New Mac Pro Announced at WWDC! - It's OFFICIAL!

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

Isn't Thunderbolt v2 20 Gbps or 2.5 GB/s?

THunderbolt 2 unlike 1 has the ability to combine both its channels into one, or combine several T2 connections into one. (The thunderbolt/thunderbolt 2 specs are 2 channels normally one up one down each of the quoted speeds)

 

[Joachim Hoge]

Thanks to Jeff for putting things into perspective here.
This really looks like the Mac replace my 2008 MP.

Its always inspiring and educational to read you post, thanks again

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff, you are pretty much selling me on this Which I don't mind.

Hehe. Although that's not my intention. There seems to be a lot of FUD out there and a lot of it seems to be coming from a lack of understanding about Thunderbolt and what it is capable of.

When it all comes down to it, I think Apple has done something special here. It may not be the system that a lot of us were dreaming of, nor what we all need RIGHT NOW. But I think it is what the industry needs more than anything at the moment -- a different approach to get things moving. The PC world has been in a stagnant funk for a long, long time. Sure, things progress and become faster and more powerful, but no one is innovating in terms of form factors or peripheral design. That's the biggest reason I'm excited for this new system. If the new Mac Pro can do for workstations the same thing the iPhone did for smart phones, then it's a WIN as far as I'm concerned. Even if the end result is Dell, HP, etc.. coming out with something better that proves to be the next big thing.

I've been ripping on workstation vendors for years for many things. One of them being the power supplies. There isn't a PC power supply on the open market these days that isn't a complete pile of shit. Not one with a truly modern component or even one that is entirely solid-state. Looks like Apple had to step in and do it. I don't know about you guys, but I've already moved on from HDD storage as my primary system volume. IMO, HDDs don't belong inside a computer anymore. Wish they would go away, I'm sick of moving parts that ultimately fail. Then there's the whole issue of "we need a card for this and we need this card for that..." Uh, once again, let's move on. A couple more PC generations and we'll be tossing about 4K UHD video clips as if they were audio tracks. No one wants to mess with proprietary hardware and special cards. And that's where we are headed, to a computing paradigm where a single little box has more than enough to do all that we need. I'm buying one Rocket-X with each of my two Dragon upgrades. I have a hunch that as nice as the new Rocket will be, it won't feel anywhere near as necessary as the previous Rocket. Which I also did own two of, now I'm down to just one. Haven't missed the second one since selling it...

It seems that Apple is confirming that GPUs, CPU, etc.. inside the Mac Pro is all upgradeable. Not only that, but it looks like AMD/ATI, Apple and Intel are declaring a new spec for GPU cards here with the hopes for broader adoption. Looks like a different approach to PCIe or bus integration, they're not releasing specifics just yet. Keeping the GPUs modular and separate from the display interface(s). Dumping legacy connectors to streamline and eliminate bloat. Looks like the system incorporates a new addition to the C600 chipset family that rolls Thunderbolt 2 right into the chipset, cuts away integrated support for a lot of old baggage.

Isn't Thunderbolt v2 20 Gbps or 2.5 GB/s?

Yes. But there are two of those 20Gbps pipelines in each Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt 2 also allows channels and even ports to be multiplexed for increased capabilities. Two Thunderbolt 2 ports multiplexed together has about the same throughput as a PCIe v2 X16 slot. Higher latency, of course, but still close to the same bandwidth. Each Thunderbolt 2 port is backed by 4 lanes of PCIe v3 at 985MB/s per lane. That's 3.9GB/s and real-world throughput is closer to 3.5GB/s, plus some overhead for the Thunderbolt host and whatnot. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 3GB/s+ out of a TB2 port.

The real trick to all this is what devices will actually come to the table. The unfortunate side of this is that very few users, and even fewer devices, are going to need any of those multiplexing abilities or huge bandwidth. So I fear that we may not see some of these faster expansion chassis or mega-speed storage options that are possible. If we do, they will likely be niche products and rather expensive. Time will tell.

 

[Dustin Cross]

Transcoding is so 2009....

You guys do realize most shows use Avid and all of them want everything transcoded to DNxHD36. Plus everyone wants graded dailies transcoded to H.264 or similar. Transcoding is 100% TODAY and will be tomorrow as well. Especially since we have more 4K and Raw cameras, that need to be transcoded for most people to use the footage.

You guys are in some kind of fantasy land.

Sure there are ways to work with footage without transcoding and they are becoming better, but that is NOT the way the vast majority of the industry works.



Dusty

 

[michael zaletel]

The real trick to all this is what devices will actually come to the table. The unfortunate side of this is that very few users, and even fewer devices, are going to need any of those multiplexing abilities or huge bandwidth. So I fear that we may not see some of these faster expansion chassis or mega-speed storage options that are possible. If we do, they will likely be niche products and rather expensive. Time will tell.

That's my biggest concern too Jeff. Once you provide this much power out of the box, it's hard to get a big enough market willing to pay for the economies of scale required to support expansion options. Like you said, the Red Rocket itself may not even be necessary after another generation or two of the new Mac Pro and related CPU's and GPU's. Some users on here don't realize how infinitesimally small their niche is yet they expect a $100 Billion company to accommodate it.

 

[Scott Crawley]

I think you are missing the context here. We are discussing raw computing power and looking forward to the day when our workstations will be able to work with RAW files of 5k or more without the need to transcode.

I don't think Jeff was commenting on the current state of the common workflow, though I don't doubt that his own preferred method does not involve transcoding for editorial. I'm pretty sure he was being cheeky.

You guys do realize most shows use Avid and all of them want everything transcoded to DNxHD36. Plus everyone wants graded dailies transcoded to H.264 or similar. Transcoding is 100% TODAY and will be tomorrow as well. Especially since we have more 4K and Raw cameras, that need to be transcoded for most people to use the footage.

You guys are in some kind of fantasy land.

Sure there are ways to work with footage without transcoding and they are becoming better, but that is NOT the way the vast majority of the industry works.



Dusty

 

[M Most]

You guys do realize most shows use Avid and all of them want everything transcoded to DNxHD36. Plus everyone wants graded dailies transcoded to H.264 or similar. Transcoding is 100% TODAY and will be tomorrow as well. Especially since we have more 4K and Raw cameras, that need to be transcoded for most people to use the footage.

You guys are in some kind of fantasy land.

Sure there are ways to work with footage without transcoding and they are becoming better, but that is NOT the way the vast majority of the industry works.

They're not in fantasy land, they're just in a different segment of the industry than you or I. They're in the segment of quick turnaround, much lower data volume, and to a great degree, much lower budgeted productions. Think individual projects, some "indie" very low budget productions, documentaries, local (and sometimes non-local) commercial spots, promos, and many other types of things. You might want to refer to all of this as the "one man band, individual entrepreneur, personal project" segment, but in reality, it's not really limited to that. Not everything is a studio level entertainment show, you know (as has been pointed out to me here and elsewhere many, many times......)..

 

[Bruce Allen]

And that's where we are headed, to a computing paradigm where a single little box has more than enough to do all that we need.

I think you should change "we" to "the average REDUSER".

For folks doing VFX... we're going to need a gigantic compute cloud. Plus extremely powerful GPUs - far more than this v1 Mac Pro has.

...unless everyone wants their VFX delivered at 2K for the forseeable future?

And we know how much REDUSERs loooove 2K

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Dave Blackham]

THunderbolt 2 unlike 1 has the ability to combine both its channels into one, or combine several T2 connections into one. (The thunderbolt/thunderbolt 2 specs are 2 channels normally one up one down each of the quoted speeds)

If this is possible is it also possible to use say 2 or more Thunderbolt connections to combine more channels in to a fast link say 4 or 6 channels which may be able to use all lanes in the RC-X card with out any contention. Im thinking using the new Mac Pro which appears to offer 6 discrete TB2 connectors.

 

[Scott Crawley]

A recent article suggested between 20-30Mb/s. That's megabits so maybe 3MB/sec. No brainer.

That's less than Standard Def FireWire in the 90s. We've come a long way!

:driving:

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I think you should change "we" to "the average REDUSER".

Is there such a thing as an "average REDUSER"? I'm not even sure what that would be...

For folks doing VFX... we're going to need a gigantic compute cloud. Plus extremely powerful GPUs - far more than this v1 Mac Pro has.

I do lots of VFX and animation work. I'm not working on feature films, but I'm working on games and other types of productions. I was technical director for all the animation produced, cut-scenes, etc.. for an upcoming PS4 game. All created and mastered in 4K. Tons of fluid and particle simulations, rigid and soft body dynamics. Workstations used were 12-core Westmere Xeons with 48GB RAM. We used a mixture of Xeon systems, including some dual E5-2687W SuperMicro builds toward the end to round out our render farm.

IMO, cloud is a 4-letter word. Unless you're speaking of cloud as in localized compute cluster, you're just jerking off. With a remote location cloud setup, no amount of compute power on the back end is going to compensate for the transaction times, lest you fork over the whole job in its entirety and probably on a transportable RAID, not IP delivery.

...unless everyone wants their VFX delivered at 2K for the forseeable future?

I haven't finished anything in less than 4K / UHD for nearly a year now and don't plan on doing it again. Didn't we have all these same discussions with the move to 1080p? I know I did...

Bruce, I know the Mac Pro doesn't fit your perceived or anticipated needs coming up here. It doesn't meet all of my requirements for a glorious do-it-all workstation either. I'm not really sure what you're getting at here though... Sure, Apple could have built a super monster workstation with 48 cores across quad CPUs and support for 1TB of RAM, 10 PCIe v3 slots, and integrated ATTO, LSI or ARECA 12Gbps SAS RAID-6 and whatever else they could have crammed in there that's arriving within the next few months. But they didn't. No way they ever would, that is not Apple. This new Mac Pro is very much what Apple is about. Starting right up front with the streamlined power profile and solid state power supply all integrated.

Even if Apple were to create that monstrosity I just outlined, it still wouldn't be the end-all, be-all workstation. It still wouldn't solve current VFX bottlenecks. And eventually all the computing power we can currently cram into 2 or 3 racks full of the upcoming Xeon CPUs will be able to fit on someone's desktop. And eventually a rack full of those will fit on someone's desktop and so on... And by that time, we'll all be whining over something else and VFX artists will have new problems, new needs, new things to complain about. We won't be worrying about 4K distribution to a 2D panel, we'll be tracking high resolution spatial projections and delivering content to something like the Star Trek Holodeck...

I still stand by what I said earlier. This new Mac Pro is Apple's way of pushing the industry or giving them a nudge in a certain direction. Something Apple has done quite successfully with the past several product shake-ups they have launched. And I tip my hat to them for that. When the new Mac Pro arrives, I'll order one. Probably just one unless my needs change. Then I'll go from there. It won't be my only system, far from it. Nor do I expect it to fill all my needs. It might fit all the needs of some people... At my desk right now, I have a Z820, a tower I assembled that's near identical to the Z820, a 2010~now Mac Pro and a 2011 iMac. Every single one of them is doing something. Both of the Windows systems are rendering. The Mac Pro is working through a particle simulation, I'm typing this on the iMac and it is laying off backups of one of the RAIDs to LTO...

 

[Paul Harb]

Sigh

Sigh

Transcoding is so 2009... It's what people who are still using FCP7 do.

:blink:
:badputer:

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Transcoding is so 2009... It's what people who are still using FCP7 do.

:blink:
:badputer:

Haha..

Don't get me wrong, I really like FCP7 myself. But nothing lasts forever.

 

[Justin Quinn]

The upcoming Rocket-X will be faster than what Thunderbolt 2 can offer. However, I don't think it will be a problem. Even at Thunderbolt 2 speeds, there is still enough bandwidth for the new Rocket to feed data back to the system at over 3GB/s, yes that is 3000 megaBYTES per second.

Hey Jeff,

I'm confused...

Is there some official spec/benchmark sheet regarding the RRX? All I know of is that Red announced that it would be 5x faster than the current version, but I haven't seen an actual specs of benchmarks. I'd be pleasantly surprised if real world performance actually reached that capacity.

I mean, the current RR can't saturate Thundrebolt 1.0, so how could a 5x faster RRX saturate a TB 2.0 connection?

If so, then what is the processing power of the new RRX?


jq

 

[Peter Majtan]

I think we also need to clarify the "WE"...

Last time I've checked this was REDUSER. RED does not make VFX SW/HW, nor does it make scientific SW/HW. RED makes digital cinema camera and related accessories, HW and SW. If we need to broaden discussions here to accommodate ALL possible uses of the new Mac Pro (or any other piece of HW/SW), this place would quickly get out of control...

So I think it is more then fair enough that we "narrow" the discussions here to the topic's relation to RED and RED's ecosystem.
The was majority of peeps here either own RED camera(s) or frequently work with them. Looking at your profile, website and comments Bruce - the POV you are pushing here has nothing to do with RED. No offense. If VFX implications is your main concern - there are far more appropriate forums to go and went your frustration...

So yes "WE" here usually mean the average RED user (hence the name of the forum). Our workflows evolve around basis imaging pipeline for the RAW R3D data, which for the most part includes data management on location (and through out the post process), previewing, editing, grading, transcoding, compositing, etc... 3D animation and VFX are 99% of the time outsourced to specialist companies. And yes - both 3D and VFX are part of the greater picture, but so is audio and other related disciplines. You don't see audio guys discussing here how the new Mac Pro sucks for ProTools. Nor you see the medical or scientific communities (other major Apple markets), or the CAD folks doing that here. They do that on their specific forums...

It is my personal opinion that as far as REDUSER is concerned, the new Mac Pro is an answer to prayers for most folks here. Certainly those who work with RED HW and SW. Yes, there are still many questions to be answered and real-world testing to be done once the "box" is out. The other closely related area is color correction, but even those issues seems to be addressed with the feedback from BMD and other HW/SW makers...

So lets keep this REDUSER and on topic...

:sifone: Peter

 

[Peter Majtan]

Hey Jeff,

I'm confused...

Is there some official spec/benchmark sheet regarding the RRX? All I know of is that Red announced that it would be 5x faster than the current version, but I haven't seen an actual specs of benchmarks. I'd be pleasantly surprised if real world performance actually reached that capacity.

I mean, the current RR can't saturate Thundrebolt 1.0, so how could a 5x faster RRX saturate a TB 2.0 connection?

If so, then what is the processing power of the new RRX?


jq

Justin, ironically that is precisely the point Jeff is trying to make. That it is premature to be worried about the use of RRX over TB2 - which seems to be the no.1 concern of folks in here...

:sifone: Peter

 

[Bruce Allen]

I think we also need to clarify the "WE"...

Last time I've checked this was REDUSER. RED does not make VFX SW/HW, nor does it make scientific SW/HW. RED makes digital cinema camera and related accessories, HW and SW. If we need to broaden discussions here to accommodate ALL possible uses of the new Mac Pro (or any other piece of HW/SW), this place would quickly get out of control...

So I think it is more then fair enough that we "narrow" the discussions here to the topic's relation to RED and RED's ecosystem.
The was majority of peeps here either own RED camera(s) or frequently work with them. Looking at your profile, website and comments Bruce - the POV you are pushing here has nothing to do with RED. No offense. If VFX implications is your main concern - there are far more appropriate forums to go and went your frustration...

So yes "WE" here usually mean the average RED user (hence the name of the forum). Our workflows evolve around basis imaging pipeline for the RAW R3D data, which for the most part includes data management on location (and through out the post process), previewing, editing, grading, transcoding, compositing, etc... 3D animation and VFX are 99% of the time outsourced to specialist companies. And yes - both 3D and VFX are part of the greater picture, but so is audio and other related disciplines. You don't see audio guys discussing here how the new Mac Pro sucks for ProTools. Nor you see the medical or scientific communities (other major Apple markets), or the CAD folks doing that here. They do that on their specific forums...

It is my personal opinion that as far as REDUSER is concerned, the new Mac Pro is an answer to prayers for most folks here. Certainly those who work with RED HW and SW. Yes, there are still many questions to be answered and real-world testing to be done once the "box" is out. The other closely related area is color correction, but even those issues seems to be addressed with the feedback from BMD and other HW/SW makers...

So lets keep this REDUSER and on topic...

:sifone: Peter

OK. Cool.

Some of us are interested in 48fps 4K stereo though... or 60fps 4K.

60fps 4K would be a pretty good way to show off Dragon, IMHO.

Are you sure that Mac Pro's GPUs will handle that in realtime once you start sticking a bunch of nodes on in Resolve... and some NR... and some tone mapping?

That's why I think it is not unreasonable to hope that those GPUs on that Mac Pro are upgradeable and I hope that they don't cost an unreasonable amount to upgrade.

And it is not unreasonable to ask why they couldn't have put a couple of PCIe slots in there.

Agree?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Brian Merlen]

Lots of Red workflows involve CUDA... Hopefully more will move towards AMD based workflows because of this...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Bruce, I see your points loud and clear, but I think your examples are blown out of proportion. When you mention NR, I hope you're not talking about NR in Resolve. Who uses that anyway?

60fps 4K is somewhat arbitrary, don't you think? I'd like to think I could handle that now in some capacity on my current systems, but I don't have a monitor that can display it. Well, I had the Sharp PN-K321, but it was a turd so I sent it back. Then when you start adding nodes in Resolve, that's fine and dandy, but which nodes? Color nodes take almost zero processing to apply, blur nodes and NR are quite demanding.

One thing you have made abundantly clear though is that you obviously prefer the brute-force approach to most of your computing problems. Hehe... I used to be the same way, but then I got over it. You see, there will never ever be enough computing power or a big enough workstation for me to tackle what I want to do head on via brute force. Gotta find better ways. And like I said earlier, upgrading GPUs is usually a poor financial move as the benefits gained with each generation have historically been quite minimal. Unless they can start making these GPU cards in the new Mac Pro for super cheap, like cheaper than the crappy ones available on the discount shelf at your local PC shop, it just isn't going to make sense unless you have a sugar momma or someone else writing the check. The odds of me upgrading a GPU in this first generation New Mac Pro R2D2 trash-can edition??? I would say, absolutely zero. In fact, I figure I'll buy the thing, ROI it in about 8 months and then assign it to some other menial task when I buy the next version. The next version should have newer and better GPUs, more storage and will have HDMI 2.0 and some bug fixes.

As for RED workflow... I bet it will handle just fine. My current lesser-spec'd systems all do just fine. Granted, we don't have 6K Dragon yet, but that doesn't worry me so much. My biggest concern is that the software will be ready when I need it. The hardware usually takes care of itself and is lightyears ahead of the software most of the time anyway.

I'm sure this Mac Pro will beat out my current champ of a system. My SuperMicro based dual E5-2687W 16-core box with a 6% overclock and RAM clocked to 1866MHz. Nice system, but a bit quirky. Stable enough that it's my Resolve station. I have dual GTX690's in the thing and have actually played with other configs and have had more GPUs in there at times for testing. GPUs are not my bottleneck. The new Mac Pro my have a bottleneck for some tasks with the dual ATI cards in contrast to a monster PC build with 3 or 4 current GPUs, but now we're comparing apples with entirely different fruit.. Sometimes an Apple just needs to be an Apple and that's that. If I'd rather have a banana or an orange, I'll get one of those instead.

Other than GPUs, the only other PCIe cards I'm using in any of my systems currently are ATTO and ARECA SAS controllers, Red Rocket cards (was two of them, now I just have one), a Kona 3G and a BMD DeckLink HD Extreme 3D. Hmmm... All of those work just fine via Thunderbolt, even the Rocket which is a bit bandwidth limited. The AJA and BMD solutions already have Thunderbolt versions of those units so we can ditch the PCIe card altogether. Oh, oops, I have a couple 10G Ethernet adapters in a couple systems... I guess I don't see where the fire's at... I'd be grumbling if I really cared about my 32TB RAID moving over, but it's going to stay where it's at on the system it's attached to. By the time that system retires, the RAID is going to retire too. My smaller RAIDs are less significant and I'm having great luck with my Thunderbolt storage.


So yeah, I hear you in regards to the GPUs. But as always with Apple systems, if you need superior GPU power, you just have to look elsewhere. Nothing new here. I'm thankful they're actually giving us dual GPUs as a stock configuration. And not just for the purpose of attaching more displays -- actually for serious work. This is a big step for Apple. Most users, regardless of industry, are not going to miss the PCIe slots. Or at least not anywhere near as much as they think they will. People who will feel it most are those who are planning to replace a current Mac Pro with this new one, keeping existing hardware inside it or attached to it, instead of brining in the new one as its own entity and building from there.

 

[Mike Garrick]

You guys do realize most shows use Avid and all of them want everything transcoded to DNxHD36. Plus everyone wants graded dailies transcoded to H.264 or similar. Transcoding is 100% TODAY and will be tomorrow as well. Especially since we have more 4K and Raw cameras, that need to be transcoded for most people to use the footage.

You guys are in some kind of fantasy land.

Sure there are ways to work with footage without transcoding and they are becoming better, but that is NOT the way the vast majority of the industry works.



Dusty

Dusty all the above quote proves is just how little development on this front Avid has done. Dont get me wrong Avid is the standard for many , including some of my projects. But the whole transcoding for "Avid to play nice" sooner or later will change. I just wish it was sooner rather than later & maybe that accounts for why Avid is in financial difficulty at the moment.

Anyway back to the Mac Pro...... @ Jeff you make this thing sound far more versatile than 1st thought.......my only concern is the the equation in Apple land the smaller the tech the bigger the price.