My question was more referring to AMD, that is showing off a 2S system with Naples.
But I guess you've answered me, telling me that the market for 2S is getting smaller and very likely won't be covered by mMP, but only destined to workstation servers.
Give that very likely the system won't be completely assembled in an engineering sample by H1 2018... it gets hard to speculate on GPUs (nVidia Volta? 2n gen Vega?) but also on CPUs. What could be delivered by the end of H1? Coffee Lake Xeons?
The Xeon Phi could be an interesting add-on option to a mMP
[doublepost=1491575730][/doublepost]BTW... why do I read that PCI-E Gen4 is out now?
https://www.synopsys.com/designware-ip/interface-ip/pci-express.html
When Apple says they want to build a system that can grow with the years, they can only do it by ensuring no bottlenecks for future cards.
Biggest problem with adopting AMD on Apple computers, as for CPUs is... immaturity of platform, and a lot of Troubleshooting required from AMD engineers at Apple project.
Way easier will be adopting Intel CPUs. No software changes to OS. Intel has mature platform, that Apple can easily implement in their hardware, without any gripes, and mostly, and finally. AMD has finite number of engineers, and the resources, that could help Apple to get project done are way more constrained compared to Intel.
If you would ask me: IMO we still are looking at single socket Computer, with Dual GPUs, however, the GPUs have their own enclosure, and their own, independent cooling system. More like a hybrid between MP 5.1 in 6.1 form factor. Think of it that it will have the same form factor, but taller, with space for two GPUs.
About my previous information, that I was so adamant to keep behind closed doors. I got information that Apple planned a partnership with AMD, and allow them to produce special, made for Mac GPUs. The idea was that Apple planned modular ecosystem. For example, if you had an GPU made for Mac, you would connect it externally, via TB3 cable to any Mac Computer, and allow expanding its capabilities. Way easier from one perspective, problematic from another. Apple is adamant about Efficiency, and that will never change. GPUs made for Mac, were also supposed to have specific limit of power consumed, because that is what Apple usually does.
You could've had for Example Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro, and expand their capabilties, without a problem, through external connection. That was the idea behind it. Vega Architecture was supposed to be the go-to architecture for this, because of its new Memory Paging system, that is less bound by PCIe bandwidth. Right now, I do not know what is going to happen with those plans.
The biggest part of this news, was that Nvidia would also get the ability to develop "Made for Mac" GPUs. They would require however external drivers. Apple was at that point adamant on not using Nvidia GPUs in their computers.
Apple planned that iPad would be a something like interactive display(that is best thing I can come up with from information I was provided), for Mac computers. This is not dead, but nobody knows when this will come to fruition.
AMD Naples comes in 16 and 32 Cores, 16 cores are too much on the lower end, and 32 cores are the same intel Offers with Skylake-EP, further Intel goes from 6 cores to 72 cores on the same socket, to do that on AMD Apple would need two very different Logic boards for the mMP, unlikely.
Another question is the AMD Naples APU loaded with Vega10/20 GPU and HBM2 memory it could adjust very well in a form factor similar to the tcMP and axe discrete GPU, but ties Apple to AMD cycles very deep, who knows when that Naples APU will see an updtae (if ever).
So going to AMD Naples is not comfortable for a Modular product customizable to a wider range of PRO users, also dual socket Naples APU offers just 64 cores less than 72 cores from a single Xeon Phi.
Nope. Naples is coming up in Dual Ryzen CPU MCM, Triple Ryzen CPU MCM, and quad Ryzen CPU MCM packages.
So bases for all three CPUs are 16, 24, and 32 cores. Currently, the leaks point to 3.1/3.6 GHz core clocks for the 16 core CPU, and 180W of TDP. But the biggest advantage AMD can have is the price. Currently the information I have is that top-end ThreadRipper CPU will be 1299$. Which is slightly mind blowing.
