awake every night.
[doublepost=1468435695][/doublepost]

My claim was stock against stock at the time it was introduced, not stock against flashed (hacked) GPU's, etc. But yes, the present nMP is obsolete too!

Early buyers of the nnMP ought to be quite happy for 3-5 years, after which the normal depreciation of a computer is about zero anyway. My 3,1 is worth 5-10% of what I put into it if not less.

Ahhh, so by that reasoning the Power Mac G4 Sawtooth was a POS because today my iPhone has more processing power.

And the Cray supercomputer wasn't really a supercomputer, because a Tube is faster than it! Silly Cray, what a waste of time that computer was!

 

[AidenShaw]

Anyways, again, just for fun. thought maybe it'd light a spark in the thread. let me know what you think!

"Square peg in a round hole" comes to mind.

You've made a square cylinder, with most likely proprietary form factor GPUs.

The "thermal core" is the problem with the MP6,1 - not a feature.

Let the MP6,1 evolve into the MP7,1 (similar case, updated parts). There's a market for a shiny, quiet system.

For the new Pro tower, let it take standard graphics cards. if you want super-quiet, replace the thermal core with liquid cooling, and use water blocks with standard connections for the GPUs and CPUs. A big, slow, quiet case fan on the radiator. (And the case airflow would help cool the other parts - it doesn't look like your cube would have airflow across the other components on the GPU card.)

 

[s-hatland]

It still relies on a thermal core and must use proprietary graphics cards, thus adding far more R&D expense.

actually, my thinking, and i probably didn't explain it well enough, was not proprietary cards. you (or apple) would use standard, off-the-shelf cards, take of the heat sink/cooler, and install the "GPU-to-heatsink adaptor" to attach it to the core. it's a messy solution to be sure, but i feel like DIYers or even authorized repair/apple stores could install new ones and not be stuck on 3 year old GPUs.

tried to stick with the thermal core to keep it quiet. new xeons and boards would be no different from any other form factor.

but yeah it's messy and not well thought out, just wanted to (try to) play engineer/product designer this morning.
[doublepost=1468436491][/doublepost]

it doesn't look like your cube would have airflow across the other components on the GPU card.)

how does the nMP get airflow across the backside of its GPUs now? or is that part of their proprietary design, where they put components that need air on the other side of what would be for a normal board layout?

 

[tuxon86]

Have you actually used Xcode? I doubt that would work well through the cloud.

I agree that Apple needs to keep the desktop line alive for development reasons. Sadly I think the 5k iMac is the way they are going.

It doesn't have to be XCode...

 

[AidenShaw]

how does the nMP get airflow across the backside of its GPUs now? or is that part of their proprietary design, where they put components that need air on the other side of what would be for a normal board layout?

Same way that it gets airflow through the power supply, over the IO card and the memory DIMMs. The fan sucks air between the skin and the both sides of the cards - not just through the core.

Step through the overview animations at http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ ...

 

[s-hatland]

Same way that it gets airflow through the power supply, over the IO card and the memory DIMMs. The fan sucks air between the skin and the both sides of the cards - not just through the core.

Step through the overview animations at http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ ...

i see what your saying. having the fans only over/covering the core would make the rest of the air around the case stagnant. point taken.

would have to make the vents in the top of the case basically go across the whole top, not just a strip, and the fan(s) above everything else to pull air through the core and also around it.

 

[rGiskard]

"Square peg in a round hole" comes to mind.

You've made a square cylinder, with most likely proprietary form factor GPUs.

The "thermal core" is the problem with the MP6,1 - not a feature.

Let the MP6,1 evolve into the MP7,1 (similar case, updated parts). There's a market for a shiny, quiet system.

For the new Pro tower, let it take standard graphics cards. if you want super-quiet, replace the thermal core with liquid cooling, and use water blocks with standard connections for the GPUs and CPUs. A big, slow, quiet case fan on the radiator. (And the case airflow would help cool the other parts - it doesn't look like your cube would have airflow across the other components on the GPU card.)

Apple tried liquid cooling once before, back when they had to squeeze every MHz possible out of IBM's G5:

Honestly I never found the cMP 4,1 - 5,1 to have noisy CPU fans. Maybe a studio that requires silence could just put the computers in a sealed and ventilated utility room and use bluetooth antennas for keyboard/mouse.

 

[tuxon86]

Apple tried liquid cooling once before, back when they had to squeeze every MHz possible out of IBM's G5:

Honestly I never found the cMP 4,1 - 5,1 to have noisy CPU fans. Maybe a studio that requires silence could just put the computers in a sealed and ventilated utility room and use bluetooth antennas for keyboard/mouse.

That's a long time ago. Water cooling system have improved greatly since then.

 

[Draeconis]

With a advent of Fusion Drives, I was certain the next Mac Pro would come like this. Pros (whatever this means these days) needs fast access, but large amounts of storage. HFS+ makes this a tricky sell, but with APFS, Fusion Drives make more sense.

It'd be great if the next Mac Pro came with an NVMe M.2 SSD (SM961 anyone?) in a fusion drive setup with a large HDD to back it up. Perhaps tweak it to that you could have two spinning drives? M.2 would be especially welcome, not this proprietary nonsense.

Use standard GPUs from AMD and Nvidia; some people want OpenCL, some will want CUDA. They could sell their own upgrades later if they wanted to? If they're serious about gaming and VR, this could be the machine to do that?

Xeons and ECC I don't see going anywhere, and they've proved they can vastly shrink the logic board down, so it doesn't have to be a massive tower like before either. There's always scope for making them i7s, but then that cuts into the iMac margins of course 😉

DVD/BluRay drives are highly unlikely, but no one would be too surprised by that by now.

Thunderbolt would be a basic requirement, hell the first shown Thunderbolt (then named Light Peak) computer was a prototype Mac Pro reported on MR a number of years ago.

Apple have a lot of directions they could go in. The current Mac Pro was and is certainly impressive, but I just think too many compromises were made to impress people with how small it is.

 

[rGiskard]

how does the nMP get airflow across the backside of its GPUs now? or is that part of their proprietary design, where they put components that need air on the other side of what would be for a normal board layout?

Given the Tube's issues with failing GPUs, the answer is apparently "not very well".

It's difficult to speculate where the cooling problem lies without knowing more specifics about the failed video boards, but the reports do indicate that maxing out the fan with third party software doesn't fix the problem. Thus it may well be something that is not in contact with the thermal core is what fails - like the VRMs on the side opposite the GPUs.

Apple's too clever by half designs too often opt to run components right on the edge of their thermal design limits. They usually work but in extreme use cases they will either throttle excessively or fail, and a workstation is by definition an extreme use case. But even their precious iMac forces it's laptop GPU to run slower than it does in other computers. It would be a great product to use in an industrial design class as an exhibit in bad ID, especially since there is no benefit whatsoever to an excessively thin iMac.
[doublepost=1468439473][/doublepost]

That's a long time ago. Water cooling system have improved greatly since then.

It's unnecessary complexity that adds risk with little benefit.. Fans are still required to cool the liquid radiator. Actually I'd say there is zero benefit unless Apple plan to begin overclocking their Xeons.

 

[koyoot]

It's uncessary complexity that adds risk with little benefit.. Fans are still required to cool the liquid radiator. Actually I'd say there is zero benefit unless Apple plan to begin overclocking their Xeons.

Bigger stability, lower power consumption alongside lower temperatures and higher reliability is no real benefit?

Guys, do your technical analysis is based always on personal preferences, or strictly technical analysis?

There is a very good reason why Radeon Pro Duo board water cooled is averaging 293W of power consumption under load while maintaining 890 MHz core clock, on BOTH Fiji XT chips. So for each GPU the average power consumption is 146.5W and single GPU gives on average 7.3 TFLOPs of compute power. Compare it to even Nano that is air cooled(184W at average 850 MHz).

 

[ITguy2016]

Apple tried liquid cooling once before, back when they had to squeeze every MHz possible out of IBM's G5:

Honestly I never found the cMP 4,1 - 5,1 to have noisy CPU fans. Maybe a studio that requires silence could just put the computers in a sealed and ventilated utility room and use bluetooth antennas for keyboard/mouse.

They don't. This became a "problem" only after the nMP was released and only for those people who are searching for a reason to advocate the nMP. Having said that I fully acknowledge the cMP could be noisier if outfitted with high end GPU's which contain their own fans, other expansion cards, multiple CPU's, etc. Something which cannot be done with the nMP. All the noise will exist on the outside of the nMP.

 

[AidenShaw]

It's unnecessary complexity that adds risk with little benefit.. Fans are still required to cool the liquid radiator. Actually I'd say there is zero benefit unless Apple plan to begin overclocking their Xeons.

HP likes them...

http://www8.hp.com/emea_africa/en/products/oas/product-detail.html?oid=6746050#!tab=features

 

[Jack Burton]

With a advent of Fusion Drives, I was certain the next Mac Pro would come like this. Pros (whatever this means these days) needs fast access, but large amounts of storage. HFS+ makes this a tricky sell, but with APFS, Fusion Drives make more sense.

It'd be great if the next Mac Pro came with an NVMe M.2 SSD (SM961 anyone?) in a fusion drive setup with a large HDD to back it up. Perhaps tweak it to that you could have two spinning drives? M.2 would be especially welcome, not this proprietary nonsense.

Use standard GPUs from AMD and Nvidia; some people want OpenCL, some will want CUDA. They could sell their own upgrades later if they wanted to? If they're serious about gaming and VR, this could be the machine to do that?

Xeons and ECC I don't see going anywhere, and they've proved they can vastly shrink the logic board down, so it doesn't have to be a massive tower like before either. There's always scope for making them i7s, but then that cuts into the iMac margins of course 😉

DVD/BluRay drives are highly unlikely, but no one would be too surprised by that by now.

Thunderbolt would be a basic requirement, hell the first shown Thunderbolt (then named Light Peak) computer was a prototype Mac Pro reported on MR a number of years ago.

Apple have a lot of directions they could go in. The current Mac Pro was and is certainly impressive, but I just think too many compromises were made to impress people with how small it is.

Since we're brainstorming here:

On AMD vs nVidia: Some people on the cgsociety have claimed that Open CL rendering engines perform better on nVidia than on AMD. So for them, there is no benefit to going AMD.

As for wish list, pie in the sky ideas: I'm perfectly happy to part with spinning media completely. No DVD/blu ray drives. No 3.5 inch hard drives. I'd be happy to only stick with the 2.5 inch form factor since I'm looking at ONLY ssd for my next machine. I think Apple could make that slim or even mount it to the back wall of the case like some of the new PC cases out there (where the CPU, ram, and mobo are on the front, the SSD drives are mounted on the back.)

Quiet. Efficient. Expandable. User serviceable.

If they keep a CD/DVD drive sized bay, it should have an SSD hot swappable mount inside.

 

[koyoot]

On AMD vs nVidia: Some people on the cgsociety have claimed that Open CL rendering engines perform better on nVidia than on AMD. So for them, there is no benefit to going AMD.

So far every benchmark that actually is Rendering in Open CL shows that AMD is better at it than Nvidia offerings...