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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
- Thread starter Mago
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One thing Stephen Hackett brought up that I think is still relevant is that the old cheesegraters were built to deal with the massive engineering problem of hot G5 chips.
https://512pixels.net/2017/12/considering-the-future-mac-pros-role-in-the-imac-pro-world/
So even if the Mac Pro was a traditional tower, it's not unreasonable to think that you could shrink it down to a size more akin to the PowerMac G4s while still keeping a lot of the same expandability. And that's leaving the fact that the vast majority of people wouldn't miss Apple axing stuff like the 5.25" bays (which are gone in any universe whether you like it or not.)
https://512pixels.net/2017/12/considering-the-future-mac-pros-role-in-the-imac-pro-world/
So even if the Mac Pro was a traditional tower, it's not unreasonable to think that you could shrink it down to a size more akin to the PowerMac G4s while still keeping a lot of the same expandability. And that's leaving the fact that the vast majority of people wouldn't miss Apple axing stuff like the 5.25" bays (which are gone in any universe whether you like it or not.)
Maybe I know a thing or two on how to design hardware...
I didn’t see any career postings on their site but you should have a look here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=bla...tors&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
Good luck in your search!
Good discussion going on here. I know several folks see this whole thing as face-palm inducing, but it is instructive for some of us to think about what the mMP could be. After thinking through my own needs lately, as a Sandy Bridge based linux machine and the 2013 nMP 12-core together aren't cutting it as much anymore, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on a Dell 7820 with 2 x Xeon 4114s (10 core, each), cheapest GPU option (NVS310), 500GB SSD, 96 GB of RAM, 2x10TB Ultrastars. All told, with the education pricing, it came to $6100.
I needed something sooner than later and I also have a preference for linux in this machine (web hosting some apps that are only available through linux), so the new, modular Mac Pro was at a disadvantage. But through this discussion, I also just figured the mMP was unlikely to fit my needs and was going to be vastly more expensive for the same performance even if it could, and if I were to try to force that as the solution (i.e. thinking I could designate that Sandy Bridge linux machine to 100% web hosting duties and use the mMP for the more OS-flexable tasks).
I needed something sooner than later and I also have a preference for linux in this machine (web hosting some apps that are only available through linux), so the new, modular Mac Pro was at a disadvantage. But through this discussion, I also just figured the mMP was unlikely to fit my needs and was going to be vastly more expensive for the same performance even if it could, and if I were to try to force that as the solution (i.e. thinking I could designate that Sandy Bridge linux machine to 100% web hosting duties and use the mMP for the more OS-flexable tasks).
I think, assuming we see a tower at all, a return to the mid tower form factor is likely.
Only thing that could keep a the full height tower design around is maybe dual CPUs.
Or maybe both a mid-height and a full-blown dual system.
Note that Dell/HP/Lenovo usually have had three towers (not counting SFF) - a smaller mid-tower that's single socket, a larger mid-tower that's available single socket or dual socket, and a larger tower with two sockets (but available as single CPU - leave one socket empty). Power and expansion (RAM, PCIe, drives) gets better with larger cases.
Apple could certainly afford to make a lineup of upgradeable workstations. The smaller mid-tower would probably be unnecessary (overlaps the Imac Pro except for probably being much cheaper). Three motherboards would be easy to do (mid-size in single and dual socket, and large dual socket). Much of the design would be common among the three.
____________
I suspect that the whole "must do a modular Mac Pro" was an afterthought and a reaction when Apple showed big customers the Imac Pro concept - and many customers reacted with "OMG No!".
100000% TRUE, I think they planned to ditch the tcMP for the iMac Pro when advanced in the iMac Pro project they realized the PRO-grade user stampeede they where crafting, else the iMac pro is a Single Year 'patch' model as the needed time to migrate from Intel to AMD was much larger than what the user base can tolerate.
An open question is, after the mMP is launch, the iMac Pro has some sense in the Mac Lineup?, IMHO a big NO
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There are plenty of people for whom the iMac Pro makes more sense. Plenty of people don't upgrade their computers often or at all. My parents when they ran their own graphic design business would just buy the low-end pro Mac and at most get third-party RAM, and then run it as is for four or five years and get another model. That's how every design studio I've worked at bar one would operate as well. iMacs seem perfectly fine as fire-and-forget machines, or for people who have invested in the Thunderbolt ecosystem (where internal, tower-specific stuff like capture cards don't make as much sense as external options that can be easily swapped between computers or taken into the field.)
With that said, arguing that the iMac Pro makes no sense for people in comparison to the Mac Pro is an asinine conversation to have when we have no real clue what the Mac Pro is going to look like.
Apple ain't HP or Lenovo, though. They've never had multiple tower Macs since Jobs' return,* I doubt they're going to in the future. That's more attention to a tiny market segment than they're clearly interested in. If you need a TB of RAM, >2 sockets, or eight hard drives in your computer, a Mac has never been a great option. They're midrange towers, and that's unlikely to change.
*Save for the Mac that must not be named!
The MDD PowerMacs had dual processors, again in that same enclosure size. Along with four PCI slots, the AGP slot, four 3.5" bays and two 5.25" bays. The CPUs aren't really much hotter, the GPU(s) definitely are, but it definitely seems like it's still a workable footprint.
How many 2013 nMac pros are still in inventory? Are they still producing 2013 nMacs (old tech)? i would like to up-grade my 2010 6 core cMac pro and i don’t want to wait for fairytale dreams to come true.
Might as well buy a refurb, then. Plenty of configs available in the US: https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/mac_pro
Lots of people from several forums are kinda wound up when it comes to the new Macs. I spent 12hrs a day for a couple of months and came up with an obvious purchasing theory!
Don't forget to include the price of the second mac you need to re-enable the iMac Pro if it bricks itself during a software update
Wiki says the PowerPC 970FX used 48 watts running at 2 GHz. That's downright miserly compared to today's Xeons/Threadrippers/Epycs.
Why do I see the design language of the HP Z series...
tube on the side.
same diameter as 6,1 but 1.8x taller (longer).
ala iPhone X, stainless steel instead of aluminum.. glass outer (top half is removable)..
cMP throw-back with the front grating.. (I/O on there as well as the back)..
maybe intake fan and out.
maybe needs some sort of basing that could possibly also house certain components.
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idk, i'm guessing Apple already has a concept or prototype of something similar.
it'd be cool to see their take on it.
same diameter as 6,1 but 1.8x taller (longer).
ala iPhone X, stainless steel instead of aluminum.. glass outer (top half is removable)..
cMP throw-back with the front grating.. (I/O on there as well as the back)..
maybe intake fan and out.
maybe needs some sort of basing that could possibly also house certain components.
---
idk, i'm guessing Apple already has a concept or prototype of something similar.
it'd be cool to see their take on it.
In discussions with a certain renowned journalist I've learned that the HP social media teams have infiltrated these forums with carefully trained psychonaut lizard warriors masquerading as a range of ex or ex-leaning apple users. Whose sole purpose is to disseminate HP impressions. What you see is not in fact what is there, you've just been manipulated to become one of the sheeple. A healthy dose of sodium fluoridated water will leave you susceptible to their suggestive superpowers. There's a war on for your mind! Do you own any gay frogs ?
Fortunately I've concocted a special formulation of specifically selected natural anti psychomanipulation agents. They are available on my website for a fair price....
You are the one whose argument needs support. In all your rather haphazard reading of the specs, you have also missed that fact that these cards have more than one SDI 12G input. The 8K card has four . Even the, Extreme 4k 12G card has two ( and two 12Gb/s optical links) [ it is a x8 PCI-e v2 card which unless the external TB box's PCI-e switch does a v2 to v3 roll up, it will still suffer the physical pin count mismatch problem. ].
Arithmetic: 4 * 12Gb/s = 48 Gb/s . So is x4 PCI-e v3 bigger or smaller than that? Yeah, that is the core issue.
[ As an additional sanity check. HDMI 2.1 covers 8K. It's bitrate? 48 Gb/s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_comparison . DisplayPort 8K 60Hz data demands ... 49 Gb/s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Resolution_and_refresh_frequency_limits_for_DisplayPort ( only compression on makes it through DPv1.4. If capturing RAW in the > 40 Gb/s range. Only non-compressed 8K on DPv1.4 is 30Hz. ]
Even if this card is quirky (and/or buggy ) and you can't actually capture 4 streams in parallel, there will be others that can.
A variant that compresses before send back to host perhaps. Or capped at 30Hz (and less that 10-bit per color ).
If you want to do multiple camera 8K capture with one card then x16 PCI-e v3 comes in very handy.
[ This also indirectly points out why getting into full frame buffer scraping to play hocus pocus TB video feed solution runs into scaling issues as these screen sizes get bigger and "deeper" (more color. ) and possibly faster. ]
I added more info if the picture didn't speak a thousand or even one word...
The PSU is in the middle... by "2 x core" I mean the triangle core/heatsink similar to the trashcan Mac Pro...
Also, I got rid of the cartridge-style idea. And, resorted to what Apple did with the Trashcan Mac Pro but added another triangular core, made it cube and design elements into it that got rid of a lot of wires and cables. I don't know how exactly, but cables and wires are mostly gone. If there are any cables or wires, it's not visible since it's a see thru design. And, the cables and wires aren't tight or easily broken when servicing...
what else? RAM is accessible via the other side (not pictured) where the i/o ports are (pictured)....
Well, without further ado... here it is... with rounder more elegant corners...
The PSU is in the middle... by "2 x core" I mean the triangle core/heatsink similar to the trashcan Mac Pro...
Also, I got rid of the cartridge-style idea. And, resorted to what Apple did with the Trashcan Mac Pro but added another triangular core, made it cube and design elements into it that got rid of a lot of wires and cables. I don't know how exactly, but cables and wires are mostly gone. If there are any cables or wires, it's not visible since it's a see thru design. And, the cables and wires aren't tight or easily broken when servicing...
what else? RAM is accessible via the other side (not pictured) where the i/o ports are (pictured)....
Well, without further ado... here it is... with rounder more elegant corners...
That is for a single CPU core. 48W/core. And be careful of Apples-vs-Oranges comparison. It actually really is basically just the core CPU. Modern CPU packages enclose far more than just the core function units. The 970's had a separate "Northbridge" chip to handle memory and high speed I/O bus interaction. To normalize the comparison you'd need to roll up all the functionality into one number to makes an Apples-vs-Apples comparison of thermal problem workload. ( Northbridge , PCI/PCI-e controllers , power regulation , etc. )
And it is a bit higher than 48W. A post at the link below (about half way down) pulls some data from an IBM report (link to that PDF there). Peak voltage topped out closer to 79W.
"...
Interesting. Hardware: G5 970 2.0 GHz 130 nm (PowerMac7,2)
Max power CPU0: 79 Watts
Max power CPU1: 68 Watts
...."
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387306&start=4160
So two cores at 79W = 158W. So same ballpark as current Intel Xeon W and you haven't even added in the Northbridge yet. And that is just the 970FX. The dual core 970MP added another core to each die (while stay at same 90nm process size so a die expansion that has more heating surface. ) and Apple used two packages to cover the last Mac Pro 5 Quad. If any decent longer term planning was done, then the case would be design with those 970MP constraints (probably projected at time of case build) in mind plus some judicious error bar factor.
The Power 970 is only miserly when start to stack them up to the Intel Xeon SP stuff. Some of the Gold class stuff is in the 150-160W zone. So two of those at 300-320W is a whole another league from what the Power G5 case had to handle in the CPU cooling zone. Besides being grossly more expensive ( which I doubt Apple wants to apply their 30% tax to ), it would push the case larger that the old era.
the "Plus some judicious error bar factor" is primarily what Apple screwed up with the 2013 Mac Pro design. (iMac Pro may have issue too. ). A bigger case will have more slop to soak up more thermal underestimation issues. Add more air and space so that can tolerate the arrival of more random thermal sources.
Pile on top the push to drag GPUs in the a zone that is about twice that 158 ( up into the 300W zone) and that aspect of modern components is actually on a growth path from back early in the century.
So between the 2013 MP and 2006 MP case sizes is likely what Apple will roll out. Stuff like 5.25 drives, optical drives and 4x SATA drives is probably going to get trimmed, leading to some shrinkage from the max ( might get 1-2 SATA drive(s). 1-2 10TB drives is order of magnitude more capacity than what flash can deliver. ). The CPU + GPUs are going to push growth from the min. I think the need for at least one standard PCI-e slot and the associated "jokers wild" thermal envelope that needs will also push growth from the min. ( dial back from zero slots but not all the way to 4 random card slots. Trade-off fixed sized TB thermal values for random that open slots 3 and 4 would bring. )
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In case it was maybe overlooked, there's already an MSI nVidia 1080Ti PCIe video card that was announced, with a Thunderbolt USB Type C port (as well as other standard port types) on the card itself.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1151...gtx-1080-ti-gaming-x-card-with-usb-typec-port
Have not seen it actually for sale yet, however.
A version without the USB Type C port:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...1080_ti_gaming_x_11g_geforce_gtx_1080_ti.html
As to the Mac or MacPro form factor: I'd like to see a two case size option: a smaller tower case <$1,500, with a mATX motherboard, with 2x usable PCIe x16 video card slots, buyer's choice of a factory installed: standard PC (non-workstation class) nVidia or AMD video card, a current generation (Coffee Lake) non-Xeon CPU, multiple SSD choices, choice of an optical drive, room for (user installed) 2x spinning 3 1/2" hard drives, choice of 2x industry standard PSU sizes.
Call that: "a Macintosh that's better than a Hackintosh, because it's genuine Apple".
In addition to a new 2018 modular Mac Pro, with a larger form-factor case, similar (if not identical) to the HP Z840. That is: an all-in-one full tower case, with very minimal external wiring.
Either that, or simply release macOS to HP (or other trusted 3rd party established PC brand), to enable custom-built & officially authorized macOS machines that are 99% the same as the Windows machines they're offering.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1151...gtx-1080-ti-gaming-x-card-with-usb-typec-port
Have not seen it actually for sale yet, however.
A version without the USB Type C port:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...1080_ti_gaming_x_11g_geforce_gtx_1080_ti.html
As to the Mac or MacPro form factor: I'd like to see a two case size option: a smaller tower case <$1,500, with a mATX motherboard, with 2x usable PCIe x16 video card slots, buyer's choice of a factory installed: standard PC (non-workstation class) nVidia or AMD video card, a current generation (Coffee Lake) non-Xeon CPU, multiple SSD choices, choice of an optical drive, room for (user installed) 2x spinning 3 1/2" hard drives, choice of 2x industry standard PSU sizes.
Call that: "a Macintosh that's better than a Hackintosh, because it's genuine Apple".
In addition to a new 2018 modular Mac Pro, with a larger form-factor case, similar (if not identical) to the HP Z840. That is: an all-in-one full tower case, with very minimal external wiring.
Either that, or simply release macOS to HP (or other trusted 3rd party established PC brand), to enable custom-built & officially authorized macOS machines that are 99% the same as the Windows machines they're offering.
FWIW, something that's come to mind for me is the Dysan fans ... the tech looks mysterious, but it actually is pretty brutally straightforward: it uses a conventional fan which then gets piped through the weird-looking part which is configured to create a venture effect and pull more air along with it.
Thus ...
Envision what happens if a cMP is changed over to a Dysan fan concept ...
1. Put a big round fan on the base (like the tcMP). Axis is vertical, so it draws air up from the bottom.
2. The airflow is directed into a pipe, then routed over to the cabinet's (front) side. In effect, this is merely some plumbing to put the air where we want it.
3. Put a "Dyson loop" for the fan's air at the case front (where the cMP currently has a fan). Its outflow will draw additional air in from the front of the case.
4. And/or put a similar "Dyson loop" near the back of the case, where it will draw additional hot air from inside the case to get it overboard. The cMP does this also horizontally, so when mimicking this, this would also be a horizontal loop.
Note that #3 and #4 could be two ducts running off of one common (large diameter) supply fan.
Note that if we're going to start ducting, we could have several custom-tailored outputs for targeting specific hot spots in a design (CPU, etc).
FWIW, this concept is *not* using any Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube technology, but that could potentially also be considered as a means to do targeted cooling with chilled air, so as to minimize the size/mass of an otherwise larger heatsink (such as CPU).
Not happening. Apple isn't going to make an xMac, and they certainly aren't going to actually mention Hackintoshes.
And also not happening. Apple isn't going to make two Mac Pro SKUs in different tower configs, let alone return to Mac clones.
The people hoping for an Apple Z840 are crazy. Apple has never produced such a computer, why would they now?
Putting a USB 2.0 controller on a GPU card isn't too hard. From the article link above:
"... What MSI isn’t commenting on right now is whether this USB-C port will offer anything besides DisplayPort alt mode functionality, such as USB 2.0 data another alt mode. T .. "
The required minimal data transfer protocol required for Type C ports is USB 2.0. It would easy to put a very small and very lightweight USB 2.0 controller on the board a bleed off a subset x1 PCI-e v3 bandwidth to technically connect to system while pragmatically it did a 100% of nothing 99.9999% of the time. The bleed off could be done with a simply cheesy PCI-e switch if someone has built something oriented toward that (again the switch would idle in one position 99.9999% percent of time. )
An even cheesier solution would be just run a USB cable from a header on the logic board to the card and leverage the internal PCH chipsets USB controller. It is an extra cable to plug into the video card but skips the almost do nothing PCI-e switch and extra minimalistic USB 2 controller.
Thunderbolt v3 is vastly different. It requires three inputs. x4 PCI-e v3 , two DP v.12, and GPIO (GPIO from the logic board is not normally fed to a GPU card.). It also has power supply requirement that are substantially higher than USB 2.0.
This is extremely likeliy a DP alt mode socket that is pretty much devoted to that single alliterative mode all the time. The objective is targeting folks who already have a Type-C cable lying around and an external Monitor that already can use that cable (e.g., a Type-C to mini-DP or Type-C to full DP cable ).
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And: Steve Jobs and the Woz never produced an Apple I personal computer, until one day, they did.