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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 MacPro predictions? Hopes? Fears?

I see that Fujitsu (ARM lead partner) will be presenting details of a Vector form of ARMv8 in August.

If this contains ARGON (SIMD extensions) - and if ARM absorbs the IP, could this be the HPC chip they (ARM) believe will help them break into the server space?

That could give Apple access (this year) to a HPC ISA from ARM.

And ~2019, Apple would (if Fujitsu OEM their chips) have acces to a Tofu3 (6D fabric).

Not sure any of this technology is destined for the MacPro :-) ... but it does open up a new 'vector away from x86 - at least in Apples datacentres.

AJ
 
jake southard said:
Yup love my trashcan too.
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Me three. It just works. Something to be said for that. Would I like a faster GPU? Sure. Do I want it bad enough to have to use Windows? Nope.
 
I got a couple of the 2013 Mac Pro's and they have unfortunately seen very little usage. While I prefer OS X from a UI standpoint the performance penalty when compared to my other windows systems just isn't worth it.

It is a shame because while the old MP tower had plenty of faults, it was at least competitive in its day. So long, OS X.
 
DJ Meyer said:
I got a couple of the 2013 Mac Pro's and they have unfortunately seen very little usage. While I prefer OS X from a UI standpoint the performance penalty when compared to my other windows systems just isn't worth it. It is a shame because while the old MP tower had plenty of faults, it was at least competitive in its day. So long, OS X.
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I would love to argue with you, but when you're right, you're right. :embarassed:
 
I think I speak for many when saying that I'd rather have stability and UI coherence at the somewhat minor expense of not having cutting edge flavor-of-the-week hardware. Lots of us don't have the time or patience to tinker around with PC builds and Windows. Just need something that works every time and allows projects to be delivered with as little headaches as possible in a simple and elegant manner. Macs let me focus on the actual creativity and not the endless PC gear/benchmark rat race- leave that to the assistants and hobbyists.

+1, also love my trashcan. Will probably upgrade it to a 10 core / 64GB later this year pending on what the 2016 refresh looks like.
 
Saumene Mehrdady said:
I think I speak for many when saying that I'd rather have stability and UI coherence at the somewhat minor expense of not having cutting edge flavor-of-the-week hardware.
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old news, but yea my z820's are rock solid stable working machines that happen run rings around any trashcan... and in my case the performance is not about latest greatest, it's about delivering on time, reliably every time... again some thing the trahscan has proven to be not stable enough, with overheating underpowered GPU's

i do use a MBP as my personal machine, prefer OSX, but had to gave up on Mac's as trustworthy working tools, they were just equal to the tasks required in 2014.. and have been frozen in time, and now can only be seen as mile and miles behind in mid-2016 by anyone other than the hard core fanboyz

it's alread half way through 2016 with zero sign of a refresh, i think the trashcan's a dead man walking.
 
A question, how does the latest z1 compare to the trash can now?

I personally find the trash can too small. It would be better to have a frame they could insert as many CPU or GPU cards in as they like.
 
Antony Newman said:
Random thoughts....

What would it take for Apple to decide to move off Intel - and for you wanting to buy another Trash Can from them?

+) Apples core's all comfortably outperform all other ARM cores in terms of instructions per clock (IPC) - including ARMs own designs.
I would speculate that a single Apple A9X core would still comfortably outperform a single (yet to be released) ARM A73 core (lets estimate Apple as 30% faster )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores

+) ARM A73 core is ~ 2 x IPC of the ARM A57

+) Each Core in Xeon E5-2699 v4 is 1.6 times x the speed of the Xeon D-1581.
And each Xeon D-1581 core is Approx 2.5 x the speed of each of the 48 cores in the Cavium (which is comparable to an ARM 57)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium-thunderx-48-arm-cores/11

+) Xeon E5-2699 v4 core = 1.6 x 2.5 speed of A57 = 4 x A57 core
+) Apple A9X core = 2 x 1.33 = 2.6 x A57 core

I make that (very roughly) that 3 x Apples A9X cores == 2 x Xeon E5-2699 v4 cores.

Which roughly means that a 32 core Apple on TSMC 16nm (Intel ~20nm) would run about the same speed as a 22 core Intel on 14nm.

TSMC are rolling out 10 nm (Intel 14nm) this year .... and then 7 nm in 2017 (Intel 10nm).


If Cavium managed to squeeze in a 48 core chip in 28nm ... Could apple manage more than 32 cores at TSMC_16nm, 10nm or 7nm.

I have a feeling that if Apple wanted to - they COULD replace the XEON with a more potent in-house designed chip and for far less $$$ than Intel charges for their top end Xeon.

If the 48 core Cavium costs $800 .... I am guessing that Apple could create 48 core x A10 on the TSMC_10nm for far less (as they would be selling million for each thousand that Cavium are shipping).

Dreaming...

AJ
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Antony Newman said:
Interesting week:

+) I wonder if Apple could get their hands on a Fujistu ARMv8 (as in Post-K)
http://www.isc-hpc.com/isc16_ap/presentationdetails.htm?t=presentation&o=782&a=select&ra=search

+) And on the architecture front .. this chip looks like it solves the (thus far) unsolvable issues of parallelising tasks, with simple code, and incredible scalability. Nvidia's brilliance is involved in this design.
http://news.mit.edu/2016/parallel-programming-easy-0620

+) And China have smashed the performance per watt record using a homegrown SIMD chip. (they beat their last supercomputer .. which is now #2). So ... even though Intel was prevented from selling start of the art 14nm Xeons to China, China's homegrown 28nm process chips are now used in a Chinese super that is 5 x faster than that the fastest US supercomputer!

Out of all of these, the first one would make me want to buy ARM shares. Fujistu is the AMG of chip design.
2020 will likely bring with it the fastest supercomputer on the planet that indroduces the worlds first 1000 PETA-flop machine. (that's a 10x jump from Sunlight Taihu Light).

I noted that Apple are introducing Texture compression into their Metal framework .. based on an ARM technology (ASTC). As Metal is also used within macOS, I wondered if Apple have a distant change for their GPU roadmap?

Predictions : I now think Apple will introduce a new Mac Pro in 2017 on Sierra.
+) It will be based on APFS (new flash optimised File system. Optimised for LOW LATENCY, not High throughout)
+) it will use P3 (Apple's added the GPU goodness and pixel formats for up to 16 bits per pixels .. Ie more than 10bits)
+) With even more of the Mac OSes GPU backed, and steps being taken to let GPUs directly access main memory (ie alleviating memory bandwidth issues), I guess Apple will wait for AMD to release Vega with 32GB GPU's, and put 4 of them into a new cylinder.

And I wonder if Apple will roll out a 'TSMC' 7nm A11 multi-core machine?

Still Dreaming...

AJ
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More than Nvidia. I haven't kept up, but pwrfirmance owr watt is important, as the amount of power from a outlet, and heat that canbe handled are two bug faxturs I wish Nvidua would makenan arm based gp-GPU supper computer of 1000 watts. Probably equivalent of hundreds of i3's in much less realestate. There is live Linux x86 binary translation siftware out there, and sandboxjng to use Ubuntu or redhat programs on the sane system.

I'm still waiting to optimised benchmarks for my shield TV under Linux
 
Now hopes, that it will be upto 30 centimeters wide, two feet tall, 20-40 processors down the bottom part and at least 3 GPU cards on top with space for 3 more full pci-e cards for down to $100US.
 
It really depends on how much you can buy used 20 year old pentinums and GPU cards to thrown in a 2 foot high flip top trash can. :)
 
Dermot Shane said:
again some thing the trahscan has proven to be not stable enough, with overheating underpowered GPU's.
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Hate to sound like an apologist/defender but that was just 1 bad batch of GPU's from AMD in early 2015. Apple has a program where they replace it for free until 2018. I had a unit purchased in June 2015 that had a bad GPU from that batch but it was fixed without queand it's been good ever since.

Unfortunately the internet took that issue and blew it up (the articles about Deadpool's post, etc.) to make it seem like all mac pros are defective.

It's great that Z820's work for you- I like those machines as well.
 
I like the power of our PC after switching from Mac, but there are a lot more problems on PC for me. Yes when I invest more time in them I will be able to fix them but still you loose time. Some examples
- cintiq screen sometimes becomes green
- sometimes the usb does not work so I cannot use the mouth
- disconnecting memory drives often does not work so you need to restart
- the pc is much louder since the power supplies are too tightly in the box, even though I have very nice cooling on the CPU the power supply are not very loud.
- much more pop ups from anti virus programs and windows in general asking if I want to do something random.
- the cpu is running at much lower clock speed than I would want, haven't found a way in the BIOS to change it.
- I really miss ProRes coded, it just works on OS X. On windows transcoding is often unstable and Avids codecs are not that well supported.
- I still miss FCPX. The keywording etc was just amazing.

But this PC is of course super fast in Davinci and also stellar for VFX programs like 3ds Max or Maya that I also use.
/Andreas
 
Saumene Mehrdady said:
Hate to sound like an apologist/defender but that was just 1 bad batch of GPU's from AMD in early 2015. Apple has a program where they replace it for free until 2018. I had a unit purchased in June 2015 that had a bad GPU from that batch but it was fixed without queand it's been good ever since.

Unfortunately the internet took that issue and blew it up (the articles about Deadpool's post, etc.) to make it seem like all mac pros are defective.

It's great that Z820's work for you- I like those machines as well.
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I just had my GPU's replaced last week. Graphic glitch problem on renders are even worse now. So it's not just a bad first batch. Another Reduser has had his GPU's replaced 4 times until he got ones that worked. I am sending mine back in tomorrow for next set of GPU's . Wish I could return the damn computer.
 
With such small incremental gains in Intels Xeon IPC .... perhaps Apple will wait (? another 8'monhs?) until Intel samples 10nm CPUs, to get a 40%? reduction in the Wattage of each individual core that will allow 4Ghz x 32 core Xeons?

With AMD starting with small GPUs first while they get their 14nm GblFoundary GPU tech proven, is there a GPU right now that Apple would want to use ... or do we think Apple also wait for Vega (8 months for samples?) and Large memory capacity HBM2?

And in 8 months time, Apple will have had time to rework the OS to be optimised for low latency storage in the new Apple File system.

These are things that would get me buying another maxed out Mac Pro that purrs away quietly in room, and probably meet 99% of other people's needs for many years to come...

AJ
 
Joel Voelker said:
"I still miss FCPX"

Holy crap, I don't think this has ever been said by anyone ever
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Which versions have you used? The app really matured and blossomed after 10.2 ....personally I can't live without it.

It's an NLE for the 21st century digital file-based age and not the 20th century tape/film age (AVID, premiere, FCP 7, et al.). I guess many people can't accept that.
 
Saumene Mehrdady said:
Which versions have you used? The app really matured and blossomed after 10.2 ....personally I can't live without it.

It's an NLE for the 21st century digital file-based age and not the 20th century tape/film age (AVID, premiere, FCP 7, et al.). I guess many people can't accept that.
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Well! This!
 
Saumene Mehrdady said:
Which versions have you used? The app really matured and blossomed after 10.2 ....personally I can't live without it.

It's an NLE for the 21st century digital file-based age and not the 20th century tape/film age (AVID, premiere, FCP 7, et al.). I guess many people can't accept that.
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I still work fastest in FCP7. Depending on the project I will still go thought the bother of making proxies and editing in 7 just because I know I'll have a better time. The only thing that sucks about FCP7 is that it doesn't support native r3d and it renders slow as shit. I hate that there's a real FCP8 optimized for 64bit just sitting in the depths of Apple. They should just release the code.
 
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