new Mac Pros

[L. Langer]

Jeff, from an engineering perspective, are the new CPUs something that could be pretty much just dropped in and then you're good? Meaning, can Apple design everything else and just be waiting on the CPU? Or do decisions have to be made with the CPU in hand to make sure everything checks out. I can't imagine wanting to go to market without doing significant testing on a product like this, but I'm also not well versed in the computer engineering workflow.

That's usually the case, except when they make it known far in advance that they are moving to something new. Intel would not likely make radical changes in this slumping hardware market. They depend heavily on drop-in CPU upgrades for servers, workstations, and performance desktops. In the next few years, Intel is betting heavily on their Xeon Phi platform to supply the computing muscle of the future, so I think we may see something there on the Apple side since they invested heavily in OpenCL development and have made it mandatory for their ecosystem.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If Apple were going to release something based on the current Xeon platform, why have they not done so? It's been officially shipping from HP and other vendors for 10 months now. Not to mention the lead-up time and testing before that. I know people who saw Mac Pro prototypes based on the current Xeon platform, as they are always prototyping lots of things. None of that ever saw the light of day. The upcoming Xeons will drop into Socket R LGA-2011 motherboards with C60x series chipsets. However, full support for them is still up to each motherboard or system vendor to implement via BIOS or potentially other hardware changes. There are already a lot of questions about power consumption and concerns over many boards having proper VRMs and power support to handle the upcoming chips. I would not buy a dual Xeon board today thinking that there's a 100% guaranty I can install the next version of the Xeon CPUs on it. The upcoming chips *should* consume a lot leas power and run cooler, possibly even require smaller heatsink surface areas as they get a die shrink from 32nm to 22nm. This also means higher clock speeds. Engineering samples have been circulating.

There are rumors going around about new entries to the chipset line up that will offer some augmented features, possibly even Thunderbolt support. If the chipsets fail to deliver on that front, we'll still get Thunderbolt with the next Mac Pro, I'm 99.99% sure of that. While Intel hasn't yet released a chipset that incorporates it, Thunderbolt can be added to a system on the PCIe 2.0 interface -- just as Apple originally added it to the 2011 iMac and Macbook Pro systems, which had no direct support for it in their chipsets.

Apple is not stupid. Not only that, but they communicate very well with Intel... They probably know more than just about anyone else what is happening at Intel with upcoming CPUs and related products. The Xeon Phi is about to make a big splash. In terms of power it should be comparable to a Tesla K20X card, but will launch at less than half the price. It is also far more versatile in that it can run OpenCL code, but also be compiled for X86 instructions as well.

Many of us are assuming that the future Mac Pro will be based on the Xeon E5 platform, specifically the upcoming Ivy Bridge iteration. That could be flat out wrong! What if Apple releases a streamlined tower design that is more modern and compact? Something based perhaps on the Xeon E3 platform and designed to leverage the Xeon Phi???


It's possible that this report of new Mac Pros is valid, but I'm very, very skeptical. I'm betting, if it happens at all, it's an update to allow more of the current units to be shipped to the EU.

There is also a possibility that Intel will indeed release the updated Ivy Bridge Xeon E5 V2's when they said they would. Which means the last couple leaked roadmaps could be bogus. A move they have pulled before. In short, we really don't know for sure what's going to happen.

 

[robert sala]

the EU commotion around the PSU is bogus. Europe is not getting the new iMacs but might get the powermacs first. There must have been new designs ready for spring 2013, so when the news of Intel delays came the decision was purely marketing: do we release the new powermac on time with the current processors and then an upgrade or wait still more. Given the FcpX damage Apple could not simply wait further to lose the remaining faithful pro users. The nextmacpro with the latest top GPUs, CL/cuda compatibility, Tesla/Phi support , delivered now, turns out to be more important than waiting for the new crop of Xeons with thunderbolt. A further wait till spring 2014 effectively might mean all the remaining faithful leaving for PC platforms with Adobe , Scratch and such.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Considering this rumour comes from EU, it might just be the same model modified for compliance with the new regulations.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Jeff, I guess the question is how serious is Apple in pursuing the tower-based desktop computer? They have spoke about a post PC world, indicating they see themselves in the mobile space for the most part, with the iMac perhaps being as close as they want to get to a desktop computer. I'm finding it very tough to predict their path, because on the one hand they have given hope to a new Mac Pro but on the other hand they seem intent on killing it. I suppose a hybrid design of some sort could allow them to deliver the power professionals need while keeping the form factor smaller. But there are so many questions as to what that may entail. Oh to know what is happening behind closed doors over there in Cupertino.

 

[Thomas Koch]

As long as I get 40+ PCIe lanes I'll be happy. Oh, and thunderbolt.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Just looked into the Xeon Phi a little bit. It's a MIC (Many Integrated Core) on a PCIe card? For . . . what purpose specifically? Is it supposed to replace a Graphics card?

If you've got a Xeon Multicore processor and a Xeon Phi acting as a GPU (even though it's not exactly a GPU; it's a more versatile set of processors), wouldn't that not work properly with the Mercury Playback Engine of Adobe and other similar engines?

I see the power of MICs clearly, but didn't realize that they were intended as secondary processing, rather than primary.

This is one of those moments where I just learned 10x as much as I knew, and now have 100x as many questions. >_<

 

[Shane Daly DP]

not holding my breath on this one either. i get the feeling i'd get all worked up to only to see an existing mac pro with an EU-compliant power supply be released.

which, of course, is exactly what we've all been waiting for.

why you gotta treat us this way, mac pro? for years we've defended our relationship with you while all our friends told us to be with a PC.

"that girl's a gold-digger" they'd say.

"sure she's pretty, but she's stupid".

we knew better. we've loved you all along. despite having to buy you proprietary and marked-up things because the accessories 'those PC girls' use were just below you.

but now that your little sisters ipad and iphone opened their brothel and the public streamed in, you sit back getting fat off of their spoils. your processors creaking under commonplace audio / visual tasks.

you won't even let me put my thunderbolt inside you.

Brilliant.