Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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?

It's always exciting when Apple finally admits they screwed the hooch. Of course I just bought a second hand trash can a few months ago, but looking forward to the day that these mystical pro products grace us earthlings.
 
Good-ish news I suppose. But still looking at ~18+ months until it ships from the sounds of it.
 
I dont understand how Apple screwed anything?

Did anyone get injured from using their product?

Hey Im an Apple fan boy that owns 2 Dells and a BOXX (all for 3D work) plus a few legacy and nMP.

A company makes a decision and its really up to the consumer to make the choice of purchase.

They all have their fails and positives as far as my experiences go.
 
The next Mac Pro won't ship until Intel is well into their new architecture and manufacturing process, so you're looking at at least two years out. The stuff they are doing with the new architecture is revolutionary and allows for customization designs that Apple and other OEMs want, so they (Apple) know that things have to be just right before they can launch the Mac Pro again. Intel has also developed an equivalent to AMD's APU, with a discrete GPU backed with HBM, which may very well end up being in the next-gen Mac Mini, Mac Book, and iMac.
 
Eric Santiago said:
I dont understand how Apple screwed anything?
.
Click to expand...

They followed the Steve Jobs credo of "This is what I think you need and what I'm going to give you." instead of "I hear what you want and you're going to get it.". It wouldn't have been so bad had Apple actually had the fortitude to follow through with their plans for the NMP to receive continuous bumps and core upgrades to add more power and flexibility, but they chose to abandon it after a year or so, likely because the economics of supporting it just were not practical. In hindsight, there were a lot of mistakes made, chief of which was the SFF design and the heavy reliance on Thunderbolt to expand the capabilities of the product. Even after three generations, the Thunderbolt ecosystem on Apple's side of the market is still figuring itself out, despite loud cries of "Give us this!" or "Give us that!" and on the Windows side of things, it's completely dead/irrelevant at this point. Apple should have kept the workstation design of the previous Mac Pro and just given it some favorable updates and modernizations to keep it relevant to video pros, since other creatives prefer the iMac over full-blown workstations.
 
Yesterdays announcement regarding Apple letting Imagination (PowerVR GPU) know that Apple's GPU believe their own GPU designs will completely replace the Imagination GPU is also very interesting - as Apple's design is believed to be more power-efficient that (one of the) market leaders.

Giving Imagination 2 years notice will mean that Apple will have access to ARMs DynamIq (ie hardware & instructuction set support to accelerate individual CPU cores and almost two orders of magnitude speedup when a core wishes to leverage on SoC hardware acceleration)

I wonder if Apple are going extend the GPU magic to the desktop...

AJ
 
Unless Apple got full access to other IP through licensing agreements, it wouldn't be possible for them to make a desktop-grade GPU, because it would require years of R&D to make something unique at this point. It makes more sense for them to just get a custom Intel or AMD SOC with HBM and call it a day.
 
They stuffed it up OK. They can't expand the current design, nonsense, look at my previous suggestions.

Something interesting though. I read earlier this or last year, that Apple was thinking of closing down US Mac Pro production, as their Asian partners now had the technical ability to make therm. Test, I fail to see how this would not be easy for them to 'learn'. Suspicious.

Frankly, I want a 3D circuit mac mini as powerful as an upgraded Mac pro, this year. Look at my other thread for the PETA flop 10 liter IBM proposal. Such a thing is perfect for Mac pro and mac mini, but smaller without liquid power transfer.
 
As far as Apple "screwing things up" - Craig Federighi did admit that they may have messed up future developments with the trash can design ("I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner...") - so it looks like that will be "re-thought." Nice to imagine what they will come up with, however unaffordable it might be. :-) And it is disappointing to think that the next real upgrade will be in 2018 - but time does fly.

But, in the meantime, new iMacs designed for pro users - specifically media production types - look to be coming mid -2017. Can't wait!

As for the Steve Jobs approach of giving them what we think they should have - that's what it takes to be truly innovative. It doesn't always work but Jobs, and Apple, have a pretty good track record. I, for one, hope they don't completely drop that philosophy.

This could be fun.
 
"Apple Screwed up" : I guess Apple were expecting the Software Industry to more effectively leverage Two GPUs working together, and that the newer GPUs and CPUs would dramatically reduce the their thermal footprint. That 'bet' didn't pan out. Most software houses don't want to have to load-balance the GPU-GPU 'mess'.

External GPU : AMD Inifinity fabric is a good start - but even that probably only has one or two generations of GPU before it would need replacing (latency not ok, B/W scalable to 0.5TB/s). ARM Mesh network would usable (>1TB/s)

Creating their own Desktop GPU : ARM offers a service to 'scale up' some of their (Mali) mobile GPU designs - but I don't think Apple would use them. Apples A10 Fusion did however demonstrate their ability to make powerful, efficient & small mm^2 GPU that vertically integrates to the rest of the SoC. It might even be of similar complexity to creating a Desktop GPU. My understanding is that the Apple GPU team had already switched to their own designed for (perhaps) 2/3 of the GPU engine and that was an impressive step up in performance than the PowerVR.

Intel 10nm : In not their fastest Process. That'll be Intel 14++
In Oct '17 years TSMC and Intel will have 'exactly' the same process density (Intel 10nm == TSMC 7nm)

My guess is that when Apple 're-enter' the pro market they will be designing a machine that runs its own >TBs mesh network. Something suitable to edit in 'raw' 8k, interactive VR, machine learning, chemistry visualization ... and be used to replace all the desktops in the new HQ.

Apple COULD use an INTEL x86 CPU, or (probably half the price) AMD x86 CPU ... but ... this does seem like their (Apples) GPU team is still expanding. If they could make a monster 7nm GPU with a boat load of 7nm Apple ARM V8.3 compatible cores, running on an CMN-600 network, they would be able to create a Moduler network expansion that even allows additional CPU,GPU or other h/w.

That's my guess .... topped off with an 8k Rec2020 monitor in early '19.

AJ
 
Last edited:
So...now the revolutionary Mac Pro is being re-thought.
So.....re-thinking the re-thought. Hope that doesn't cause a space-time paradox with spaceship being sucked in the black hole/cylinder. Well one has to start somewhere so going from consistent self-fluffery to "oh yeah ups" is at least some movement from Cupertino Bubble Square/Circle/Simplepolygon 1.

Guessing bazzilion of money wasn't enough to get it right the first time, couple of years after ditched proper tower and year after year folks wondering when the f is next proper mac workstation coming up. "It's just around the corner" for the last ten years.

Wonder what is next in attempting to desperately re-invent the wheel at any cost. Square box is uncool, umbrella holder kicked the bucket. Guessing a pyramid with triangle components. Or a spiral. Dodecahedron which floats in air with 60 dongles dangling out, and wirelessly streams 8K to monitor but doesn't work during bad weather. Or on Wednesdays.

Or perhaps still the cylinder approach but this time with a bit more effort then "add shape" in drawing app for external design, upgradeable and previously tested for reliability during power usage. That would be totally cool for a $3-9K professional workstation, if it is a too much of an obstacle for other products in the line up labeled "pro" but prioritized for thinness. If there aren't enough funds gathered from re-selling/re-packaging other's creations I can wire $20 to help cover students to press "render" inside the spaceship and check the status in 30 mins after latte. The air condition in the testing room being turned off.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
This makes me so happy. Now I can stop contemplating the move to Windows. Man I was dreading the thought.
Click to expand...

I just jumped ship and built a mini-itx pc...so worth it.
 
Hrvoje Simic said:
So...now the revolutionary Mac Pro is being re-thought.
So.....re-thinking the re-thought. Hope that doesn't cause a space-time paradox with spaceship being sucked in the black hole/cylinder. Well one has to start somewhere so going from consistent self-fluffery to "oh yeah ups" is at least some movement from Cupertino Bubble Square/Circle/Simplepolygon 1.

Guessing bazzilion of money wasn't enough to get it right the first time, couple of years after ditched proper tower and year after year folks wondering when the f is next proper mac workstation coming up. "It's just around the corner" for the last ten years.

Wonder what is next in attempting to desperately re-invent the wheel at any cost. Square box is uncool, umbrella holder kicked the bucket. Guessing a pyramid with triangle components. Or a spiral. Dodecahedron which floats in air with 60 dongles dangling out, and wirelessly streams 8K to monitor but doesn't work during bad weather. Or on Wednesdays.

Or perhaps still the cylinder approach but this time with a bit more effort then "add shape" in drawing app for external design, upgradeable and previously tested for reliability during power usage. That would be totally cool for a $3-9K professional workstation, if it is a too much of an obstacle for other products in the line up labeled "pro" but prioritized for thinness. If there aren't enough funds gathered from re-selling/re-packaging other's creations I can wire $20 to help cover students to press "render" inside the spaceship and check the status in 30 mins after latte. The air condition in the testing room being turned off.
Click to expand...

Yes,polygon Mac pro, sounds so trendy even Steve would like it. If it does produce a paradox, we hope someone doesn't come back and say "I know the solution, we have to make the Mac pro shorter".

Anyway, seems they have just started thinking about doing this. Hope they are reading my modular Mac proposals from before. Modular Mac Mini is good too. You can design a system that integrates as the processing solution on the back of a display (modular IMac). So, a mini blade system could he the right size, with the the mini as a micro blade system. A mini could share models from an Mac laptop platform.

Apple should own the PC market by now, instead such a job is being done that consoles and android devices are diminishing their sales, and neither are particularly good compared to what a PC should be.
 
GPU : IP & departing from Imagination technologies (in the mobile space).

I think I may have not thought through this thoroughly enough.

+) Apple would need a license to SELL products that included Imagination IP.

+) That means that Apples announcement means that in Less than 2 years time, they will not be selling any component that has any Imagination technologies IP in it.

+) This means that Apple-only NEW GPU design is Currently being created by TSMC on 10nm for the next iPhone.

Guesses : Apple created a 'Desktop Class' CPU for the mobile phone. Hands up those that think their new GPU architecture wont also scale to the Desktop space?

I am guessing we will find out at WWDC (June) if there is a new 'generation' of language that Xcode can compile into.
Perhaps they've included some of the complex number primitive types from ARMv8.3A ... or have included hardware accelerated depth mapping from stereoscopic images....

AJ
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top