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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

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

Ah, well you probably got yours from Sumitomo USA then. From what I see on their website, they are apparently now offering them as BTO from Japan. Sneaky, but once Corning rolls out their cables, they will probably stop selling them since Corning's cables should be pretty inexpensive by comparison.
 
Hopefully they will be cheaper. I chalked up the high price to the whole early adopter and low demand sort of thing. It seems I found them on Amazon Japan and some other Japanese web stores. Actually they look to be rather commonly available in Japan, if you don't mind the high price. The currency conversion puts the 20m cable from Amazon at about double what I paid for it. Wow. Doesn't seem right. The optical encoder/decoder units on each ends of the cables make them about double the size of the ends on the copper cables. Same height and width, but longer. I guess Intel makes those components, so it's really up to optical fiber manufacturers to make the cables and incorporate them. That's the story I got, hopefully we'll see a bunch from Corning. The optical cables don't transmit power, obviously, but other than small HDDs or SSD units, that's a non-issue.
 
Mike Halper said:
My understanding is the max lanes on any processor now is 40. Add up to 8 lanes for the TB chipset and you get 48, but that's still 8 shy of the 56+ that are really necessary to get the full potential out of the hardware that's there.
Click to expand...

That is not how Thunderbolt works, it uses PCIe lanes from the CPU. Anand from Anandtech suggests ("bets") the new Mac Pro would run the 2 GPUs at 8x (PCIe 3.0) and dedicate the rest to Thunderbolt (Source: https://twitter.com/anandshimpi/status/348582181960044545). Of course it is far too early, let's see how this is handled. As far as I know there are 40 PCIe 3.0 (80 effective PCIe 2.0) and 4 PCIe 2.0 in Ivy Bridge-EP.

As for choosing a single socket configuration, I am pretty certain it was to hit a certain size footprint. A dual socket configuration would simply make the chassis much larger, requiring much heftier cooling. It is a trade-off like any other, which would make sense for some, not for others.
 
Already been discussed. But they actually show a significant improvement, not just a small tick up. Not sure what people are expecting overall. Assuming the numbers are accurate, and I do have my doubts, they seem to be right in line with where they should be. Compared to the Westmere core Xeons, we should be knocking at the door of a 20% boost in computational performance and 25% in memory I/O with about a 22% composite. That's assuming other things being equal -- number of cores and clock speed. The comparison is showing roughly a 9% score increase with the supposed new tower over the previous generation config with 12 cores that is clocked 12% faster. Or a composite of about 19% improvement over the comparable 2010~current 2.67GHz 12-core system. Hmmm...

I'm willing to bet these benchmarks are bogus. But that's just me. If they are indeed real, then I would say the numbers are encouraging. Especially since it's pre-production hardware running a beta OS and showing a nearly 20% increase over a similarly clocked Westmere generation with the same number of cores.

Apple skipped the last Xeon iteration. Turns out it was a smart move on their part. I always thought they had their reasons and probably good ones for skipping. Totally makes sense in retrospect. Prior generation offered little to nothing over the Westmere CPUs that came before. Sure, there were 8 cores per CPU for 16 cores / 32 threads in a dual CPU system, but that came at a significant price premium and the performance per clock per dollar was just not there to be had. Going to be interesting to see how these new Ivy Bridge Xeon EP's work out. Looks encouraging so far...
 
If they gave us a Sandybridge model two years ago, wouldn't those chipsets be compatible with Ivybrigde Xeons? Meaning we would be able to drop in the upcoming Ivy Xeons when they are released?
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
If they gave us a Sandybridge model two years ago, wouldn't those chipsets be compatible with Ivybrigde Xeons? Meaning we would be able to drop in the upcoming Ivy Xeons when they are released?
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I'm clueless about any of that, but when has Apple EVER made CPU upgrade an option for a Macintosh?
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
With the E5-2600 V2 CPUs, we get 40 lanes of PCIe v3 plus a PCIe v2 host, I'm not sure without a spec sheet in front of me how many lanes are accounted for there with v2 . We don't know how Apple is dividing up lanes in the new Mac Pro. I'm going to assume that each GPU gets 16 lanes of v3. So that leaves 8 there. I believe there's 24 lanes of PCIe v2, but there may be more, I don't recall. I want to say there's enough bandwidth to support everything on the system. Thunderbolt 2 is based on PCIe v2 in terms of its own topology and signaling. Each Thunderbolt 2 port can be backed by either 4 lanes of PCIe v3 or 8 lanes of v2.

The difference between Thunderbolt 1 and Thunderbolt 2 is that v2 has 4 x 10Gbps channels instead of just two. We will need new cables and new devices to take advantage of it. It's not 100% clear, but it seems that when connecting TB1 devices (including displays) that TB2 ports go into 10Gbps per channel mode. I don't know how that plays into TB2 device use and it may be wise to keep TB2 devices on certain ports and keep all TB1 devices on different ports. That said, when operating in TB2 mode, one of the 20Gbps channels is dedicated to the video stream, uni-directional. All other data must pass over the other 20Gbps channel, same as in TB1, just double the bandwidth. In TB1, you connect a display and your TB port now only has one 10Gbps channel to work with.
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Thanks Jeff. That clears up some things and makes me look at the new Mac Pro a little more positively. I'm going wait until it's released and I see some real world feedback about it. I'll be looking at either new Mac Pro or my first Hackintosh (and still leaning toward Hackintosh). My guess at this point is that the same money that would be spent on a new Mac Pro and all the Thunderbolt expansion chassis to get cards running on their own ports for better performance would buy more overall performance from a Hackintosh. But we will see.


Subhadip Sen said:
That is not how Thunderbolt works, it uses PCIe lanes from the CPU. Anand from Anandtech suggests ("bets") the new Mac Pro would run the 2 GPUs at 8x (PCIe 3.0) and dedicate the rest to Thunderbolt (Source: https://twitter.com/anandshimpi/status/348582181960044545). Of course it is far too early, let's see how this is handled. As far as I know there are 40 PCIe 3.0 (80 effective PCIe 2.0) and 4 PCIe 2.0 in Ivy Bridge-EP.

As for choosing a single socket configuration, I am pretty certain it was to hit a certain size footprint. A dual socket configuration would simply make the chassis much larger, requiring much heftier cooling. It is a trade-off like any other, which would make sense for some, not for others.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying. I was told by someone that the Thunderbolt chipset actually added lanes. It looks like that person was wrong.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Already been discussed. But they actually show a significant improvement, not just a small tick up. Not sure what people are expecting overall. Assuming the numbers are accurate, and I do have my doubts, they seem to be right in line with where they should be. Compared to the Westmere core Xeons, we should be knocking at the door of a 20% boost in computational performance and 25% in memory I/O with about a 22% composite. That's assuming other things being equal -- number of cores and clock speed. The comparison is showing roughly a 9% score increase with the supposed new tower over the previous generation config with 12 cores that is clocked 12% faster. Or a composite of about 19% improvement over the comparable 2010~current 2.67GHz 12-core system. Hmmm... ..
Click to expand...

Disagree. The new mac is based off of the Z87 ( Itx flavor ) platform with a 1150 socket, and while you do have a perceived increase in I/O, they are also sharing many lanes between their own implementation of thunderbolt and the limited PCI-E as well as a connector loss through the flex cables connecting the circle together. That is why this benchmark likely is accurate, as it shows the limitations of running a Xeon chip on the non-server haswell platform. The big boy processors Intel will be releasing shortly after the mac comes out will be socket 2011 based ( or a new socket ) that will keep a cap on these processors.

And then you need to remember the competition. We are comparing this new system to 3 year old mac towers. PC's will be in a position around the same time to have multiple sockets, up to 4 x 15 cores, as well as a ton of real PCI-E slots for expansion so you can actually take advantage of that 40G bandwidth.

I am not knocking apple here. It is great that you can now buy a tower 1/8th the size of the old tower and still have the same performance. But when you start sacrificing performance for size, you might as well just buy a imac or mac mini and get on with it, and truth is, 90% of users probably wont ever tell the difference.
 
Scott Crawley said:
I'm clueless about any of that, but when has Apple EVER made CPU upgrade an option for a Macintosh?
Click to expand...

Yep. I took out the two dual core Xeons from my 2006 MacPro and replaced them with Quad core Xeons and effectively doubled the power of my machine. Cuts 1/4 res r3d in Premiere just fine still. I'm sure the current 2012 MacPro will do me fine for quite some time. Maybe in a few years they add a second CPU model and make these viable for the things we do.
 
marty walters said:
Disagree. The new mac is based off of the Z87 ( Itx flavor ) platform with a 1150 socket, and while you do have a perceived increase in I/O, they are also sharing many lanes between their own implementation of thunderbolt and the limited PCI-E as well as a connector loss through the flex cables connecting the circle together. That is why this benchmark likely is accurate, as it shows the limitations of running a Xeon chip on the non-server haswell platform. The big boy processors Intel will be releasing shortly after the mac comes out will be socket 2011 based ( or a new socket ) that will keep a cap on these processors.
Click to expand...

Where are you coming up with this? Z87 and ITX??? Dude...

Apple has already stated they're using Ivy Bridge Xeon EP. And both the ones demoed and reviewed by Pixar as well as the ones shown at WWDC were all LGA-2011 socket based, rocking 12-core E5-2697 V2 and 35-2695 V2 CPUs. There is no Haswell anything in the boxes shown publicly thus far. Haswell Xeons or the new LGA-1150 chips don't offer 12 cores or a host of other features that have already been confirmed and they only come as part of the E3 line. It's possible they may offer a lower LGA-1150 configuration, that would even be a compelling option for those not looking for a more expensive 12-core box. Would be a great option for those who need a desktop class CPU and more connectivity than a Mac Mini.

As for the rest of your post, I think you're missing the point of this system and why it may exist. It's obvious it's not a system that fits your needs, whatever those needs may be.


Jarek Zabczynski said:
Yep. I took out the two dual core Xeons from my 2006 MacPro and replaced them with Quad core Xeons and effectively doubled the power of my machine. Cuts 1/4 res r3d in Premiere just fine still. I'm sure the current 2012 MacPro will do me fine for quite some time. Maybe in a few years they add a second CPU model and make these viable for the things we do.
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Yep, not a big deal. Of course, you have to stick with CPUs that are compliant with the chipset and other innards in your generation of Mac. It's quite feasible to upgrade a Mac Pro to faster CPUs that the architecture supports now that most of the older Xeon CPUs have plummeted in price. Depending on what you have currently, it may or may not be worth it, but the option is there. If you have a single CPU Mac Pro, you can drop in a second CPU. However, it's a real pain to get a proper heatsink for the CPU and RAM card to go with it. Apple Parts doesn't stock any of the components for older systems and oddly enough there are not too many dead Mac Pro systems out there to cannibalize for parts.
 
Man this thread is still going . 54 Thousand viewings so far . One thing this thread proves is the level ( or lack Hah! ) of interest in this machine. It is difficult to see a new PC, on Reduser anyway, generating this level of discussion.
 
The new MacPro would be perfect with ability to run a Red Rocket X without limits, and with a dual CPU option. Storage, rocket and other TB shit can be placed in the sever room with a nice optic TB cable.

I keep my fingers crossed...
 
Mike Garrick said:
Man this thread is still going . 54 Thousand viewings so far . One thing this thread proves is the level ( or lack Hah! ) of interest in this machine. It is difficult to see a new PC, on Reduser anyway, generating this level of discussion.
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It is a big thread! I'm more amazed by how much Jeff knows about hardware. His posts in this thread alone should be a Wikipedia entry on the 2013 Mac Pro and perhaps 2013 personal computing hardware!
 
michael zaletel said:
It is a big thread! I'm more amazed by how much Jeff knows about hardware. His posts in this thread alone should be a Wikipedia entry on the 2013 Mac Pro and perhaps 2013 personal computing hardware!
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Right?. What a geek! ;-)

He needs a merit badge. http://www.nerdmeritbadges.com doesn't have one that is conveys the magnitude of his achievement. Someone here should design one.
 
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Mike Garrick said:
Man this thread is still going . 54 Thousand viewings so far . One thing this thread proves is the level ( or lack Hah! ) of interest in this machine. It is difficult to see a new PC, on Reduser anyway, generating this level of discussion.
Click to expand...

I'm a PC guy but there's no denying that for Media MAC's have a long history of providing a better production environment. I suspect my 16 core fermi Z820 (7 months old) would give the new mac's a run for their money performance wise... but you give up some things staying in the windows world (prores for one). Besides that... a PC like the Z820 will never be sexy... it's a big powerful truck... gets the job done but not elegantly. There's some debate regarding the new pro form factor... but I think it's fantastic - especially the thermal design which may result in a system that doesn't sound like a jet engine when it's under load (coughZ820cough) even if it sort of looks like one.
 
Maybe I'm not understanding something with the Thunderbolt 2 ports. There are six ports, but I feel like I distinctly remember them saying in the keynote that they're backed by three Thunderbolt 2 chipsets. Wouldn't that mean 12 lanes are backing the ports, not 24? Meaning you can't have all six ports simultaneously receiving full TB2 bandwidth? I mean, I'm not saying it isn't still a lot of bandwidth to go around - but in people's dreams for a multiplexing GPU/Rocket-X enclosure, that would mean x8 of PCI-E 3.0 from two ports, but only leaving two empty ports that wouldn't share bandwidth with the above two, not four.

It's possible I've misunderstood something, hence my confusion.
 
Mike Garrick said:
Man this thread is still going . 54 Thousand viewings so far . One thing this thread proves is the level ( or lack Hah! ) of interest in this machine. It is difficult to see a new PC, on Reduser anyway, generating this level of discussion.
Click to expand...

The HP Z820 workstation generated as much interest in terms of attention, but not as much debate. The reason is simple: The Z820 is exactly the stuff we know, just moreso. Anyone that has The Best From Last Year looks at it and can say "Yep, that's the same. Just more. Awesome." There isn't much to debate about it. Aside from Windows VS Mac. But everyone is sick of that debate.

The new MacPro, on the other hand, is very different from what we know. Some embrace it, some are willing to try, some are recoiling because it doesn't match what they know. There are some knowns, but there are more unknowns, and that fuels the discussion.

I'm not saying the Mac Pro is better than the Z820; I'm a diehard mac fan and I would love a Z820. Just pointing out why one spawned more pages than the other.


Also, I've been tempted to make "Kilgroe Fixed It" decals in the Kilroy Was Here format, and give them out if I ever make it out to a Red Meetup at NAB or the like.
 
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