What's Happening With the Mac Pro?

[basehead617]

The main reason i haven’t updated my 2019 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio is that I require absolute silence in the office. As far as I’ve heard the Mac Studio fan is quite audible whereas my Pro makes literally zero noise once you’re more than a foot away from it.

Is that still the case with the most recent Studio? Or is it silent at high loads?

 

[Nyx1]

This year Will be 50th year Apple celebrate so hope we will see another Mac pro with new design first time we see Apple make discrete CPU and GPU

 

[seek3r]

Workstations have better options instead of TB5.

It’s called infiniband, see my comment

That said, infiniband scales a lot better

IBoTB5 though is now supported directly as well FWIW

 

[hirshnoc]

So after 2013 they thought Apple was discontinuing it, they didn’t…same thing after 2019.

So why is a four year gap (2027-ish) that unlikely?

 

[Jack Burton]

Lots of things: SDI cards, SMPTE-2110 dual 100Gb Ethernet cards, 100Gb/200Gb/400Gb, audio interfaces, NVMe RAID cards, among other things.

I forgot all about audio interfaces. Been out of that game too long! Sounds like you are gonna have fun with that rig.

 

[haincha]

I'm surprised they have not made some sort of external attachment that can support gfx or other peripherals that people might want. Keep the Studio as the Pro device and allow addons.

 

[uczcret]

I appreciate you digging that up. However, I'm perplexed by that report, as are many others in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1eh61si/comment/lfx81wv

It's difficult to tell if the numbers represent total sales or revenue, and, of course, that chart changes every quarter. Even more perplexing is that CIRP's data varies widely even within the same year: (both charts are from 2023)

View attachment 2592185View attachment 2592186

Mac Pro making up 9% of Apple's Mac revenue on any given quarter, instantly negates any shred of legitimacy CIRP reports might hold.

 

[avro707]

Actually, I would be just really happy if they would release AMD drivers for the 2019 Mac Pro so I could move beyond the AMD 6900

A lot of Apple’s fan base would be furious if Apple did that. They have invested so much effort in the anti Intel Mac Pro fight that it would be a huge U-turn.

I would definitely like to be able to add some newer Radeon Pro GPUs. That would be a good stop gap for many. CPU power is not a problem for me, just would like some newer GPUs.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

“The Mac Pro is falling behind” is the anthem of the last 15+ years of MP

 

[1037]

Not only that, the cluster functionality of Thunderbolt 5 seals the deal. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-boost-from-new-rdma-support-on-thunderbolt-5

That's $35,000

 

[kwikdeth]

A lot of Apple’s fan base would be furious if Apple did that. They have invested so much effort in the anti Intel Mac Pro fight that it would be a huge U-turn.

I would definitely like to be able to add some newer Radeon Pro GPUs. That would be a good stop gap for many. CPU power is not a problem for me, just would like some newer GPUs.

What I want is improved CPU support. The generation of CPUs they used were small relatively speaking, and now command utterly ridiculous premiums on the secondhand market. People have gotten CPUs like Xeon Gold series to work on a single boot but as soon as it reboots its over. All it takes is a microcode ROM update to support them.

 

[ksec]

With thunderbolt 5, this is the first time in 15 years of Mac Pro death rumors that I feel like it truly might be the end.

I hate the clutter and cable nests that the octopus box configuration will bring with the studio, but adapt or die, as they say.

TB5 is PCIe 4.0 x 4. For Audio and Video Professional that is enough for storage and editing. I am thinking most comments here clearly dont know about external PCIe settings.

The only thing that is possible not working with TB5 or in future TB6 is external GPU. However I dont think Apple wanted to support those anyway.

So yes I dont see any issues with Mac Studio at all.

 

[kwikdeth]

Not only that, the cluster functionality of Thunderbolt 5 seals the deal. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-boost-from-new-rdma-support-on-thunderbolt-5

It's still kind of a joke, though. "The increased bandwidth of Thunderbolt 5 over 10gbe" and it's like so what, when there's 400GBe NICs now? It looks cool but anybody who actually has a budget for AI work is going to see this for what it is.

This year Will be 50th year Apple celebrate so hope we will see another Mac pro with new design first time we see Apple make discrete CPU and GPU

Folks really need to accept this is never going to happen with Apple Silicon. It is antithetical to the entire concept of AS design.

 

[throAU]

It's still kind of a joke, though. "The increased bandwidth of Thunderbolt 5 over 10gbe" and it's like so what, when there's 400GBe NICs now? It looks cool but anybody who actually has a budget for AI work is going to see this for what it is.



Folks really need to accept this is never going to happen with Apple Silicon. It is antithetical to the entire concept of AS design.

Yeah if they want the mac pro to be an AI powerhouse they need infiniband on it.

Linking a few ultras up via 400/800 gigabit will show they're serious; dinky little thunderbolt connectivity is fine for the studio, the Pro should be more serious.

 

[avro707]

What I want is improved CPU support. The generation of CPUs they used were small relatively speaking, and now command utterly ridiculous premiums on the secondhand market. People have gotten CPUs like Xeon Gold series to work on a single boot but as soon as it reboots its over. All it takes is a microcode ROM update to support them.

Maybe it’s worth everyone pushing feedback to Apple to see if they can do it, assuming that’s all it takes.

Naturally there will be a million reasons put forward while it cannot.

But one key one would be people who have the existing top CPUs might want them to remain exclusive and rare so they can sell them at a premium.

 

[throAU]

What I want is improved CPU support. The generation of CPUs they used were small relatively speaking, and now command utterly ridiculous premiums on the secondhand market. People have gotten CPUs like Xeon Gold series to work on a single boot but as soon as it reboots its over. All it takes is a microcode ROM update to support them.

Maybe it’s worth everyone pushing feedback to Apple to see if they can do it, assuming that’s all it takes.

Naturally there will be a million reasons put forward while it cannot.

But one key one would be people who have the existing top CPUs might want them to remain exclusive and rare so they can sell them at a premium.

For the 2019 mac pro?

Not happening, no one is writing new firmware for this (well, apple are the only ones who can, given the code-signing requirements) given that both Apple and intel consider it EOL/EOS.

They don't need a million reasons, they have two:

1. we have only validated the CPU options we provide; third party CPU upgrades are not supported
2. we aren't writing new firmware for a machine deemed end of support