New Mac Pro Confirmed to Have Removable CPU

[flat five]

[offtopic]

It's practically a tautology.

that's a cool word.. never heard it before.
i think i'm guilty of that on too many occasions.. like, i'll often catch myself saying the same thing in succession.



[/offtopic]

 

[Nugget]

...like why would a 256GB SSD be faster than 128GB, assuming both use the same underlying tech?

No clue, but is that truly a safe assumption? There's certainly a precedent here. The OWC guys seemed to think that the greater NAND densities in the larger drives contributed to significantly better write performance. I sort of recall discussion about it here but the details escape me. It's not a subject I know much about and I'm not about to speculate.

Notably, from the comments on that blog post:

"This isn’t all that surprising. Most models of SSD’s increase in speed as capacity goes up. More capacity usually means more NAND devices, which means more channels and more interleaving. Go look at any model of SSD and compare the manufacturer’s specs of the 64GB model to the 256GB or 512GB model, and you’ll see a similar huge jump."

"What are you telling us? Smaller SSD’s are always more slow. A 64GB would be more slow then a 128GB. The 512GB Version is always the fastet and this knows everybody since many years."

If it's a misconception, it appears to be a common one.

 

[Renzatic]

Are those compatible (except for form factor) with those Apple uses?
Why even develop SATA Express when this solution does the job?
Do you suggest that this is the standard everyone and Apple should adopt?

Apple has adopted it in all aspects but form factor. It's a PCIe SSD. Exactly the same as the one you get in the Mac Pro.

I didn't find your truck versus car analogy helpful either. For what was that... in order to...

First of all, Apple is using the PCIe bus where ever it is needed. All the heavy load goes over PCIe and even the external TB ports are some PCIe plus useful features. There is no faster and more versatile port than Thunderbolt anywhere. So if anyone has the trucks to move a mountain, it is the Mac Pro. And it is also the sleeker computer. So you can have a nice car that doubles as a powerful truck.

The only part of PCIe apple is not using are those dimensional standardized expansion card slots. What is so good about them, that they can't be phased out as obsolete technology? Backwards compatibility can't be an issue, if upgradeability is your goal. Surely you don't wanna replace your dual GPUs with older ones? And going into the future, why stick with what has become obsolete a long time ago?

Listen, your practically preaching to the choir when it comes to Thunderbolt. I know what it does. I know what it's good for. And I like it for those reasons. I'd love to see the day when you can slap a fully featured workstation GPU up through Thunderbolt.

...but that day isn't today, and it's not gonna be here for awhile yet. That's why we still need PCIe slots inside the computer.

Yeah, Apple has an excellent piece of engineering in the Mac Pro. It can do some incredible stuff very efficiently. But it does have that one caveat. Being able to upgrade your GPU can give you a huge boost of power at a cost much lower than buying an entirely new machine. Even a single upgrade per machine can extend its life by 2-3 years. And GPUs are never so good that something better is just around the corner.

And hell, what's obsolete about PCIe? Apple's using it for their GPUs. Are you saying the form factor itself is obsolete? How? It's still commonly used in the pro market. Any desktop tower you buy today will have it, and there's nothing else out there currently in line to replace it. That's not obsolete. That's standard.

Graphic card makers have already worked around the standard in using two slots for one card. And adding more fans because the positioning of the card is stopping the air flow, instead of leading it around the hot chip. Also these cards have become too heavy for holding in with one screw at the top, so the PCIe x16 slot needed a little plastic latch to avert the card from falling out by itself. And because of all these little fans the whole box needs to be noise-damped.

Yeah, that is a downside, but one that's ACTUALLY FIXED by the Mac Pro. The GPUs in the Pro aren't any different than their giant PC equivalents. Those little chips still generate just as much heat, and need just as much cooling. But the design of the Pro itself moots the need for that giant heatsink and fan. If Apple were to make the case just a little bigger, all you'd have to do (in theory, I'll admit) is strip all that extraneous stuff (which can easily be done without breaking the card), and slide it into the proper slot. A little bigger at the base, and a little taller, and it could've taken regular PCIe 16x cards.

There's no need for Apple to go entirely proprietary with all their bits and pieces, other than to make the entire machine as small as possible.

...which is nice, but not 100% necessary considering the market. It's not a portable machine. They could've gone a little bit heavier and bigger than they did, and everyone would still be just as thrilled.

And if you do want to change your configuration, you have to shut down your computer, unplug it and screw it open. And don't forget to double check if all the pins fit correctly before you close it, put it back in its place and hope it's still booting. I don't get, how this experience can be better than plugging in a plug-and-play Thunderbolt peripheral? What are those use cases, when 20 Gbit/s are not enough and you need raw PCIe? You are making this up, just to disagree.

I've already mentioned these exact pluses of TB in...er...one of these Mac Pro threads. Where we differ if you arguing for Apple's current either/or setup, whereas I'm saying the best case scenario would be to have access to both. Not necessarily the PCIe 1x - 4x slots, that's covered by TB, but a couple of 16x slots could be fitted in that cylinder without making that tiny machine HUGE as a tradeoff. Just bigger.

Also, keep in mind that you can saturate a TB connection with a good external SSD Raid. It's fast certainly, but not so fast it can cover ALL scenarios.

Not being IBM-compatible is the least of Apples problems. In the contrary, it's a huge benefit. Someone needs to not follow the compatibility madness. The new Mac Pro form factor was only possible because it does not support PCIe expansion cards. And you wanna give it all up, just because of third party pricing greed? No! If they are not yet copying Apple, they should start with it right now. I can't wait to see, when Intel claims to be the inventor of the UltraTrashcan.

Better 3rd party greed than Apple exclusive greed. Why pay $3000 for a card when you can get the exact same thing for less elsewhere?

Since we know those GPUs are easily user replaceable in the new Pro, then it's not a huge stretch to assume they'll possibly be user upgradeable. But with only Apple using that form factor, only they will be providing the upgrades. They'll build off the same GPU references everyone else does, but you'll be paying much, much more for access to them.

And what's so bad about compatibility? The Mac Pro is using the same standards everyone else is, so it must be important for them. They're the same in every way EXCEPT for form factor.

For some people, that smaller form factor might not be worth it. And as nice as the new Pro is, there are some downsides.

 

[thekev]

Nice, though any replacement will be pricey

Yeah I doubt you'll see many people going for new 12 cores. I kind of wonder if anyone will look for a good deal on a Sandy Bridge E 8 core, then test that.

LG Socket 2011 though will be depreciated once Haswell based xeon's are released too wont they?

That is true. I suspect that the more likely upgrades would be way down the line when businesses start to retire servers. CPUs don't always see massive year over year performance gains, so in some cases it is practical.

The Service Manual confirms that the CPU can, and will be, replaced separately should an issue arise. The process has 13 steps and ends with running a Cooling System Diagnostic A list of new special tools is given in the manual for doing so. The list includes;

A Core Cradle
CPU Riser Spring Press
CPU Grease Stencil (Which applies the paste in a 6x5 grid pattern)
CPU Riser Cover
Access Card Tool (Same thing used to open original 17" intel iMacs)
T8 Torque driver set to 0.85Nm

It may be beyond the comfort level of those who haven't spent a lot of time inside computers.

It's not a surprise to me. It's Manufacturing 101 - when the quantity produced is relatively low, modularity is more likely, in order to support BTO options and minimize the need to re-tool from one year's models to the next. The fact that it doesn't look like yesterday's modular design is beside the point. The fact that the GPU cards are a proprietary design is beside the point - Apple needs these to be modular for Apple's own purposes.

Well there are more likely reasons than those ones. First there is no specification that allows for soldered Xeons. They would have to design an entire socket without running afoul of intel's IP. This issue does not exist with notebook cpus, and they aren't the same. They will need to retool for a future model no matter what. This is because sockets change with the next generation. Chipsets can typically go 2 cycles. Since Apple skipped the first cycle, this is limited to one.

 

[Renzatic]

No clue, but is that truly a safe assumption? There's certainly a precedent here. The OWC guys seemed to think that the greater NAND densities in the larger drives contributed to significantly better write performance. I sort of recall discussion about it here but the details escape me. It's not a subject I know much about and I'm not about to speculate.

Huh. Well I stand corrected then.

Though here, it all depends on individual chip density, rather than overall storage space. Like a 128GB drive with 2 NAND chips installed won't be see any potential write speed boost when compared against a 256GB drive with 4 chips on it. But a 256GB drive with two denser chips would see a little boost to write performance.

 

[iPadPublisher]

The only times I've been on the market for parts is for repairs. Other than that I totally agree. Upgrading piecemeal is nice for enthusiasts and gamers but in the high end workstation world we get two years max out of the box then we push them down the line.

Normally, I would agree with this... but remember it was FOUR YEARS in-between new Mac Pro units. I bought mine in 2010 and did in fact feel the need to upgrade last year in order to keep up with demand. Not saying this is the NORM, but it was nice to be able to bump up the engine a few horse power while waiting for this new unit to come along.

 

[Gudi]

Assuming that both drives are built upon the same tech, why would a 128GB SSD be any slower than a 256GB one?

I am not AnandTech and I can't explain the inner workings of SSDs. The only benchmark I could find in a quick way was this one showing less than half the write speed in a current rMBP with only 128 GB compared to its 256 and 512 GB siblings. I don't know the reason for this effect, but my notion is to generally avoid all SSD with 128 GB because of write performance issues.

 

[Renzatic]

...this one showing less than half the write speed in a current rMBP with only 128 GB compared to its 256 and 512 GB siblings. I don't know the reason for this effect, but my notion is to generally avoid all SSD with 128 GB because of write performance issues.

It still weirds me out that a doubly dense NAND chip can produce nearly twice the performance. You'd think that the speed would be more aligned to the voltage, onboard controller, and bus speeds, rather than the density of the chips themselves.

From the way I understand it, NAND and ram aren't vastly different from each other. It's not like a 512GB stick of DDR3 ram is twice as a 256GB stick of the same stuff. You do get a bit of a speed boost, but it's pretty slight. Nowhere near as profound as what we're seeing here.

It's too late to rack my brains and start reading stuff. I'll look it up later and figure out why that is.

 

[Gudi]

I don't want to put words in his mouth but all he said was that you don't need more ram than you need. It's hardly a controversial position. It's practically a tautology.

Ouch! Did I only say 1=1? Lets try again.

The thing with inactive RAM is, it tricked people into believing their RAM was always almost full and they needed to upgrade, because gigabytes of free RAM must always be available. When in fact the free RAM is supposed to fill up. Inactive RAM is useful to the user, because it might reduce hard disk activity, while free RAM is really doing nothing. So the RAM seams to be full, but it isn't. It is only really full, when it is full with active RAM.

In a similar manner there is rarely accessed "inactive" data on every SSD. A fusion drive would act like memory management. When the SSD is full (or seems to be full) it copies the least used "inactive" data to an HDD and deletes it on the SSD to make room for more "active" data. When there is no fusion drive it is the obligation of the user to manually make sure that the SSD isn't full with lots of rarely used data. If done properly 256 GB can bring you a far way before you hit the limit.

With Mavericks OSX stopped showing RAM distribution and now shows RAM pressure instead. And inactive RAM is not pressuring your RAM limit, because it can be dumped anytime if more space for active RAM is needed. Inactive RAM now appears to be free (for redistribution), what it is. This is a great way to reassure over-anxious users that 16 GB of RAM is indeed enough for light computing.

Now what if your filesystem would act similar and starts to show you every file that wasn't opened for longer than a week as free(able) storage space? Would that convince you, that the limits of your current SSD size are not yet pressuring you (as much as you might think)?

The more of it you have, the better.

And that is simply not true. You can easily have more RAM than you need and than it doesn't help you with performance. But your RAM can never be fast enough. The faster it is, the better it is. Always! And the same is true for SSDs and all kinds of storage types. Faster is alway better, while bigger only helps when you haven't enough. And if you have enough depends on whether you store all your data in the right place.

 

[wallysb01]

It may be beyond the comfort level of those who haven't spent a lot of time inside computers.

Certainly sounds like something I wouldn’t want to do with one piece of hardware that costs maybe $4K (original nMP) and another that costs maybe $1K-2K (new CPU), while hoping to not break either.... iFixit it while hopefully be out soon to confirm or deny our worries.

 

[Gudi]

Apple has adopted it in all aspects but form factor. It's a PCIe SSD. Exactly the same as the one you get in the Mac Pro.

So than you could take an Apple PCIe SSD card and put it in a Dell PCIe slot? But not the other way around, right? Now who is using a proprietary standard that doesn't work with the other one!

And if everything except the form of the card is identical, isn't it than plausible that PCIe SSD cards for Dell laptops, will also fit in a Mac Pro? At least with PCIe there is a chance of getting an upgrade in storage peed. Where as with current SATA we are already stuck.

 

[GunZi]

I wish i could buy that thing hehe

 

[moderately]

Are those compatible (except for form factor) with those Apple uses?
Why even develop SATA Express when this solution does the job?
Do you suggest that this is the standard everyone and Apple should adopt?

I didn't find your truck versus car analogy helpful either. For what was that... in order to...

First of all, Apple is using the PCIe bus where ever it is needed. All the heavy load goes over PCIe and even the external TB ports are some PCIe plus useful features. There is no faster and more versatile port than Thunderbolt anywhere. So if anyone has the trucks to move a mountain, it is the Mac Pro. And it is also the sleeker computer. So you can have a nice car that doubles as a powerful truck.

The only part of PCIe apple is not using are those dimensional standardized expansion card slots. What is so good about them, that they can't be phased out as obsolete technology? Backwards compatibility can't be an issue, if upgradeability is your goal. Surely you don't wanna replace your dual GPUs with older ones? And going into the future, why stick with what has become obsolete a long time ago?

Graphic card makers have already worked around the standard in using two slots for one card. And adding more fans because the positioning of the card is stopping the air flow, instead of leading it around the hot chip. Also these cards have become too heavy for holding in with one screw at the top, so the PCIe x16 slot needed a little plastic latch to avert the card from falling out by itself. And because of all these little fans the whole box needs to be noise-damped.

And if you do want to change your configuration, you have to shut down your computer, unplug it and screw it open. And don't forget to double check if all the pins fit correctly before you close it, put it back in its place and hope it's still booting. I don't get, how this experience can be better than plugging in a plug-and-play Thunderbolt peripheral? What are those use cases, when 20 Gbit/s are not enough and you need raw PCIe? You are making this up, just to disagree.

Not being IBM-compatible is the least of Apples problems. In the contrary, it's a huge benefit. Someone needs to not follow the compatibility madness. The new Mac Pro form factor was only possible because it does not support PCIe expansion cards. And you wanna give it all up, just because of third party pricing greed? No! If they are not yet copying Apple, they should start with it right now. I can't wait to see, when Intel claims to be the inventor of the UltraTrashcan.

I agree, well thought out and explained. I do object to the implication that the nMP is like an El Camino.

 

[wovel]

But a proprietary connector on the GPUs SUCKS.

----------



The GPUs are upgradeable.

But the connector they needed for the thermal core design didn't exist. What were they supposed to do? Stick to the same old design. That is just not how Apple works. This design is not just about being smaller or lighter. It is about efficient quiet cooling.

I suspect will see more GPU options in the future and Apple may even offer in-store upgrades. Once that happens, I am sure you will see 3rd party upgrades. I would not expect 3rd party upgrades to ever be officially supported, but they will exist.

 

[Thomas2006]

Look at the tear down? The GPUs can be pulled from the unit just like the CPU card can. If the GPU units can be pulled from the unit, then they can be upgraded.

Upgraded to what? Well, that remains to be seen.

Hopefully, dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titans.

 

[BEIGE]

haha. The Titans are crap compared to the D700s for OpenCL.

 

[Gudi]

Even a single upgrade per machine can extend its life by 2-3 years. And GPUs are never so good that something better is just around the corner.

True. The new Mac Pro may age faster because of a lack of upgrade options. But than again the attractive trashcan design may also increase resale value, from the professional into the enthusiastic market. It is not clear if buyers lose or gain money this way.

It's still commonly used in the pro market. Any desktop tower you buy today will have it, and there's nothing else out there currently in line to replace it. That's not obsolete. That's standard.

The pro market does not set the standards anymore. Since Q4 2008 the majority of PCs sold are laptops not desktops and I'd argue that desktop towers themselves have become obsolete. It certainly is a niche market. But those cards are clearly obsolete, not only because of their size, their layout and the wasted space. But because the idea of expansion cards is flawed. The idea was that every card needed its own opening in the casing, so that it could introduce its own ports. And that idea is flawed. You don't wanna have single-purpose ports, but universal multi-purpose ports. A TB port can be adapted to HDMI, but not the other way around. A new kind of expansion cards should be able to connect with all the ports a computer has to offer, but not to punch a hole in the casing.

...which is nice, but not 100% necessary considering the market.

The market is not what you want from Apple, but whoever wants what Apple has to offer. Believe me, I was among those who demanded the iPhone 5c to be cheap not colorful. What customers want and what vendors want are two different things and the market lies between them, not on either side.

Not necessarily the PCIe 1x - 4x slots, that's covered by TB, but a couple of 16x slots could be fitted in that cylinder without making that tiny machine HUGE as a tradeoff. Just bigger.

And add a couple of new heat sources with unknown side effects. So the solved heat problem becomes unsolved again? Listen, Apple doesn't want you to tamper with their computer design. An IBM-compatible PC with parts from everywhere is not their ideal.

Also, keep in mind that you can saturate a TB connection with a good external SSD Raid. It's fast certainly, but not so fast it can cover ALL scenarios.

Is there any connection possible that can't be saturated, any amount of memory that can't be filled? There are always limitations, the art of design is to make good compromises. Apple is generally very good in making small, quiet, powerful machines, that are not so standardized.

But with only Apple using that form factor, only they will be providing the upgrades. They'll build off the same GPU references everyone else does, but you'll be paying much, much more for access to them.

It's nice to be Apple, so much of their success is based on parts that are available to everyone and not worth much on their own, but in the way Apple integrates them, they become valuable. They can omit features others take for granted and still manage to be more desirable. A phone that doesn't have a keyboard.

And what's so bad about compatibility? The Mac Pro is using the same standards everyone else is, so it must be important for them. They're the same in every way EXCEPT for form factor.

But form factor is the crucial part. You could put the same specs in the old Mac Pro casing and it would be less desirable than in this neat little trashcan. You buy Macs in part because they look good. Even for stationary desktop where size and weight seam to matter less, they are important to Apples design philosophy.

 

[N64]

But the connector they needed for the thermal core design didn't exist. What were they supposed to do? Stick to the same old design. That is just not how Apple works. This design is not just about being smaller or lighter. It is about efficient quiet cooling.

Just saying, the professionals who need to upgrade their cards aren't going to care about that excuse.

 

[flat five]

Just saying, the professionals who need to upgrade their cards aren't going to care about that excuse.

you mean the hobbyists who want to upgrade their cards aren't going to care about that excuse?

i don't know, i'm not some IT dude working around gazillions of pro computers but i'm amongst a decent enough sized group of peers using mac pros or mbp in professional/creative environments.. and from what i see, none of them (including myself) are clamoring for the latest/greatest gpu updates..
at some point, hardware is irrelevant.. it's the ideas which are important.. as in- i'd way rather draw a good idea on a powerbook with 64MB vram using an outdated version of sketchup (or whatever) than drawing a crap idea on the newest tech..

 

[Gudi]

Just saying, the professionals who need to upgrade their cards aren't going to care about that excuse.

Just saying, Apple is laughing at their critics all the way to the bank.

I doubt we can convince them, that they are doing anything wrong.​

 

[Gudi]

Add to that the fact that Apple didn't even cared to offer a 2nd SSD slot on the other gpu card while there is (or at least was) a placeholder for it on the prototypes we have seen earlier, is beyond belief. A Mac mini can hold internally more SSD storage (2x1TB) than the nMP! Ridiculous.

Still the Mac mini is the last one to be updated with PCIe SSD. Those up to 2x1TB storage are limited by SATA 3 to 600MB/s maximum. This is exactly what I mean with performance-wise speed is more important than size.

Prediction: The new Mac minis (Early–Mid 2014) will offer one PCIe SSD slot and one SATA HDD slot in a Fusion Drive combination. Apple will market them as being 50% faster compared to previous SSDs.

I'd only buy this machine for the max RAM (what is it? 64GB? 128GB?). If there was a new Mac Mini that could take 32GB I'd much rather have that than a MP @ $$$.

Everything in memory must be loaded from disk at least once. Even if you do have the need for vast amounts of memory, it shouldn't be your one and only concern. I can think of no scenario where disk speed isn't important also.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Normally, I would agree with this... but remember it was FOUR YEARS in-between new Mac Pro units. I bought mine in 2010 and did in fact feel the need to upgrade last year in order to keep up with demand. Not saying this is the NORM, but it was nice to be able to bump up the engine a few horse power while waiting for this new unit to come along.

no no no I totally agree that was the longest wait in history for a refresh of a machine that essentially only needed a new drop in processor. I think the biggest hold up was the solution needed for Thunderbolt.

I am very interested in seeing how HP addresses Thunderbolt in a conventional tower configuration with removable parts and such.

 

[coolspot18]

that bottom picture gave me chills. its crazy how that small little box can house that much power :0

Which exactly makes it unpractical for many pros. Surely function over form is important in the business segment?

It's a pro computer. Of course it has a removable CPU.

No expansion slots... Daisy chaining seems so 80s (i.e. SCSI). Desk full of wires and boxes

I am very interested in seeing how HP addresses Thunderbolt in a conventional tower configuration with removable parts and such.

Will HP address Thunderbolt? Seems like it's pretty DOA in the PC market place and on life support for the Mac.

----------

So than you could take an Apple PCIe SSD card and put it in a Dell PCIe slot? But not the other way around, right? Now who is using a proprietary standard that doesn't work with the other one!

Wouldn't be surprised, just like how on the 2011 iMacs, you can't replace the hard-drive since it has special firmware that controls the fan speed.

Hopefully that isn't the case with the SSD.

 

[powers74]

This is really cool news! Let's hope it stays this way in future updates…

 

[BEIGE]

Just saying, the professionals who need to upgrade their cards aren't going to care about that excuse.

ya, the same (already last-gen) GPU for four years is not going to work for me with Mari and Maya.

I am very interested in seeing how HP addresses Thunderbolt in a conventional tower configuration with removable parts and such.

HP already offers Thunderbolt 1 workstations.