Mac Pro to Finally See Updates Next Week

[AidenShaw]

And yet there have been plenty of motherboards on the PC side with more than 4 slots for single CPU machines. For a $2499 machine I expect more than what can be done "easily".

And why would intel design a chip with a memory controller that supports 4 dimms, but triple channel memory? Doesn't really make sense.

Thank you for pointing out the odd situation that Apple has 4 or 8 DIMM slots for a CPU that would natively support 6 or 12 slots. I omitted that detail....

 

[Mac Kiwi]

Yes true indeed however it hasnt been that much of an advancement with 3D power in along time. I too use PC's (BOXX and DELL) for 3D work but honestly dont see much of a diff between the latest Nvidia cards and what was offered 2 years ago.
We did a demo between a few years old cards and played with some huge data-sets and still it wasnt enough to wow us
The only advantage I find with PC over Mac (we have a ton of em for everything else) is the minor quirks you find in Maya running on Macs.

Even with Opengl and where dual planes comes into use in the viewports?

 

[DeepIn2U]

If Apple would do a Pro in a bigger Mini form factor with the cooling, solid state and other tech they have developed, they might sell 2-10 units per user. Admitedly it would still be small potatoes as compared to iPads (great new problem), but they already did the R&D, so it is a product engineering issue. Make all internal upgrades solid state and all spinning crap external.

Why can't they make a 4 CPU ie. E3-1220 L Mac mini style (all heat sink and NG MP style fans) in a case 4x a Mac-Mini.

Or better yet a custom chip using that theory with 8-16 cores per die.

Users can populate racks of them. They could sell the compatible aluminum extrusion for racking by the meter.

MacOS has intense compute capacity. Let it be free.

Rocketman

I think the next generation CPU's is what Apple is after ... since "performance per watt" is the reason they chose Intel over Power/AMD.

1. Less power consumption yet increase in multiples for performance is a BIG win for top end pro's ... less electrical bill means more $$ on R&D (SW, HW, raises, you get the rhythm). Also less HEAT - better hardware lifespan!!
After all you're not purchasing a 3yr disposable workstation now are you?!!?!
2. Half the height of the existing MPro ...
still has 4 drive bays (accommodating SSD's standard - another 12mths to significantly drop in SSD pricing at 512GB/1TB sizes, while
allowing for 2-4 PCIe 3.0 slots (2.2 is still very common),
3. Maybe slightly wider and less weight!

 

[Rocketman]

I think the next generation CPU's is what Apple is after ... since "performance per watt" is the reason they chose Intel over Power/AMD.

1. Less power consumption yet increase in multiples for performance is a BIG win for top end pro's ... less electrical bill means more $$ on R&D (SW, HW, raises, you get the rhythm). Also less HEAT - better hardware lifespan!!
After all you're not purchasing a 3yr disposable workstation now are you?!!?!
2. Half the height of the existing MPro ...
still has 4 drive bays (accommodating SSD's standard - another 12mths to significantly drop in SSD pricing at 512GB/1TB sizes, while
allowing for 2-4 PCIe 3.0 slots (2.2 is still very common),
3. Maybe slightly wider and less weight!

I think having an external drive bay and even an external PCI card or GPU farm over TB is now practical latency wise. Facebook's latest server farm uses 12v DC power routing to reduce transformers and heat. So a rack of minis or newpros using a 12v cabling scheme would save considerable power. Single users could still have a brick or BTO internal, defeating the heat savings. The first thing you learn when you run a SSD only computer is almost all heat and power usage and noise goes away. The improvement in heat budget would allow a higher TDP processor set. Apple power management in software is further headroom for heat management of an entire rack or room.

As for latency the drives or GPUs can be physically next to the CPU boxen with cooling management systems.

The cheapest UPS ever is an internal Just In Case laptop battery. Apple would likely opt for less than 12v too.

By mid 2013 Intel will have Haswell or whatever it's called and mature die shrink manufacturing processes. By then we will certainly have TB v2.0 in copper and may even have v1.0 in optical, but that is less likely. So we will have a TB bus of over 80 GB/s as compared to now 20 (10 on the new NGMP because the dual plugs are split). MacPros are currently sold as workstations. The new meme should be modular 1-8 units per user or group so overall sales increase, despite the lower market share of desktop units as compared to laptops and tablets. If you make it easy and logical to buy two, more folks will buy two.

Rocketman