Thunderbolt display with future Mac Pro's

Of course they will. Thunderbolt is the new standard for all new Macs across the board. There'd be no reason for the new Mac Pros not to support Thunderbolt.

 

It is not 100% certain. There are several reasons why they will not. Primarily it means either loosing a PCI-e slot or at the very least chopping down the bandwidth to the at least a couple of PCI-e slots.

Either the TB displays data connects as a whole (USB slots included) or it doesn't.

 

I read somewhere that Thunderbolt spec will be revised so it can be passed via discrete GPUs.

That's the main problem of Thunderbolt MacPro, I think. You just can't plug ATD into MacPro's GPU and hope it all works just as in any other Mac.

Sad, being the most expensive and powerful, yet the most left out of all. And frankly, I really even doubt there will be 2013 MacPro. Let's just hope Cook's email was true to every words.

 

How they will implement Thunderbolt on the Mac Pro?

They will most likely do it the same way they do it on all of the rest of the Macs. They will embedded a GPU on the motherboard.

That design involves no cables for the user to hook up or not. Cleaner internal presentation. Allows Apple to share component costs between Mac Pros and other Macs (probably the iMac). It does not involve customer/proprietary PCI-e graphics cards.

The TB Display cable to the Mac Pro's graphics card?

No, that won't work. While Thunderbolt is backward compatible with Display Port ( you can plug a Display Port device into a TB device), Display Port is not forward compatible with Thunderbolt. You can't plug a Thunderbolt device into a Display Port Computer/GPU. In short, plugging in a Display Port device only works at the "far" end of the chain (away from the TB computer).

Graphics cards are quite capable of Thuderbolt like speeds. They just don't provide encoded PCI-e data. Only video data.

If talking about a future design of the Mac Pro where the Thunderbolt is a port on the Graphics card, this approach is highly unlikely. It gets pushed forward as a "possible" option by those who primarily want Thunderbolt to show up on a PCI-e card so they might somehow "retrofit" TB onto older computers. That isn't going to happen.

Thunderbolt requires that the whole motherboard was designed for Thunderbolt. The Thunberbolt controller takes three inputs (x4 PCI-e , 1-2 DisplayPort signals , and the TB switch control) , so putting the controller on a GPU card is very much non standard. Even is steal PCI-e bandwidth from the card's connection you still don't have the TB control signals.


There is a possible variant where a Display Port signal is routed off the card and onto the motherboard. Right now that would mean a custom card. Second it likely would involve an internal cable(s) that needed to be connected. [ need two if connecting two Display ports outputs from GPU]
It is a more complicated and more expensive ( additional video switching , assembly , etc. ) solution. I don't think Apple or the mainstream PC vendors are going down that path in the next year or so. When Thunderbolt ships standard on over 50% of all desktop personal computers ... maybe. But not now or 2013.

 

One implementation currently being tried is to literally have a displayport cable routed out of the GPU and then back into the computer into a separate thunderbolt card. It's ugly and from what I have read it doesn't work well, but that was a solution. This obviously would not be a way Apple would want to do it since cables are the work of the devil to Apple.....

 

The answer is simple. New MP will have connector on MoBo for TB data and GPU for displays. No need to have 2 connections unless youre chaining data and video devices combined.

 

I would say wait unless you really need a TBD right now. I would wait not because of the Mac Pro's, but eventually there will be an update to USB 3.0 on the TBD display and that would make the display more "future proof".

 

Several options.

1. If "have to buy an Apple monitor" , you can buy the regular cinema display with a Display port connector. It is part docking station too. It will work with your current laptop , the current and future Mac Pro , and 10's of millions of mainstream personal computers.


2. Have a burning itch for a TB docking station. Something like this will work

http://www.belkin.com/thunderbolt/

It is almost September so it should be out soon. On the second TB port you can put an Apple , Dell , HP , NEC , etc DisplayPort monitor. You'll actually get USB 3.0 that way.

In short, you don't have to bundle the docking station into the monitor like Apple did.


Both of those have a extremely high percentage guarantee of working. Whether the 2013 Mac Pro gets TB or not they will work. If you need a good monitor, buy one. But the primary evaluation should be on being a good monitor. Not that it is a TB docking station.


Apple doesn't "have to" put TB on the next Mac Pro because the TB Display exists.

 

From my vague understanding, it is easier for Apple to wait until Haswell when Intel should include TB natively with the Xeons. The new TB 2.0 should be in 2014. These lead me to believe it may be 2014-2015 before Pro gets TB.

I have two TBDs I want to hook to a new Pro. I'm not happy but there's nothing to be done but wait.

 

Ha, apparently you haven't seen how they've treated the Pro market in the last year, first killing Final Cut Pro (sorry, FCPX is amateur-hour for post houses), then the 17" MBP. I'd be amazed if there's a new Mac Pro at ALL in the next 2 years.

 

They said they're releasing a new Mac Pro in 2013... though the current trend is not settling, I agree.

 

The same company who said video on an iPod would never happen, and they'd never make a phone. Until there's a shipping Mac Pro, and after nearly 3 years without legitimate updates, I consider the product dead in the water.

 

It was several years in between the last Mac Pro upgrade. This isn't any different. It still worries me a little, too.

 

I have a Hexacore myself and to suggest Apple hasn't left Mac Pro owners behind is a joke. It's also a joke that the current MBP can out perform a Mac Pro when it comes to shipping data around.

We are missing TB, what monitor do we buy now? What's the point of buying a non TB monitor today other than it's the only one that will work with a Mac Pro. What do MBP and Mac Pro owners do. Cannot use a TB display with both of those computers.

Also 3 Gb/s SATA ATA is a little long in the tooth.

Whilst I enjoy using my Mac I don't enjoy that the current MBP is more up to date with the rest of the industry than Apple's higher end Desktop Computer.

Just go and look at the article on Arstechnica today about HP Z820 compared to the Mac Pro.

 

The Mac Pro is definitely showing its age. We'll know for sure come next year if it's truly dead or not.