References to Intel's Latest Ice Lake SP Processors in Xcode 13 Beta Hint at Forthcoming Mac Pro Update

[DrEGPU]

I bought and subsequently sold my Intel Mac Pro 2019. Apple has a very narrow definition of who constitutes a professional for which they design Mac Pros, ie not me. It’s a shame, as the new Mac Pro is very well designed, but with disappointing components. They should’ve gone with Epyc CPU’s for lower costs, more cores, pcie 4.0, and more pcie lanes, so they wouldn’t have had to develop that stupid pcie allocation tool. Even if they use TWO Ice Lake Xeons, it’ll still have fewer pcie lanes than epyc CPU’s or the new Threadripper pros.

 

[StupidOpinion]

it seems that everyone has misunderstood tim cook from last year. if you rewatch the video, you'll hear him say something like "we will continue releasing intel macs for years to come". just because he said "2 year transition" does not mean that all macs will only use apple silicon, it means that all macs will have an apple silicon option. a full convert to apple silicon is a terrible idea due to all the software and hardware that isn't even supported yet.

 

[StupidOpinion]

Yes but macOS 12 now has features only for the M1 chips, Apple has already begun to throw Intel under the bus.

i suppose certain professionals who require intel based macs don't need apple features, just apple compatibility

 

[I7guy]

Apple is on a roll lately.

 

[plunger]

Absolute 💯 way to piss off every Mac Pro 2019 owner. Even as one of the first customers to order it, I didn’t receive it until feb 2020. So just over a year old and they are talking about another release. WOW what a way to get pros to spend 10k and then release an update so soon. SHOCKING. A way to basically make sure the nail is in the coffin.

So, you'd be happier if it wasn't updated/supported for 5 years?!!!

 

[arvinsim]

Shame that AMD processors never went into a Mac and Nvidia GPUs stopped being supported.

 

[TonyTech]

Max Yuryev from Max Tech and Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs are selling their $15,000 and $10,000 Mac Pros respectively, because they are getting better bang for the buck and sometimes even better performance from the Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[leicaman]

It would be sensible to keep the Intel Mac Pro running for a few generations. Big companies invested into the promise to make pro software on its release and users of these machines may not be able to dump their software in the blink of a eye. I also still rather doubt that Apple can take on dedicated AMD GPU's yet.

The ease with which software can be transitioned to Silicon makes that hardly a big deal. Most software ran as well or faster in Rosetta 2 than it did natively. So the transition isn't that big a deal for anyone. They can make the software Universal for years if they want.

 

[DFP1989]

Absolute 💯 way to piss off every Mac Pro 2019 owner. Even as one of the first customers to order it, I didn’t receive it until feb 2020. So just over a year old and they are talking about another release. WOW what a way to get pros to spend 10k and then release an update so soon. SHOCKING. A way to basically make sure the nail is in the coffin.

All that’s being discussed is a CPU bump. Assuming this is true (so many rumours have proved false lately), it’s refreshing to see them updating a machine before it’s withered on the vine.

Is your machine less capable today than it was when you bought it a year ago? To be pissed off because a computer is updated TWO YEARS after it was released is hilarious.

 

[DFP1989]

Max Yuryev from Max Tech and Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs are selling their $15,000 and $10,000 Mac Pros respectively, because they are getting better bang for the buck and sometimes even better performance from the Apple Silicon Macs.

Video editing is but one use case. My experience video editing with M1 Macs so far has been generally positive with caveats.

Timeline performance with HEVC 4K footage in FCP has been amazing, but if you get a very complicated timeline exports become a challenge, to the point where even the 16GB RAM versions struggle.

If Apple had announced a more potent 16-inch with 32GB RAM (ideally 64GB) I would be considering selling my MP7,1. Until then, it won’t be going anywhere.

 

[novagamer]

The ease with which software can be transitioned to Silicon makes that hardly a big deal. Most software ran as well or faster in Rosetta 2 than it did natively. So the transition isn't that big a deal for anyone. They can make the software Universal for years if they want.

A surprising amount of audio software uses AVX/2/512 which is not supported under Rosetta 2, unfortunately. Maybe an update or a hardware revision can add it, but I am not optimistic - I think it might require royalty payments to Intel.

 

[CWallace]

I don't think this is true. Ice Lake W (if released) will almost certainly use socket 4189. I'm not sure there are any historical examples of memory channels increasing without pin counts. If there was a 3647 variant it was probably a very early engineering sample, I think.

Yeah, looking at the Intel WS Product Roadmap Ice Lake-64L is on LGA 4189 with C621A.

 

[MacBH928]

IF Apple say they will replace their whole lines with AS and their AS is superior to Intel, this is not a good sign.

I think if Apple should do a buy back program and get back their Intel Pros for small price update everyone to AS Pros. They way I see it releasing and supporting software for 2 architectures is hectic, money&time consuming. Then they should resell those Intel MPs to whoever wishes to go without support.

The MacPros are super powerful and just 2 years ago they were demonstrating how powerful they can be, these things will easily last a decade of use and idk if Apple and the rest of the app developers want to support Intel for the next decade.

 

[DFP1989]

these things will easily last a decade of use and idk if Apple and the rest of the app developers want to support Intel for the next decade.

I agree with the first part and disagree with the second. There are FAR more Intel Macs in the world today that are still running the most current software compared to the last time Apple switched architectures, and I'd be surprised if the support of both Apple and developers doesn't continue to be strong.

 

[belard]

I dreamed of a dual architecture Mac Pro. It was called the Armintosh. The Intel processor sits on top so it draws heat up from the Apple processor through convection. It's mostly Jobs, with a bit of early-90s Apple for nostalgia. No fan!

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

Interesting in that the 2019 Mac Pro uses Cascade Lake-W, not Cascade Lake-SP.

-------------------------------------

Update - Per MrAndrew, Intel is basing Ice Lake-64L Xeons on the same architecture as SP. And they will use a different socket and revised chipset than the Cascade Lake-W CPUs so it would mean a new motherboard.

----------------------------

Xeon-SP is designed for multiple-socket (2-8) applications so is Apple considering going toe-to-toe with the likes of Dell and HPE and offering 2/4/8 CPU Mac Pros for datacenter applications?

Could we see a bi-furcation of the product line where ASi Mac Pros are single-CPU models (with high core counts) and then Intel Mac Pros are multi-CPU models?

Another poster mentioned they had heard Apple was working on multi-CPU interconnections. I presumed they would be for connecting multiple ASi SoCs (perhaps for Jade2C / Jade4C), but maybe this is for multiple Intel Xeon-SP CPUs...

Don't think Apple would have anything to do with Xeon interconnects. That would be entirely up to Intel.

 

[mikethemartian]

because you drink the kool-aid, my dude. Intel still makes fantastic chips.

Its like a religion.

 

[mikethemartian]

They should put AMD in the Mac Pro instead of Intel.

Does AMD have a processor line that can access as much main memory as the Xeon chips?

 

[fbadini]

Great news - means years more Mac OS support for Intel macs too.

Also for Apple Silicon (because I don’t see Apple give support to MacOS till 2026 and not doing for their own Mx chip…)

 

[ellsworth]

Wait a minute... isn't Mark Gurman the same person who said Apple was going to announce new MacBook Pros but that hasn't (and probably won't) happen this round? Hard to trust these people after their info comes up flat.

 

[UBS28]

Does AMD have a processor line that can access as much main memory as the Xeon chips?

Since AMD is taking over the server market, whatever requirement you have for a Mac Pro is certaintly met by AMD in terms of RAM as servers are much more powerful than a Mac Pro.

 

[G4DPII]

Mac pros used to have processor bumps almost every year. Nobody complained about that.

That's because 10 - 15 years ago. People who bought the top end G4/G5/Mac Pro, used them for work and were not whiny little *****. THey were largely people that just got on with it and were happy to see progress being made in following versions of the machines.

If people want their ego's stroked, maybe instead of spending $10k on a computer, they should book multiple trips to the far east, they get lot's of ego strokes for $5.

 

[leman]

Nah. The 'trash can' was just a poor design full stop. It's all very well judging how nice it looks and admiring its size, but the concept was ultimately flawed. You can't combine a CPU, two GPUs, a power supply and the remaining components onto a single aluminium (not even copper) heatsink and expect the thermal capacity to be adequate for all under full-load.

Not if your components are power-efficient though. I mean, Apple CPUs and GPUs consume around 2-3 times less power for the same performance, so the can design would probably work here. It's all moot point anyway as I agree they are unlikely to reuse it for the "big pro".

I could however see a "small pro" aka. Mac Cube in the trashcan design. Hell, I'd probably buy one

Absolute 💯 way to piss off every Mac Pro 2019 owner. Even as one of the first customers to order it, I didn’t receive it until feb 2020. So just over a year old and they are talking about another release. WOW what a way to get pros to spend 10k and then release an update so soon. SHOCKING. A way to basically make sure the nail is in the coffin.

Wow, you folks are really hilarious. Apple does not update the Mac Pro for years = bad. Apple updates the Mac Pro to keep up with Intel's new CPUs = bad.

 

[chucker23n1]

Since AMD is taking over the server market,

“Taking over” with 8.9% is adorable.

 

[Yebubbleman]

What expansion do you need that requires full PCIe speeds and full PCIe 16x physical slot that TB3/4 can't handle?

Me personally? Nothing. I'm not a Mac Pro customer that needs PCIe expansion on a Mac. But Thunderbolt 3/4 to PCIe breakout boxes aren't cheap even if the bandwidth is sufficient. I know it wasn't sufficient with Thunderbolt 2. I'm not sure that Thunderbolt 3/4 is sufficient for EVERY PCIe card that would go into a Mac Pro even if it is for most. Either way, forcing users to buy breakout boxes, let alone expensive ones, is not going to make customers happy.

Seems like an Apple Silicon Mac Pro isn't going to allow NVIDIA or AMD graphics to be installed, but instead require users to buy Apple's custom GPU, I don't see the need for full PCIe 16x physical slots.

Too early to tell how that will be handled. For all we know, Apple may supply GPU booster cards a la Afterburner for those that need more than the SoC provides. They're not going to make the GPU a one or two size fits all the way they're doing graphics on all of the M1 Macs released to date. You're correct that the GPUs are the main things to command the full PCIe x16 slots. But even so, my point above about breakout boxes still stands.

And I firmly believe the original 2013 Mac Pro intended on replaceable components, but Apple realized AMD's and NVIDIA's GPU roadmap didn't allow for lower powered GPUs, so they axed the idea halfway through.

I think you're 2/3 right about that. Certainly, if Apple wanted to, they could work with AMD on a GPU that was still newer than the AMD Fire Pro D300-D700 but not much faster for the sake of continuing to pump out Mac Pros. It's not like newer GPUs/cards couldn't provide the same performance at lower power draw at the very worst. But yeah, changing to a proprietary board design and interconnect was probably a bad move on Apple's part.

I don't think Apple designed the removable cover just to add new RAM. So you can't really rule out PCIe 5.0 slots. A 4x PCIe 5.0 slot equates to PCIe 3.0 16x speeds. Maybe 8x can fit.

No, they also fully intended the SSD to be user replacable and upgradable. They still didn't give the 2013 Mac Pro enough room for other cards. The smaller of the two rumored Mac Pros could absolutely be what you're describing, but I'm totally skeptical that the 2013 Mac Pro had PCIe expansion (that wasn't rooted in Thunderbolt 2 expansion to a breakout box) potential.