MP All Models Mac Pro X,Y…WHAT IF…

[mattspace]

Why would a Mac Pro need something an iPad or Macbook does not?

Universal Storage is the future, everything soldered and security coded.

Replying to myself here, but as I keep an eye on Apple's Australian store, I note that while the full range of 2019 Mac Pro SSDs are listed, but perpetually sold out, the 2023 Mac Pro no longer has any storage listed as purchasable accessories.

The only available accessories are Wheels, Feet, thunderbolt cables, or a Belkin lock. There's no storage upgrades listed for the Studio, either.

Makes one wonder - what soft of supply chain issues could Apple be having to be unable to keep this stuff in stock, or have they just decided to make storage no longer user-upgradable, by making it a service item only.

I imagine they were getting hammered by people who bought the upgrades, and then found out they needed a second Mac to enable them, and perhaps it was more trouble than it was worth?

 

[mode11]

The 2023 Mac Pros are still new. If someone wanted a big Apple SSD, presumably they’d have just specced it at purchase. Most people who want a lot of storage would use PCIe, as it’s vastly cheaper and likely faster - it’s one of the main benefits of buying a Pro over the Studio.

Perhaps few people have ever chosen to upgrade their Apple SSDs in practice; unless all your PCIe slots are filled, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In which case, perhaps Apple don’t bother keeping them in stock, and just deal with requests on a service / special order basis.

 

[mattspace]

The 2023 Mac Pros are still new. If someone wanted a big Apple SSD, presumably they’d have just specced it at purchase. Most people who want a lot of storage would use PCIe, as it’s vastly cheaper and likely faster - it’s one of the main benefits of buying a Pro over the Studio.

But they DID have the storage for the 2023 on the (au) store a couple of weeks ago, in all the sizes.

 

[Regulus67]

Since Apple stopped listing upgrades in the store. I am keeping an eye on Amazon in Sweden, as they still have most of the products on Amazon Apple Store. With the caveat that the prices seem to stay the same.
Did you check your Amazon Apple store, mattspace?

I purchased two Radeon Pro W6800x Dual cards the other week. As the price all of a sudden dropped by the day. But only on that card, the other MPX cards did not drop in price.
I thought of returning the card I purchased first, as the second was so much cheaper still. But I haven't decided what to do yet. Most likely, I will keep it. As it is back at full price again.

If I decide later that I have no use for it, I'll put it up for sale on e-bay.

 

[mattspace]

Since Apple stopped listing upgrades in the store. I am keeping an eye on Amazon in Sweden, as they still have most of the products on Amazon Apple Store. With the caveat that the prices seem to stay the same.
Did you check your Amazon Apple store, mattspace?

They don't do any internal components, or the Mac Pro at all in the .au Amazon store.

 

[HDFan]

the 2023 Mac Pro no longer has any storage listed as purchasable accessories.

Any reason Australia would be different? All storage options are available on the U.S. store.

 

[Regulus67]

Any reason Australia would be different? All storage options are available on the U.S. store.

I just realised. This must be because of Apple's Warranty system.
I recently read that in regard to the new Apple Vision Pro. One bought in the US, is not covered if it is imported to Europe

 

[mattspace]

Any reason Australia would be different? All storage options are available on the U.S. store.

Well Apple haven't sold any Mac Pros in refurb here since the 5,1 days - my suspicion being they shipped them all back to the US so new sales didn't have the competition.

However, they did have the full range of 2023 storage upgrades up until recently. The full range of 2019 internals is still listed in the store, just all of it is "sold out".

I'm actually going to have a word with the local state consumer affairs folks in the next couple of days, because selling something as "upgradable" but not actually offering the upgrades crosses some regulatory lines that Apple may not think about for the American market.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Do any of you think there is any chance of an m3 extreme or dual m3 ultras? It would be a nice way to differentiate over the studio.

 

[mode11]

Do any of you think there is any chance of an m3 extreme or dual m3 ultras? It would be a nice way to differentiate over the studio.

Who would it cater to? Would it tempt those users away from Windows workstations, especially at the price they would charge?

On a technical level, though, I guess it depends on how it would be implemented. I can't see them using the current approach, with the Max as the building block. That would either require multiple UF connections per chip, or some kind of 4-way hub silicon that the Max chips would sit around. With the latter needing to be implemented in a way that has minimal impact on latency.

Dual Ultras would side-step the UF issue, whilst delivering high CPU core counts. But what bus would they would sit on? There isn't one currently. It would also lose the benefits of shared RAM, which presumably means the GPUs wouldn't be able to act as one.

It is possible, however, that the Ultra will become its own dedicated piece of silicon, rather than stitched-together Maxes (the M3 Max seems to have been repositioned as a higher-end part, distinct from the Pro). If so, the Max wouldn't need a UF connector, simplifying its design. The new Ultra could use one, though, to enable it to be paired up as an Extreme. A dedicated Ultra design (and hence Extreme) could also be given a lot more PCIe lanes, suitable for use in a Mac Pro. It depends if such an Ultra would fit within the max chip size of the N3E process.

 

[Harry Haller]

Do any of you think there is any chance of an m3 extreme or dual m3 ultras? It would be a nice way to differentiate over the studio.

Slim or none, imo
I’m afraid the only differentiator with the Studio will remain $500 slots.
I hope I’m wrong and Apple stuns us all with a Big Mac Pro announcement at WWDC.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

This is one area where I think there could be a big trickle down effect.

If they could create a switch for 4maxes to work, that starts to really scale. Why not an 8 way switch, why not a 16 switch. No doubt there is some overhead, but that starts to give them a way to scale no one else can. That could bring massive ML abilities with crazy expensive machines. Apple does tend to like crazy expensive.

Of course I think you guys are likely right. But there is some possibility there. Just depends on the right vision and person pushing that vision. Not sure anyone at apple that's left to do that kind of thing anymore.

 

[avro707]

Replying to myself here, but as I keep an eye on Apple's Australian store, I note that while the full range of 2019 Mac Pro SSDs are listed, but perpetually sold out, the 2023 Mac Pro no longer has any storage listed as purchasable accessories.

And the W6800X Duo is now listed as sold out.

Maybe never possible to get one now.

Time to dump macOS and go Radeon pro w7900 if it fits.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Apple Developed Chip Equivalent To Four M2 Ultras For Apple Car Project - Slashdot

After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insi...

hardware.slashdot.org

Why the heck didn’t they make a Mac Pro with it!?

 

[Regulus67]

Why the heck didn’t they make a Mac Pro with it!?

Perhaps it to a large part is similar to the Vision R1 chip?
With real-time mapping of the surroundings. As the car was supposed to be self driving without a steering wheel.
If that's the case. It will not be useful in a mac. At least that is my guess. As this was explained to me here in this forum, that the R1 chip doesn't even do 3D calculation.



Quote: dmccloud

So you explain that aspect quite well, thank you. And like leman said, this is not a graphical ability.
Now I think of it more in line with the T2 chip. Not that they have anything in common. But in term of functionality that is added, that would not otherwise be present in the system

From what I understand the primary purpose of R1 is to do eye, head, etc. tracking with ultra-low latency. You could do these things on the CPU/GPU, but there would be a short delay, which could lead to motion sickness. I’ve also seen mentions that R1 is responsible for at least parts of the video output processing.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Perhaps it to a large part is similar to the Vision R1 chip?
With real-time mapping of the surroundings. As the car was supposed to be self driving without a steering wheel.
If that's the case. It will not be useful in a mac. At least that is my guess. As this was explained to me here in this forum, that the R1 chip doesn't even do 3D calculation.

Possible but the description seems very different. More specifically wrt the number of cores and GPUs, and also that it was nearly done, ie, not done. R1 obviously is shipping. It’s all guess work, but 4 ultra chips sounds pretty sweet.

 

[Harry Haller]

Apple Developed Chip Equivalent To Four M2 Ultras For Apple Car Project - Slashdot

After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insi...

hardware.slashdot.org

Why the heck didn’t they make a Mac Pro with it!?

Maybe yield and cost issues.
I still haven’t given up hope on an M3 Extreme.

 

[MacHeritage]

Apple Developed Chip Equivalent To Four M2 Ultras For Apple Car Project - Slashdot

After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insi...

hardware.slashdot.org

Why the heck didn’t they make a Mac Pro with it!?

I still think an Extreme chip is possible for the Mac Pro and would be what desktops like the Mac Pro are for. It could also help Apple with dealing with the competition in the long run. This just proves that it is possible.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

This would be a double extreme!

 

[mode11]

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple Developed Chip Equivalent To Four M2 Ultras For Apple Car Project - Slashdot

After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insi...

hardware.slashdot.org

Why the heck didn’t they make a Mac Pro with it!?

Pretty likely because "equivalent" doesn't mean what that many are inferring that article implies. If it was actually four ultras ( or 8 maxes) all jamed together why use the 'word' equivalent? Pretty good chance that the metric for 'equivalent' was being measured in aggregate "TOPs" or "TFLOPS". How many CPU cores do you need to string together to match the TFLOPS of a upper range GPU. That would be more than several. And quite likely consuming much more die area to boot. how many CPU cores to match the 'equivalent' NPU TOPs performance.

If Apple tried to do the work that the R1 is doing in the Vision Pro then they would need several multiples of the more general usage M series equivalent. Pretty good chance that this " car spatial inference from 'vision' " SoC was closer to the R1 than the M1 in structure. The R1 doesn't run general user apps. There is no generic user access there at all.
They do need a 'high horsepower' inference engine in the R1. A semi-automous car would have even higher senor fusion / sensor inference overhead. And extremely little need to run "happy App store apps" .

The car can also do with a scale out set of chips. M2 and R1 in the Vision pro 'split' the work. A car have even more external sensors. Those also don't necessarily need to be piled up into one huge heap to analyze. ( What is going on behind the car and in front of the car are really two different areas of inference. There are different 'actors' and external events happening. Just need to find the identifiable 'stuff' and hand it off to higher level inference. There is no need to unified the memory of all the raw sensor feeds from everything into a singular heap. If they are decoupled then don't need something like UltraFusion. M2 - R1 ... no UltraFusion there either. )

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1773135334567788661

Perhaps an Extreme?

 

[mode11]

Yeah, I speculated about that in post 385, above. Makes a lot of sense.

All P-cores and a rebalancing between CPU and GPU could make for an insane chip. I couldn’t afford one, but it would be fascinating to read about.

 

[impulse462]

i'm wondering if the next iteration of the mac pro will be delayed because of this: https://arstechnica.com/security/20...secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

heres the actual paper: https://gofetch.fail

i wonder if the authors have been in contact with apple and theyve updated in the mean time