Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?

[patrick.a]

Apple II processor cards - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Well it's "8 year old tech" in that Intel hasn't really done anything with CPUs since Haswell and AMD was stuck on Polaris for almost a half-decade, themselves. 😡

Thanks! I guess that was a very different time back then though.

 

[anthony13]

I know product updates are usually Tuesday's or Thursday's, but here's hoping for tomorrow morning. My eyes can't take squinting at this small laptop screen and restarting every hour much longer.

 

[Freida]

What Azrael said! The AS will blow anything out the water. Its so huge that people are still not seeing it.
This is really history here and we are part of it. Apple will now own the top spot for speed + great experience.
Intel is finished and Nvidia + AMD should be worried as I think they will be beaten soon also.

Apple just started this few years ago and what they showed us on 2 year old (and unmodified) chip was simply outstanding. Now, 2 years later, active cooling and scalable = we are all gonna be Fusioning our pants.

I'm super excited and I know that this is going to be HUGEEEEE!!!
Apple wouldn't switch over from Intel for small 10-20% speed increase. They are after huge numbers and this will be it.
Fasten your seatbelts as this will blow everything!

And as Azrael said - AppleTV will become console by default as you will have the chip that can drive all these games so no extra work is needed from Apple. Just refresh and voila = good to go and kill the market.
It will be up to developers to choose as the hardware will be there.

And with Apple controller I think we might be in for a treat. That + Apple headset = VR/AR might get very interesting in the living room 🙂
The tech is almost ready for primetime. Few more years and we will experience another huge revolution in the entertainment business.

And in the distant future, we won't have offices as we have now. We will all work from home and the work will be done through virtual office. Kids will learn through VR that will allow them to see and experience everything. Wanna talk about sharks or dolphins? Forget ducking seaworlds with torturing animals - no no no! You put on your VR kit and the teacher will take you on the bottom of the ocean where you will see and 'feel' everything with your own eyes whilst no animals will be harmed.

Same for medical students that will be able to experience anything thats needed + more. This is the future that we are now slowly going towards.

Just like the iPhone changed how we use our phones this will eventually be the same. It will change how we live our lives.

Sorry, went little too far on this but I got excited so the fingers kept typing :-D

Anyway, HISTORY is written now 🙂
hahahahh
Ok, I'll stop now 😉

A console? How many products are Apple going to make?

I think we already have Apple silicon in the Mac pro in form of the afterburner card. More of these cards can come. The MPX modules are nice packages for adding AS functions. Hard to believe that Mac Pro is dead in two years time. It might see stiff competition from AS but I think Mac Pro is the last to go together with an intel MBP16. Apple is large enough to support the two lines for awhile. All laptops and iMacs will likely go AS very soon (a year).

The first dedicated AS for Mac with active cooling will be very important for Apple as it will give us consumers and investors a guide what is possible with such a SoC. An iPad AS will be seen as a failure. So no, I do not think the iMac 24 will have the same performance bracket as a low end laptop. If they give us the same performance as a high end MBP16 with the first AS for iMac, I am fine.

 

[The_Lord_of_Apple]

I know product updates are usually Tuesday's or Thursday's, but here's hoping for tomorrow morning. My eyes can't take squinting at this small laptop screen and restarting every hour much longer.

For me it will be Wednesday morning when I get up to get the announcement, however if it doesn't come then at least I have Bachelor in Paradise to look forward to in the evening. I need trashy tv to help me feel better lol!

 

[The_Lord_of_Apple]

What Azrael said! The AS will blow anything out the water. Its so huge that people are still not seeing it.

All we have see are some demos. Nobody outside of help knows how this will fare in the real world? As much as triple 4K streams looked impressive, how would DaVinci Resolve/C4D work under Rosetta? How would plug-ins work? There are so many unknowns!! When C4D purchased Red Shift, how long did it take Red Shift to port everything to metal? Longer than initially indicated.

Additionally, to say Nvidia and AMD GPUs are finished is a bit of stretch. Designing your own GPU unit is no easy task. Call me pessimistic but I don't think Apple's first GPU will be nowhere near the latest offerings from NVIDIA or AMD.

Afterburner is a great example but how many companies have leveraged the card's API for their own software to run on it?

Too many fanboy predictions!!

 

[gusping]

What Azrael said! The AS will blow anything out the water. Its so huge that people are still not seeing it.
This is really history here and we are part of it. Apple will now own the top spot for speed + great experience.
Intel is finished and Nvidia + AMD should be worried as I think they will be beaten soon also.

Apple just started this few years ago and what they showed us on 2 year old (and unmodified) chip was simply outstanding. Now, 2 years later, active cooling and scalable = we are all gonna be Fusioning our pants.

I'm super excited and I know that this is going to be HUGEEEEE!!!
Apple wouldn't switch over from Intel for small 10-20% speed increase. They are after huge numbers and this will be it.
Fasten your seatbelts as this will blow everything!

And as Azrael said - AppleTV will become console by default as you will have the chip that can drive all these games so no extra work is needed from Apple. Just refresh and voila = good to go and kill the market.
It will be up to developers to choose as the hardware will be there.

And with Apple controller I think we might be in for a treat. That + Apple headset = VR/AR might get very interesting in the living room 🙂
The tech is almost ready for primetime. Few more years and we will experience another huge revolution in the entertainment business.

And in the distant future, we won't have offices as we have now. We will all work from home and the work will be done through virtual office. Kids will learn through VR that will allow them to see and experience everything. Wanna talk about sharks or dolphins? Forget ducking seaworlds with torturing animals - no no no! You put on your VR kit and the teacher will take you on the bottom of the ocean where you will see and 'feel' everything with your own eyes whilst no animals will be harmed.

Same for medical students that will be able to experience anything thats needed + more. This is the future that we are now slowly going towards.

Just like the iPhone changed how we use our phones this will eventually be the same. It will change how we live our lives.

Sorry, went little too far on this but I got excited so the fingers kept typing :-D

Anyway, HISTORY is written now 🙂
hahahahh
Ok, I'll stop now 😉

I'm just looking forward to an AS Mac mini with half-decent graphics 😉 Definitely jumping on the first AS mini they produce!
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Additionally, to say Nvidia and AMD GPUs are finished is a bit of stretch. Designing your own GPU unit is no easy task. Call me pessimistic but I don't think Apple's first GPU will be nowhere near the latest offerings from NVIDIA or AMD.

I think Apple could reach the low-mid GPU market fairly easily, but mid to high (say... 5700 XT and above) will take a lot longer. Plus, you have the question of devs supporting a different GPU architecture.

 

[ssong]

All we have see are some demos. Nobody outside of help knows how this will fare in the real world? As much as triple 4K streams looked impressive, how would DaVinci Resolve/C4D work under Rosetta? How would plug-ins work? There are so many unknowns!! When C4D purchased Red Shift, how long did it take Red Shift to port everything to metal? Longer than initially indicated.

Additionally, to say Nvidia and AMD GPUs are finished is a bit of stretch. Designing your own GPU unit is no easy task. Call me pessimistic but I don't think Apple's first GPU will be nowhere near the latest offerings from NVIDIA or AMD.

Afterburner is a great example but how many companies have leveraged the card's API for their own software to run on it?

Too many fanboy predictions!!

Wouldn't say that Nvidia and AMD GPUs are finished but I'd say that Apple moving towards their own GPUs does kinda put the writing on the wall. I'm sure Nvidia would've loved to have had some of that mobile SoC market where they dipped their toes in with the Tegra series a while back.

Apple's GPU designing also goes a fair while back, they've been shipping Apple designed GPUs since A8 (2014) which would put the R&D beginning around 2012. It also wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that the GPU development began along side the CPU development which would put the R&D start time to around 2008 / 2009.

Given that the mobile GPU either matched or beat the PowerVR GPUs the had been using before 2014 I wouldn't be surprised if their first desktop class GPU comes sprinting out the gates. I wouldn't imagine it being in the levels of RTX2080 but maybe the 1060 Super or RTX2070 could be doable.

I vaguely recall seeing one of the devs with the DTK say that the A12Z in the DTK seems to offer similar performance to GTX 1060 which isn't too shabby given the chip is a couple years old now.

 

[DrRadon]

I know product updates are usually Tuesday's or Thursday's, but here's hoping for tomorrow morning. My eyes can't take squinting at this small laptop screen and restarting every hour much longer.

I have zero hope for this week.
It's the 22ed, 30 days after the ARM keynote, two weeks after all the education stuff.

And if it's not the 22ed it might as well end up September or later because at that point all the "ready to ship" and "at WWDC" leaks pretty much become invalid due to age.



Got myself Anno 1800 yesterday because of the UbiSoft salle putting it even cheaper than key sellers. Just like planet zoo i was mostly looking at a game i was hyped for to play on my new computer (if it ever arises) but it runs shockingly good with low settings on my 2012 21,5 inch iMac (Windows 10, Bootcamp).

 

[pldelisle]

Intel is finished and Nvidia + AMD should be worried as I think they will be beaten soon also

Don’t worry. Nvidia is far from being worried by Apple. They are not on the same market at all. Nvidia is even more leaving the gaming industry, favors embedded, AI, data center, research...

Why do you think AMD has the consoles ? Because if not, it would be Antitrust law. Nvidia would have a monopoly of GPU chips. This is not allowed in the US.
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And in the distant future, we won't have offices as we have now. We will all work from home and the work will be done through virtual office. Kids will learn through VR that will allow them to see and experience everything. Wanna talk about sharks or dolphins? Forget ducking seaworlds with torturing animals - no no no! You put on your VR kit and the teacher will take you on the bottom of the ocean where you will see and 'feel' everything with your own eyes whilst no animals will be harmed.

I like that. There is a lot of money to do within these few lines.

 

[Azrael9]

Apple II processor cards - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Well it's "8 year old tech" in that Intel hasn't really done anything with CPUs since Haswell and AMD was stuck on Polaris for almost a half-decade, themselves. 😡

*nods. I hear you, CWallace.

Most frustrating. That said..

NVIDIA rumored to retire GeForce RTX 2080 (Ti/SUPER) and GeForce RTX 2070 (SUPER) graphics cards soon - VideoCardz.com

According to the Chinese website ITHome, four NVIDIA graphics cards will soon be retired, as the manufacturer is allegedly planning to discontinue their production. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080/2070 Series going EOL? The report claims that NVIDIA has started the phase of discontinuation and delisting...

videocardz.com

And we're still waiting for a lower to mid-range 'last year' 5700XT in any Mac costing £1250-£2k.

*Shakes head in despair.

It's not like you can't put together a consumer tower to facilitate such cards. *Looks wistfully at the old 'grater. My point, Apple have played their part in this. With outrageous up sell and pricing things beyond affordable to expensive. Why has it taken them a year+++ to add a better gpu to the iMac? Why wait until the next 'big' update when the £2k iMac you're offering has a low end (POLARIS) card.

Bottom line. You get what you take as a customer. And Apple have quite happily taken it's stale hardware profits to the bank at the expense of its customers who 'gladly' payed.

The consumer lines are so stale, AS will appear very good indeed! 😛 But Intel set such a low bar. And the competition has caught up with their process advantage because of the £££ momentum in 'i'phones and the like. And fabs are £££ big money.

Whilst the dinosaur sleeps...the mammal eats him alive.

It's a SoC future. (*looks at the amazing power in the SoC PS5...and people think Sony and AMD can do this but 1.5 trillion Apple can't?)

Azrael.

 

[pldelisle]

1.5 trillion Apple

Each time I see this I tell myself "this is f*cking insane". 😂😂

 

[Azrael9]

At least Apple said this decade won’t be like the last one !!!

Oh yes. The 2400 pound Gorilla has just stepped into the ring...and the 800 pound Gorilla...is looking down at the 200 Gorilla it just beat...and back at the 2400 pound Gorilla...

Always a worry...when a 'bigger' one comes along...

Azrael.
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Each time I see this I tell myself "this is f*cking insane". 😂😂

From the dark days of Amelio...to 1.5 trillion. Steve Jobs was the redemption story of history.

And they're probably going to hit 2 trillion with AS Hardware and the A14 lifting the family to new heights.

Who doesn't want to buy an AS Mac that will 100% crush Intel? Taken on AMD? NVidia? Or an A14x iPad? Or an A12z-14 ATV? Or an A14 iPhone?

When iPads and Macs become, essentially, the 'same' thing. In much the way that a Macbook and an iPad with a 'z' stand are pretty much the same thing...once they add those sales figures together (and we're getting to the point where the classification separation is 'eh'...) then Apple is the biggest computer vendor in the world by units sold. It's the biggest mobile company in the world with phones, ipads and macbooks. £££. And that's why even traditional PC gaming vendors are starting to follow the £££. Blizzard may have got boo'd in their own hometown con'...but Blizzard follow the money. And Mobile Diablo is going to make more money. The gaming landscape is changing. The £££ is going mobile. So Apple's write once and deploy to mobile (and Mac...AS...) makes complete sense and their Apple Arcade forward thinking...if people do music rental...why not games...which once you complete you put away and don't have 'replay' factor in quite the same way as music...)

That's some power there. Something more powerful than a PS4 in your iPhone. *blinks.

'We're not even trying.' Craig Fed'.

Azrael.

 

[pldelisle]

'We're not even trying.' Craig Fed'.

Craig «Hair Force One» Federighi for CEO !

 

[Azrael9]

Wouldn't say that Nvidia and AMD GPUs are finished but I'd say that Apple moving towards their own GPUs does kinda put the writing on the wall. I'm sure Nvidia would've loved to have had some of that mobile SoC market where they dipped their toes in with the Tegra series a while back.

Apple's GPU designing also goes a fair while back, they've been shipping Apple designed GPUs since A8 (2014) which would put the R&D beginning around 2012. It also wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that the GPU development began along side the CPU development which would put the R&D start time to around 2008 / 2009.

Given that the mobile GPU either matched or beat the PowerVR GPUs the had been using before 2014 I wouldn't be surprised if their first desktop class GPU comes sprinting out the gates. I wouldn't imagine it being in the levels of RTX2080 but maybe the 1060 Super or RTX2070 could be doable.

I vaguely recall seeing one of the devs with the DTK say that the A12Z in the DTK seems to offer similar performance to GTX 1060 which isn't too shabby given the chip is a couple years old now.

A sound posting.

It's a SoC future. There's a lot of 'Apple won't match dGPU.' blah. etc.

But look at the SoC in the PS5 for £400-500. :O

It's a SoC future. And the writing IS on the wall.

That's why Nvidia pushed their prices up for their dGPUs and pushed the 'revised' S series at similar high prices...to get cash in the bank for all that server side stuff they're doing.

AMD are playing the long game being in consoles. Once their 'chiplet' gpu comes online Nvidia are going to have some serious competition.

Like you say, Apple have now been GPUs for a long time now...as with CPUs (doing stuff Intel, themselves couldn't do...make £££ billions in mobile phones...you had your chance, Intel...and you blew it.) When you're iPad has seen a x1000 gpu improvement...I woudln't bet against them squaring up to AMD (who have only recently got off the canvas vs Nv' with RDNA2 pending.)

Nods.* Apple's 1st gpu coming out the gates 'sprinting' is a good way to see this. It doesn't have to be RTX 2080. But if it getsin the 1060Super or RTX2070 and you add that to the co-processor nature of the AS and the ability to software tune it...the experience may 'feel' as fast and fluid across the entire Mac AS 'experience.' In much the way that the A12z gives that potent bang for buck experience for iPad. That marriage of software and hardware gives a great than the sum of its parts experience. Raw power is nice...and you need a bit grunt...but the efficiency and tuning of software is essential.

So, I'm not surprised a dev has said that the DTK (A12z) offers similiar performance to the GTX 1060. Not bad for a two year old chip.

From what I saw of the 2020 demos...of Big Sur and games and PS and Maya on the 'beta' A12z Mac Mini...I'd certainly buy that for £499!!!

Azrael.
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Craig «Hair Force One» Federighi for CEO !

View attachment 933494

Flipping not one but 'TWO' fingers to their current cpu 'partner' (competitor...)

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

Amacfa said:
They ran tomb raider Maxed out, on an iPad chip...

with NO FAN?

And a PERFORMANCE HIT on Rosetta?

WHAT!?😵

The game was not maxed out, far from it. And we don't know if there was a fan, we didn't see the machine they used.
Still, maintaining 30 fps at 1080p on this game is not bad at all for an iGPU. No intel GPU can do that.

From another thread. I kinda liked that...

Azrael.
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Wedbush ups Apple price target to $450 per share; sees first $2 trillion company

Following a price target boost from analysts at Wedbush, Apple shares jumped in early trading Monday, hitting new all-time opening and intraday highs…

macdailynews.com

Azrael.
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MacBook Pro shipments forecast to grow 20% in Q3 - 9to5Mac

Some of Apple's supply-chain sources are expecting MacBook Pro shipments to grow 20% sequentially in the third quarter of this year ...

9to5mac.com

20% growth. Would grow more if they trimmed prices...

Still. A 2021 date quoting Ming for the 1st AS Macs. Macbook and iMac.

With performance estimates of 50-100% greater than current Intel performance.

Imagine that.

A Mac Mini, iMac 24, a 13 Macbook all performing 50-100% faster.

:O

You could run Intel faster than Intel swallowing up emulation... :O:O:O

Azrael.

 

[gusping]

From another thread. I kinda liked that...

Azrael.
[automerge]1594650965[/automerge]

Wedbush ups Apple price target to $450 per share; sees first $2 trillion company

Following a price target boost from analysts at Wedbush, Apple shares jumped in early trading Monday, hitting new all-time opening and intraday highs…

macdailynews.com

Azrael.
[automerge]1594651206[/automerge]

MacBook Pro shipments forecast to grow 20% in Q3 - 9to5Mac

Some of Apple's supply-chain sources are expecting MacBook Pro shipments to grow 20% sequentially in the third quarter of this year ...

9to5mac.com

20% growth. Would grow more if they trimmed prices...

Still. A 2021 date quoting Ming for the 1st AS Macs. Macbook and iMac.

With performance estimates of 50-100% greater than current Intel performance.

Imagine that.

A Mac Mini, iMac 24, a 13 Macbook all performing 50-100% faster.

:O

You could run Intel faster than Intel swallowing up emulation... :O:O:O

Azrael.

It's funny. I've been wanting a Mac mini 'Pro' ever since I got mine (launch of 2018 model). I was expecting it to take the form (if at all) of an Intel CPU and low-mid end AMD GPU.

Looks like Apple will get their first with an AS CPU/GPU combo. What is fascinating, is that the first few AS SoCs seem to be for the 'low-end' MacBooks. I thought the Mac mini would be a good starting point, but that bodes well for those of us wanting a higher end SoC, perhaps...

 

[pldelisle]

It's funny. I've been wanting a Mac mini 'Pro' ever since I got mine (launch of 2018 model). I was expecting it to take the form (if at all) of an Intel CPU and low-mid end AMD GPU.

Looks like Apple will get their first with an AS CPU/GPU combo. What is fascinating, is that the first few AS SoCs seem to be for the 'low-end' MacBooks. I thought the Mac mini would be a good starting point, but that bodes well for those of us wanting a higher end SoC, perhaps...

The Mac mini deserves to be a compute powerhouse. It must have at least the same compute power than an iMac without the built-in display.

 

[xgman]

I thought the Mac mini would be a good starting point

Well technically it already is if you count the developer versions they sent out.

 

[gusping]

The Mac mini deserves to be a compute powerhouse. It must have at least the same compute power than an iMac without the built-in display.

I agree! pldelisle, can you please become the Chief Mac mini Engineer!!!
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Well technically it already is if you count the developer versions they sent out.

Good point! It was the easiest option (and only option?). Tiny box and cheap to produce.

 

[iPadified]

I do not doubt the capability of AS , but I am questioning if a single SoC can replace the performance a 125W CPU plus a 225W GPU in one cost efficient package. The chip must be very large to have all these functions along with all the other AS functions. Large chips cost lots of money. OK, 5 nm process helps as it nearly halves (?) the area of the chip.

Some dirty calculations: If we use a A12Z as multiple, we would need about 8 to get 12 TFLOPS GPU (assume 1.5 TFLOPS/A12Z) and perhaps 23000 multicore score (8* Geekbench score (2900) of the development unit) which would be decent performance. "Decent" as more CPU power than a 28 core xeon and an 5700XT.

That setup would draw about 80W (assuming the power draw scale linear) but be >1000mm2 (8*136mm2) on 7nm, which is huge and not doable at least not payable. 5 nm plus better balance between CPU (which is too much in the example above) and GPU (which is appropriate performance) would lead to a chip of a size of perhaps 300-400 mm2, which is doable and payable. 80W would fit a MBP16 or an iMac Air.
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The Mac mini deserves to be a compute powerhouse. It must have at least the same compute power than an iMac without the built-in display.

There is an excellent Mac Pro mini in the form of the trashcan MP. Cooling like an iMac Pro.

 

[pldelisle]

I agree! pldelisle, can you please become the Chief Mac mini Engineer!!!

It would be a pleasure to kick those engineer’s a*s !

 

[iPadified]

It would be a pleasure to kick those engineer’s a*s !

It not the engineers you need to convince. It is all the management, marketing and design department that are heavy to dance with.

 

[DQ11]

I'm wondering if these chips will allow Aple to get the full power out of them. The Intel's always have to be scaled back because of heating issues in imacs so nobody using an imac has ever got the true power out of the chips....These ARM chips could help that out and that could offset some of the "catching up" that seems like it has to happen.

Are these chips really more powerful than the 2020 i-9?...Or is it that they will be in 1-2 years? I don't understand them enough.

 

[Rbfinch570]

I just don’t think it’s happening this week and who knows if at all for July. There’s really a lack of rumors. I could be wrong. There wasn’t much rumors for the refresh 13” either, just speculation and wrong Nostradamus predictions.

 

[pldelisle]

I'm wondering if these chips will allow Aple to get the full power out of them. The Intel's always have to be scaled back because of heating issues in imacs so nobody using an imac has ever got the true power out of the chips....These ARM chips could help that out and that could offset some of the "catching up" that seems like it has to happen.

Are these chips really more powerful than the 2020 i-9?...Or is it that they will be in 1-2 years? I don't understand them enough.

Apple's been preparing for at least 4 (if not 5) years ago for this switch. No doubt they will successfully fulfill all expectations for the Apple Silicon.