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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
- Thread starter Mago
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yup, "gaming" engines have become "generalised reality simulation engines", and inside them, is where the next generation of work tools will live.
I agree with you, I'll sell a limb for an Mac Pro with nVidia Pascal GPU, what are my chances? < 5% (and this is too optimistic)
I believe the mMP will have Upgradeable GPU but no COTS GPUS, it likely will include some kinda propietary trick, Apple's way, N reasons technical (tb3/dp1.4) and commercial to do this.
Seems my PROs are not in the same league as yours.
what's "Pro" for a video editor, may not be "Pro" for a VR Artist.
A Pro CAD workstation for working in Trimble SketchUp Pro, for example - SketchUp is single core only, but will eat as much GPU as you can give it, and the size of model you can manipulate, and the responsiveness of your viewport at a given quality setting, is entirely up to the GPU.
I was responding to this comment of yours, sorry if I didn't get specific enough:
So what I mean (and it seems some posters here concur) is that a case without room for full sized PCIe cards is simply too limiting. Even with no consideration in after market upgrade, the initial config is either too costly in the form of TB3 enclosures/peripherals, or flat out unavailable. What happened during the tcMP launch was that, workflows previously that were well accommodated by the Cheese Greater MP, rendered too costly to shift over to the tcMP, for not much gain if any at all. The tcMP didn't fit into these people's workflows.
This was Apple's fatal miscalculation.
It's true. Companies do not generally upgrade workstations. In all the time I have spent working on institutional workstations, I've never seen an upgraded one. Maybe RAM. That's about it.
But Apple underestimated the number of freelancers who do use the Mac Pro. And freelancers do upgrade their Mac Pros substantially.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong on this being a design basis for the new Mac Pro. In fact I'm 99% sure you're wrong. Why am I so confident?
Because Apple is addressing the problem by splitting their product lines. The iMac Pro is the un-upgradable box for corporate. The Mac Pro will be the box for freelancers.
Apple realized they couldn't address both markets with the same Mac. We already have the corporate Mac Pro. It's the iMac Pro.
Still think it'll be a proprietary nonsense box that people won't like. They'll somehow make it so that only Apple approved PCI cards will work properly in it, much like they have with GPUs.
I also believe this is a pretty good clue for speculation.
As with the tcMP, the design clearly intended to distance itself from use cases that need PCIe cards, the question in the last few years among us was whether Apple was stupid enough to think the design could satisfy most users, or that they fully intended to alienate one market segment over others to cater to. However with the tone of which they discussed the tcMP failure during the roundtable, and the fact that a juiced up iMac is now available as part of the future line up, it does make a lot of sense for the mMP to go an extreme opposite end in terms of openness. Addressing VR/AR in particular, a chassis that limits accessibility of potential PCI lanes is considered inadequate even today, let alone a design that should last a few years.
But I guess the tcMP-like chassis is still a likely product, catering to both happy users of current tcMP, and those others who want the Mac-X. If this design can scale its spec as low as the entry level G5 days, it essentially replaces the Mini line. I just don't know if Apple would want to maintain 3 products for an apparently narrow spectrum of users.
How much of the lag is due to poorly optimised code rather than lack of power? Compensating poor code with powerful hardware seem to be an inefficient solution. But hey, it keeps the sales up!
Whether or not Apple includes PCIe is an open question. (Mago seems pretty convinced no. I have heard nothing, and I'm about 50/50. I have heard that Thunderbolt was the reason the last Mac Pro didn't have standard PCIe GPUs.)
But the lockout on the older cards wasn't about Apple having control. Plenty of standard PCIe cards work fine. The issue was that UEFI cards were not common until after Apple was already done with the cMP. There was no standard for Apple to support. And Apple couldn't support the BIOS driven cards, Mac OS X was already booting EFI.
Modern Macs support UEFI cards on their internal buses. It wouldn't surprise me if the next Mac Pro inherited that too for whatever card slot it uses.
(Back in 2005 this whole discussion was had and it was decided that having a modern EFI Mac was better than trying to ship a BIOS Mac. But that meant until EFI GPUs shipped from companies other than Apple, you were stuck with Apple branded GPUs. And it took a long, long time for that to happen.)
The reality is that often the poorly optimized code of a certain software is not a matter of choice. If this piece of software is the only one available for a given task, or is already the best for it despite the shortcomings, then I find it an acceptable solution to use hardware with excessive headroom to accommodate the situation.
The problem is that macOS is unlike iOS, it is not a closed system, and even on iOS there are 3rd party apps with varying degree of optimization anyway. So unless Apple offers 1st party professional software where you use only their software for your workflow, otherwise it makes no excuse to offer limiting hardware that is "good enough if code is optimized".
Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 runs much better on the same hardware so definitely there is ample scope for optimising software... but across the board of the apps I use I see that a lot of legacy stuff is being rewritten to take better advantage of the resources available as well as prepare for the ones to come. In other words many of these apps were written at a time when today’s resources weren’t available, nor was there a need to scale for the demand of today.
But what happens when the target hardware required for an app just doesn’t exist on the platform the consumer uses ? How’s much of that is two vendors squabbling for profit than poorly optimised code ? How much of that is one vendor locking out another and the consumer is stuck with what they offer ( here this is good for you. TB3 isn’t quite PCIe but hey we want you to keep buying the promised unicorn peripherals that perform poorly when compared to other options because we want to ram a protocol down your throat. I don’t see where poorly optimised code plays a role here.)
If it was just poorly optimised code, certainly your favourite brand apple knows that. Why does it keep churning out updates to its lineup ? Keep sales up right ?
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That's a discussion that's been going on for over 50 years. When assembly was proposed to be used over straight binary, many reacted: but that can never be as well optimised!
It's true that much code can be improved, but we're also getting lots more munctionality released at a much higher frequency. There must be a trade-off somewhere and code quality is typically where it happens.
Bad news for you: [from Apple's April'17 mea culpa https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/t...-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/ ]"
So there are many, many things and people called pros, pro workflows, so we should be careful not to over simplify and say ‘pros want this’ or ‘don’t want that’; it’s much more complex than that.
what we’re doing and build something that enables us to do these quick, regular updates and keep it current and keep it state of the art, and also allow a little more in terms of adaptability to the different needs of the different pro customers
Freelancers are a minimal minimal Apple Market, most Workstations go to Media Producers, and AR/VR/AI developer startups none of then cares of periodic upgrader, unless are dead simple (as most corporate thinking).
LOL, sorry no chance the mMP to be a boxed PC-like iMac Pro, the mMP will enable Latest and most powerful Hardware, likely Xeon-Gold or AMD Epyc CPU along 1-4 GPU (I bet it will be a compact Epyc/Dual GPU solution, GPU Modular and Upgradeable but HIGHLY PROPRIETARY, NO x16 PCIe slot, as much an x8 or TB3 cages)
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I hear about an AI driven Compiler, that optimizes common code paterns to it best ASM version, it (someday) will allow your Python code run as faster as pure assembly code allows the same routine. (kinda AI-souped up trasnpiler)
You should read the more recent Cook statements around the time of the iMac Pro release. He's started using the term upgradability. I think that's a reflection of Apple being a little more sure of what the Mac Pro will be after almost a year of work.
But freelancers and small shops are a very important market. in the VR market, they're the ones who actually write the AR software.
Someone here has already mentioned, even though Apple supports VR, the creation apps aren't there. You can ship a million iMac Pros meant for VR creation, but that doesn't matter if Apple doesn't make a machine suitable for writing VR creation software.
Again, this was Apple's fatal mistake. The users sitting on the edges are sometimes critical parts of Apple's strategy.
Ok. Here is why I think Apple is going to consider/has considered PCIe slots.
Let's clear one thing up. Apple isn't just redoing the Mac Pro because they had trouble fitting a new GPU in the can. If that were the case, they'd just make the can a little bigger for better cooling. That would have taken six months.
Apple is redesigning the Mac Pro because it failed as a product. Somewhere, in Apple, they have a list of all the reasons people weren't buying a Mac Pro. You can be sure they were reading blogs and tweets and listening to podcasts and maybe even reading this forum. In fact, I know they've at least been reading tweets.
Unless they really have their heads up their asses, somewhere on that list of things that people think they did wrong is that the can Mac Pro didn't have PCIe slots. They know it's a problem. They've talked about it. And they likely have talked about if they think they can solve it.
They know if they release a Mac Pro, it either needs to have standard PCIe slots, or a really damn good story on an upgradable slot design. They know it's going to be one of the biggest things the new Mac Pro is evaluated on. They know every single review and every single response will be asking about GPU upgrades. They know because they've been reading all the reactions to the last one.
If they do have proprietary GPUs, I think a likely outcome is that there will still be PCIe slots, and possibly the second GPU would be PCIe. Or those slots could be filled with things like 8k PCIe capture cards, which at present will not work with Thunderbolt, even with breakout boxes. This is why I'm fairly confident we may see at least one PCIe slot.
Again, I have no insider information on if Apple has decided to include PCIe slots or not. But they know it is a problem. It's very likely they've at least talked about internally. And they know the further they get from upgradable GPUs without a good, solid marketing story, they worse things are going to get.
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At this point I don't see the point in a non-upgradable system to some degree, as they've created the perfect Mac for everyone else already. The only disadvantage to the AIO iMac Pro is its price if Xeons and Vega are something you really care about versus a tricked-out iMac. The iMac Pro doubles down on that segment, like they talked about in their April 2017 model.
Given that they describe the nMP coming as both modular and upgradable, I think it doesn't require too much to guess that it actually means user-serviceable (unlike the AASP-serviceable iMac Pro.) That doesn't really preclude something crazy like Apple-specific GPU cartridges or the like, but it does leave us with a higher baseline than what we've currently got.
Given that they describe the nMP coming as both modular and upgradable, I think it doesn't require too much to guess that it actually means user-serviceable (unlike the AASP-serviceable iMac Pro.) That doesn't really preclude something crazy like Apple-specific GPU cartridges or the like, but it does leave us with a higher baseline than what we've currently got.
In since PC workstations have the same problem, I always wonder if maybe Apple and Intel are working on an industry wide solution. It just seems insane that Intel hasn't solved Thunderbolt + GPU + Xeon yet.
Yep. I mean that was the issue people were talking about back in 2011 and 2012 before the next-gen Mac Pro was promised, and it still hasn't really been addressed. I laughed in disbelief when I installed the TB2 PCIe cards in my company's Z workstations and you had to plug another cable in from that card to your video card to get it to work.
"The GPUs are upgradable but they use a new slot/connector type that Intel is working on standardizing" would at least be an acceptable story to most people probably.
The other reason I tend to be skeptical of a purely proprietary GPU solution is that Apple considered the Can Mac Pro GPUs upgradable. I've hinted at it here before, but what I heard is that they just hadn't figured out the actual process for doing the upgrade, and they didn't have GPU upgrades ready.
My favorite quote I ever got from someone at Apple on GPU upgrades for the Can was "We're not ready to tell that story yet." Well I guess they'll never tell it now!
So they've already done this proprietary upgradable GPU thing, and it blew up in their face. If they do have only support for proprietary GPUs, they'd really need to get out there and actively promote the GPU design as upgradable, which they didn't do with the Can.
And unless they promise that they will ship GPU upgrades right of the gate, people will assume that they may never actually produce upgrade cards.
If they were planning on making them upgradable, it was definitely an afterthought. Otherwise why would they have made cards that required L or R placement instead of a single SKU?
It wasn't an afterthought, because I first started digging around at launch.
Was it well thought out? Probably not.
I think it's even possible that they knew technically the GPUs could be removed and replaced and that's as far as they got before they shoved it out the door.
But the idea wasn't that they were blocking GPU upgrades.
Its actually they main reason, to keep the mac pro on SOTA, no single Apple representative named PCIe or DIY expansion, do not expect PCIe, Sata, eSata, m.2 NVMe.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/15/modular-mac-pro-still-coming/
I think you mean APPLE (the note is not signed by Cook)
"In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest performance, high-throughput system in a modular, upgradeable design, as well as a new high-end pro display."
No Single Line stands USER-UPGRADABLE, just upgradable (by Apple or authorized Service Partners)... (sneaky words)
NO, Apple is redesigning the MP coz the tras can can't hold SOTA GPU/CPU. DIY Upgrades is ruled out.
The main is Coz the mMP do not offer the latest GPU/CPU, other reason are only in your imagination, they stated the iMac/MBP/iMacPro covers most of PRO users NEEDS, the MP will complement this approach, for those PRO that dont fit MBP/iMac/iMacPro, (even a more powerful MBP is rumured), Apple do not replicate Offers, do not expect the Base mMP rivaling the base iMac Pro, it will be more powerful and expensive as Apple uses to approac, its modularity will be for Display and BTO purposes.
The tcMP uses a clrever Apporach about PCIe interface Apple surely will re-take: a Propietary PCIe connector which includes Display Port signals required by the TB3 headers (now supporting DP1.4 and 8K displays)
UPDATES, UPDATES, PROs (real ones, no freelancers) and CORPORATE CUSTOMERS DO NOT UPGRADE, JUST UPDATES ENTIRE REPLACING SYSTEMS, an accountant will explain you why its cheaper replace and update than periodic upgrades (unless are trivial as RAM/SSD)
This is the most dumbest senseless speculation i've ever read about the mMP, just to keep TB3 and a cots GPU together on the design table, 0 chance, more likely Apple to include dual std GPU and some dirty DP feedback adapter than this.
LOL, 4K capture is good on single TB3 cable, an 8K device wont be maintream before TB4, only possibility is Apple offering a PCIe x8 adapter for its propietary PCIe5 capable GPU cartdriges.
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Could have just designed a bigger can for that. Doesn't require a year and a half redesign.
Tim Cook used the word upgrade. It's not just me.
And like I said, Apple considered every single component on the previous Mac Pro upgradable, even if they screwed the pooch on GPU upgrades. I don't see them stepping back from that.
I'm pretty well convinced you don't know that for sure, but it's still a possibility. I've already talked about the tightrope Apple would be walking with that in their marketing.
Using all caps doesn't invalidate the reply I already gave you on this.
I will tell you I've worked in both environments, so please don't lecture me.
Corporate customers don't buy upgrades because they tend to lease. People who own usually upgrade.
OK. Here's some honest feedback on your posts.
You've insisted AMD is happening because they have just tons of PCIe lanes. Now we're down to GPUs being on 8x PCIe lanes, and no PCIe slots.
Your posts are inconsistent from one to the next, even though you claim to have insider information.
All I'm saying is that Apple knows one of the issues with the previous Mac Pro is that it didn't have PCIe slots. I know they know that. If they wanted to do the same thing over again, they would have just shipped a larger version of the last machine they did. They're redesigning because they aren't doing the same thing.
Is it possible that the new Mac Pro ships with zero PCIe slots? Sure.
Is it possible that the new Mac Pro ships without learning from any of the reasons why the Can didn't sell? I guess. I mean, Apple can do all sorts of stupid things. But I'd be surprised.
Because let's be frank. The Can wasn't a failure because they couldn't do a rev B. It was a failure because Apple wasn't able to sell people a machine they didn't want.
If Apple thought they could sell everyone an non-upgradable design, the iMac Pro would be the replacement for the Mac Pro, and the Mac Pro would be dead.
I stopped reading at "freelancers aren't pros" ...