MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[AidenShaw]

I sure hope this is true, and that nMP will be announced at WWDC.

Cupertino's hometown daily newspaper story on WWDC.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_29975325/apple-hopes-spark-its-developers-enthusiasm

Mac Pro not even mentioned.

 

[pat500000]

I sure hope this is true, and that nMP will be announced at WWDC. But I doubt the rMBP will surface now. If they do mention an updated model, it should be Kaby Lake later on, USB-C only, I'd skip the OLED panel but OK.
Regarding i7 on nMP, to me it makes no sense. In terms of cost, nothing to gain. I don't see Apple going non-ECC on nMP, that could make it look like less of a workstation. And Xeons are non overclockable, i7s are which could be a problem for Apple, although that's something they might be able to lock at the firmware level, maybe.
But that would possibly require firmware that supports both models, of different versions - remember Xeons and i7s support different functionality.
Don't think so honestly.
I'm also not so enthusiastic when it comes to VR/AR. Apple will surely wait, like always. They will not offer a solution that won't provide the best experience, and right now it's all still very much meh.
[doublepost=1465046492][/doublepost]http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xeon-skylake-purley-cpu,31980.html

They skipping broad Well?

 

[Mago]

Decoding rumours and anti-rumours:

Facts and evidence indicates WWDC will focus on Software, VR also is know to be a main focus on Apple, as they are too secretive while spending billions on VR-related acquisitions, this VR requires hardware not available yet.

Then 9to5mac suggest (with later retract) that Apple is reading a TB display with eGPU, since macOS 10.12 introduces a feature to switch from internal to external GPU (this feature is the actual leak), they conclude it shall be an TB Display with eGPU.

Furhter 9to5mac said WWDC will be "ligth on hardware" citing their sources, what means ligth on hardware? No hardware, only updated hardware, or just introduction for later release?

New Whispers (which still has to demonstrate is reliable) are confident on MP 7,1 and rMBP introduction at WWDC but no inmediate release, have no idea on a TB Display with eGPU but an TB3 Display has to come later, possible introduced at WWDC too.

Rene Ritchie when contradicted 9to5mac discarded for now TB3 Display with eGPU but suggest a more conventional TB3 Display has to come...

what we have:

mac0S 10.12 introduces what is an feature for TB3 system: capability to use an External GPU.

whisper and ritchie discard eGpu display....

Apple has plenty old hardware on sale now.... (leaks on new hw dont help to sell this)

FCPX-VR requires powerful GPU...

my conclusion:
itś evident Apple has something hiddent for WWDC, we know a Mac Pro leak is almost impossible, so is most likely to happen, also TB3 related code on macOS is an good sign, further the TB3 Display to me seems also a sure bet for WWDC launch with release along the MP7,1 availability or earlier with rMBP.

More almost every important notebook mnufacturer has released products with TB3 since december, only thing delaying Macbooks is AMD Polaris 11, we know AMD enforced an curious NDA until next month, I think this NDA is related to polaris 11, but Polaris 11 only delays the higer end version of the upcoming rMBP16 not the base model neither the 14" none of then requires nothing not available since november at least.

Its contradictory a WWDC for new software but no hardware for this software?

 

[pat500000]

Cupertino's hometown daily newspaper story on WWDC.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_29975325/apple-hopes-spark-its-developers-enthusiasm

Mac Pro not even mentioned.

But they mentioned Apple TV. ATV 4 came out not too long ago...I don't know if what they say is believable.
Are they usually accurate?

 

[Mago]

Cupertino's hometown daily newspaper story on WWDC.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_29975325/apple-hopes-spark-its-developers-enthusiasm

Mac Pro not even mentioned.

basically a blog roundup, a Mac Pro leak is almost impossible, at leas for non-annoymous people.

 

[deconstruct60]

I sure hope this is true, and that nMP will be announced at WWDC. But I doubt the rMBP will surface now. If they do mention an updated model, it should be Kaby Lake later on, USB-C only, I'd skip the OLED panel but OK.

Kaby Lake processors in the rMBP class probably aren't going to surface until 2017. ( just like how Broadwell really didn't surface until 2016 while Core M Broadwell launched in late 2015). The "first out of the gate" Kaby Lake processors will be in the class of those used on the MacBook ( and maybe some high end, high margin desktop variants). So it made sense to bump the MacBook early 2016. ... Apple may do another bump very late 2016. The MacBook is already USB-C only. Maybe a 'merge' of MBA and MB with Kaby Lake, but the "MBP" variants.... seriously doesn't make a whole lot of sense to skip Broadwell for.

Regarding i7 on nMP, to me it makes no sense. In terms of cost, nothing to gain. I don't see Apple going non-ECC on nMP, that could make it look like less of a workstation. And Xeons are non overclockable, i7s are which could be a problem for Apple, although that's something they might be able to lock at the firmware level,

Besides costs, how are you going to overclock with a highly limited power enveloope? The GPUs are likely being underclocked due to the limited thermal envelope. Where is the huge empty thermal envelope gap in which to over clock into????

They could do a 180 degree turn and drop a overclockeed variant with just one GPU. A special Mac Pro for the single threaded drag race crowd. They could go with the PCIe kneecapped entry Core i7 model if toss the "compute" GPU. The price drop is mainly due to dropping the GPU. Doesn't seem likely though.
Apple could probably capture more of the "single thread drag racers with narrow GPU load on low cost system budget" folks with a tricked out Mac Mini . And avoid pushing the Mac Pro into a space it wasn't created for.
[doublepost=1465054647][/doublepost]

Decoding rumours and anti-rumours:

Facts and evidence indicates WWDC will focus on Software, VR also is know to be a main focus on Apple, as they are too secretive while spending billions on VR-related acquisitions, this VR requires hardware not available yet.

Secretively spending billions on VR acquisitions ?????? Impossible for a publicly traded company to do (at least legally impossible. I highly doubt Tim Cook is trying to go to court/jail. ). It isn't happening. This is just frantic hand waving.

Apple is probably not doing anything on groundbreaking on VR. If doing anything it is probably closer to matching Google VR efforts with cellphones.

There has to be a VR Mac Pro because VR is the whole future is far more likely just setting folks up for huge expectations gaps between reality and the alternative universe this thread is rapidly devolving into.

 

[Mago]

Secretively spending billions on VR acquisitions

Billions ok its am exaggeration, but actually they are spending too many millions: http://vrscout.com/news/apple-virtual-reality/

 

[AidenShaw]

But they mentioned Apple TV. ATV 4 came out not too long ago...I don't know if what they say is believable.
Are they usually accurate?

basically a blog roundup, a Mac Pro leak is almost impossible, at leas for non-annoymous people.

The story isn't a tech leak story - but more about interest in the conference.

It illustrates that a new workstation isn't that important for the customers of a phone company, that's all.

 

[flat five]

The story isn't a tech leak story - but more about interest in the conference.

It illustrates that a new workstation isn't that important for the customers of a phone company, that's all.

wouldn't the same be true for any company selling workstations?

idk, i'd be willing to bet HP sells thousands of times more printers than HP-Z.. and thousands of times more laptops than workstations.. etc.

'workstations' is a niche market no matter which way you slice it.

maybe boxx which specializes in workstations would be a different story and most of their news blips would probably include talks of workstations.. but then again, nobody reads boxx news blips except maybe 4 people.

 

[pat500000]

The story isn't a tech leak story - but more about interest in the conference.

It illustrates that a new workstation isn't that important for the customers of a phone company, that's all.

Ah okay. I heard you.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Any technology relying on new macOS wont show up before October's release. So, if there's a support for eGPU in OS X 12.0 (macOS 11), the hardware is not released at WWDC. That means, no new TB3 displays before October.

I read a story how Hollywood is pushing for VR content. Apple has to release tools for that if they are going to continue in the business. nMP v2 will be the tool. VR classes and consumer products for VR can / will come later.

WWDC is about iOS 10, macOS 11, tv-/watchOS, new developing tools and Final Cut Pro VR. And nMP v2 is going to be released with FCP VR. And maybe a Pro HDR display without eGPU. And iMac Pro.. with built in HDR display.. maybe. ;-)

 

[AidenShaw]

wouldn't the same be true for any company selling workstations?

But there's a media storm worthy of Donald Trump around any Apple event.

Since Apple's other computers are laptops (the Imac is a "laptop on a stick") - it's interesting that the reporter either didn't hear Mac Pro rumours, or that he discounted them as uninteresting.

 

[flat five]

ok.. i see what you're saying now.

 

[spaz8]

I hope the eGPU support in OSX 12 is true. I have been looking at what options there are to take with my MP 6,1 since CUDA seems to be a necessity for machine learning. Bizon box2 is the solution today, but perhaps Sonnet or Apple with have a solution by xmas.

 

[AidenShaw]

I hope the eGPU support in OSX 12 is true. I have been looking at what options there are to take with my MP 6,1 since CUDA seems to be a necessity for machine learning. Bizon box2 is the solution today, but perhaps Sonnet or Apple with have a solution by xmas.

Trying to do serious machine learning on any platform other than Ubuntu with Maxwell or later cards is akin to "swimming upstream". Even using another mainstream Linux like RHEL or CentOS forces you to waste time in setup and debugging - because the tools and libraries that you need were developed on Ubuntu.

Don't waste your money on an eGPU only to fight an Apple-hostile ecosystem. Put the same money towards an i7 or E3 box with a good GPU.

It's simply a matter of "the right tool for the job". Most of the time I'm hopping from my Windows 10 workstation to SSH or RDP sessions on Linux boxes.

 

[Mago]

Trying to do serious machine learning on any platform other than Ubuntu with Maxwell or later cards is akin to "swimming upstream". Even using another mainstream Linux like RHEL or CentOS forces you to waste time in setup and debugging - because the tools and libraries that you need were developed on Ubuntu.

Don't waste your money on an eGPU only to fight an Apple-hostile ecosystem. Put the same money towards an i7 or E3 box with a good GPU.

It's simply a matter of "the right tool for the job". Most of the time I'm hopping from my Windows 10 workstation to SSH or RDP sessions on Linux boxes.

Except if you develop for OpenCL 2.x (when available on macOS) and you use the "CUDA first OpenCL then" approach (at least on OS/X Cuda DBG and Profiler work very good, years ahead), of course this approach CUDA then OpenCL, may not fit every scenario.

About Thunderbolt, eGPU and Machine Learning I'll be surprised if eGPU spport is extended to TB2, It will be a thing only for TB3 Macs, I doubt GPUs will dominate Machine Learning, but specific solution as Google's Tensor or FPGA, at least on mid term, in short GPU Rules for a while, but keep eyes on Tensor Processing Unit, FPGA cards and of course DARPA's SyNAPSE.

Ahh, I forgot, AMD is investing on build the toolchain for machine learnig with their GPUs.

Stackoverflow has an interesting thread about http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30622805/opencl-amd-deep-learning

You'll have no problems with Theano, Caffe and Torch.

 

[AidenShaw]

Except if you develop for OpenCL 2.x (when available on macOS) and you use the "CUDA first OpenCL then" approach (at least on OS/X Cuda DBG and Profiler work very good, years ahead), of course this approach CUDA then OpenCL, may not fit every scenario.

About Thunderbolt, eGPU and Machine Learning I'll be surprised if eGPU spport is extended to TB2, It will be a thing only for TB3 Macs, I doubt GPUs will dominate Machine Learning, but specific solution as Google's Tensor or FPGA, at least on mid term, in short GPU Rules for a while, but keep eyes on Tensor Processing Unit, FPGA cards and of course DARPA's SyNAPSE.

Ahh, I forgot, AMD is investing on build the toolchain for machine learnig with their GPUs.

Stackoverflow has an interesting thread about http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30622805/opencl-amd-deep-learning

You'll have no problems with Theano, Caffe and Torch.

You've outlined exactly the headaches that I was warning about.

"ATI is investing", "when available on Apple OSX", "keep eyes on",...

Those are available now on Ubuntu/CUDA. Do you want to start work tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is Sunday the 5th of June 2016 - day after today) or tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is sometime in 2017 or later when the stack is mature enough to port the tools and libraries to Apple OSX)?

 

[Mago]

You've outlined exactly the headaches that I was warning about.

"ATI is investing", "when available on Apple OSX", "keep eyes on",...

Those are available now on Ubuntu/CUDA. Do you want to start work tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is Sunday the 5th of June 2016 - day after today) or tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is sometime in 2017 or later when the stack is mature enough to port the tools and libraries to Apple OSX)?

The few I read about (not my area) Theano, Caffe and Torch NOW (read: today, right here right now, presto, in so facto, ya) support OpenCL/AMD GPUs ... a bit of google search corroborates it.

 

[koyoot]

Interesting topic you have touched guys. It is quite funny.

Tech Journalist on forum within Internet on may 29th reported:
http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?p=263871#post263871

Pascal consumer grade cards support FP16 but the arithmetic throughput via native FP16 units is so low that even FP16 arithmetic throughput emulated via FP32 units is higher! Pascal is just a joke.

Good luck NVIDIA users, because Shader Model 6.0 (next DirectX 12 main update) will introduce native and full FP16 support. Yeah, but AMD is the bad guy ...

Secondly we see this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4m692q/concerning_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/
And a quote:

Ashes uses procedural generation based on a randomized seed at launch. The benchmark does look slightly different every time it is run. But that, many have noted, does not fully explain the quality difference people noticed.

At present the GTX 1080 is incorrectly executing the terrain shaders responsible for populating the environment with the appropriate amount of snow. The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly. Snow is somewhat flat and boring in color compared to shiny rocks, which gives the illusion that less is being rendered, but this is an incorrect interpretation of how the terrain shaders are functioning in this title.

And yesterday we have this from Oxide: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/c...ng_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/d3t9ml4

We (Stardock/Oxide) are looking into whether someone has reduced the precision on the new FP16 pipe.
Both AMD and NV have access to the Ashes source base. Once we obtain the new cards, we can evaluate whether someone is trying to modify the game behavior (i.e. reduce visual quality) to get a higher score.
In the meantime, taking side by side screenshots and videos will help ensure GPU developers are dissuaded from trying to boost numbers at the cost of visuals.

We have to wait for the end of investigation from Oxide about this to conclude anything.

 

[AidenShaw]

The few I read about (not my area) Theano, Caffe and Torch NOW (read: today, right here right now, presto, in so facto, ya) support OpenCL/AMD GPUs ... a bit of google search corroborates it.

Three pieces of a complex tool chain. "Ya" for ATI.

Stick to "your area", please. Most machine learning libraries are CUDA. OpenCL barely started to enter the field, and now that Apple is dropping OpenCL adoption has virtually ceased. OpenCL has been deprecated, good luck with building on OpenCL today.

Not using Ubuntu/CUDA is "swimming upstream". Do you want to spend your time forcing the ML square peg into the round hole that Apple gives you, or do you want to spend your time on your ML project?
[doublepost=1465086822][/doublepost]

We have to wait for the end of investigation from Oxide about this to conclude anything.

We don't have to wait on this at all. If FP16 is #1 in our minds, then we'll watch it to find out what mistakes Oxide made.

Polaris is a disaster in progress, each announcement puts it lower on the food chain. Good luck trying to distract us with minor questions about Pascal.

 

[iPadPublisher]

What is unknown is the pricing.

More than likely, would the pricing be in line with what we have already?

I'd tend to think so, give or take 5-6%. If they keep this same cylinder form factor, and thermal core design, then there's some baked-in cost savings for not having to completely retool the line, etc. Small internal tweaks, even allowing for more RAM, wouldn't change the costs much, except for additional components, of course.

Who knows, anymore though...

 

[mathpunk]

Most machine learning libraries are CUDA. OpenCL barely started to enter the field, and now that Apple is dropping OpenCL adoption has virtually ceased. OpenCL has been deprecated, good luck with building on OpenCL today.

I agree - OpenCL looks dead to me, too. There was some promise with OpenCL 2.x, but it never seemed to gain much traction. Also, FP16 is everything for ML, but outside of CUDA (and ARM Neon) I haven't seen it widely supported in hardware.

 

[rockyromero]

I'd tend to think so, give or take 5-6%. If they keep this same cylinder form factor, and thermal core design, then there's some baked-in cost savings for not having to completely retool the line, etc. Small internal tweaks, even allowing for more RAM, wouldn't change the costs much, except for additional components, of course.

I'm starting to notice price drops on cMP on the secondary market.

That would work out well for me if the new MP line brings pricing even lower for existing nMP.

I'll be watching WWDC to notice who predicted right or wrong from the media and this forum.

Anyone else going to watch it?

➰

 

[Mago]

I'm starting to notice price drops on cMP on the secondary market.

That would work out well for me if the new MP line brings pricing even lower for existing nMP.

I'll be watching WWDC to notice who predicted right or wrong from the media and this forum.

Anyone else going to watch it?

➰

I Believe a new Mac Pro is very likely, based on Polaris and a W8100 w/o ECC ram (to reduce TDP and cost, as they did with D700).

Beyond predictions/leaks I think it should have 6 TB3 ports, even at cost of 8 PCIe3 lines from 2nd GPU, Also I think we will see soon new Thunderbolt display even the nMP should be on sale soon not on Q3 or late Q3.

About Macbooks, I think Apple will introduce only the 14" model with immediate availability or as soon macOS 10.12 is released (same on the MP).

even the Mac Mini could go on sale very soon.

I don't See the bigger 16" Macbook pro as soon as the smaller, maybe introduced later along the new Mini or the updated iMacs with Polaris) that on Q4.

(these arent leaks, are my pure speculation after considering the historic trends).

 

[mattspace]

Rene Ritchie when contradicted 9to5mac discarded for now TB3 Display with eGPU but suggest a more conventional TB3 Display has to come...

3 days ago the "well informed" (tagged as such John Gruber) Rene Ritchie publishes an exhaustive article about how Apple will drive a new retina display, which makes no mention of eGPU as an option. Either he's deliberately hiding something he knows so that it's more miraculous when revealed, or he genuinely didn't know about it.

It would seem in response to his article, everyone who DID know what is coming up went to press with the details, making him look like a bit of a fool.

Less than 24 hours later, Rene knows enough to say this device, of which he displayed no previous knowledge, is definitely not happening.

Well, if you'd been listening in the right places at the right times, the phrase "released to manufacturing" was stated in reference to this product well over a month ago.

If the Retina Display, and new 15" (or equivalent in that range size) Macbook Pro (because they're a complete ecosystem offering) do launch, grab your popcorn because the butthurt in the punditsphere is going to be hilarious.