Yoused
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No, the wheels are another $400 in addition to the frame. But it is a really sexy frame.
No “Extreme” chip coming to Mac Pro?
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Jimmyjames
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Who’d thunk it...
Another flip flop from Gurman. Now he’s saying no updatable ram or gpu. Anyone get the feeling he’s grasping at straws?
Another flip flop from Gurman. Now he’s saying no updatable ram or gpu. Anyone get the feeling he’s grasping at straws?
Yoused
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He is running some sort of AI routine that tabulates the content of all the messages (email, et al) he receives and calculates for him the highest probability scores based on frequency and source-related biasing.
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No gpus, no slotted RAM. As I figured.
And yet the product will exist. Yeah, there’s a small market for other cards. But I still think this means that the CPU will surprise us in some way. The ultra extreme will exist, or they’ll run it at a silly high clock rate, or it will be socketed so that you can upgrade by replacing the SOC, or you can have two sockets, or something. Some reason for this thing to exist when there can just as easily be a M2 Ultra Studio with a bunch of thunderbolt ports.
And yet the product will exist. Yeah, there’s a small market for other cards. But I still think this means that the CPU will surprise us in some way. The ultra extreme will exist, or they’ll run it at a silly high clock rate, or it will be socketed so that you can upgrade by replacing the SOC, or you can have two sockets, or something. Some reason for this thing to exist when there can just as easily be a M2 Ultra Studio with a bunch of thunderbolt ports.
Colstan
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Well, this thread was getting stale, so we needed a new update from Uncle Gurman.
I would note that he is using weasel words like "may lack user upgradeable GPUs", which suggests what we already know from the leaker on MR, that the drivers aren't there.
He's also speculating on the differentiation between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro: "The big difference between a Mac Pro and a Mac Studio — in addition to M1 Ultra to M2 Ultra — should be performance from more cooling."
Again, that's what we were already thinking after seeing the slight clock boost with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Also, we've been speculating that the Studio may stick to the M1 Ultra, so that the Mac Pro can shine first with the M2 Ultra.
Regardless, I suppose we'll have these "clarifications" every three weeks from Gurman, until Apple finally unchains the kraken.
We spent three weeks speculating on his "hallmark features" comment and then devising ways that Apple could implement upgradeable DIMMs, then he took that back. We spent another three weeks doing exactly the same after a similar comment about upgradeable graphics, and he's also taking that back.
No, I get the impression that he is doing this on purpose. He burned his best sources long ago, but still has some insider information, it's just not as detailed. So, he's stretching out his current sources by using vague terminology, where it isn't clear whether he is talking about the Mac Pro as a historical device, or the upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro.
I would note that he is using weasel words like "may lack user upgradeable GPUs", which suggests what we already know from the leaker on MR, that the drivers aren't there.
He's also speculating on the differentiation between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro: "The big difference between a Mac Pro and a Mac Studio — in addition to M1 Ultra to M2 Ultra — should be performance from more cooling."
Again, that's what we were already thinking after seeing the slight clock boost with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Also, we've been speculating that the Studio may stick to the M1 Ultra, so that the Mac Pro can shine first with the M2 Ultra.
The only people who seriously thought those would be implemented are the slots crowd over at MR, who are still daydreaming over a new Xeon model.
Regardless, I suppose we'll have these "clarifications" every three weeks from Gurman, until Apple finally unchains the kraken.
B01L
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I really hope/think/wish that Apple will put out ASi GPGPUs at some point, the only way I can see for them to go beyond the compute/render power of the iGPU in the SoC...
I am going on the thought that the rumored six slot ASi Mac Pro may atch the slots in the 2019 Mac Pro, but with the slots between the MPX slots removed, leaving room for two ASi MPX GPGPUs without the wasted slots in between...
PCIe 4.0 seems reasonable, more than enough speed for GPGPUs & RAID cards...?
- Slot 1 - x4 - Audio I/O & DPS card
- Slot 2 - x4 - Audio I/O & DPS card
- Slot 3 - x8 - 8K video I/O card
- Slot 4 - x16 - 64TB RAID card with eight M.2 NVMe SSDs
- Slot 5 - x16 - ASi MPX GPGPU
- Slot 6 - x16 - ASi MPX GPGPU
I would think the biggest difference between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro would be the PCIe slots...
More cooling means little unless the SoC is designed specifically for faster clocks and dependent upon said "more cooling"...
Come on Gurman, give us something REAL...!
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If they aren’t going to have upgradeable RAM or allow external GPUs, then they could have sold an M1 Ultra-based Mac Pro last year. It would have offered little benefit over Studio, though, because M1 frequency didn’t scalel. So it would have just been a Mac Studio in a bigger enclosure, with mostly-useless slots (or, at least, slots that offer little benefit over just plugging things into thunderbolt ports), and maybe swappable flash memory. That would have been a dumb product.
So if they release an M2 product, it offers a little more versus a (hypothetical) M2 Mac Studio. The frequency likely can scale higher than in the M2 Max 16” MBP, and so it may be higher than in the M2 Studio.
Still doesn’t make for much of a reason to buy an M2 Ultra Mac Pro instead of an M2 Ultra Mac Studio. So maybe (1) there won’t be an M2 Ultra Mac Studio. Or maybe (2) they will do something unexpected re: the CPU. (e.g. one of the things I listed above).
I think (2) is the answer. We’ll see.
exoticspice1
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Apple should have done something like this for the Mac Pro but with their own CPU IP:
NVIDIA Grace Superchip Features 144 Cores 960GB of RAM and 128 PCIe Gen5 Lanes
The NVIDIA Grace Superchip boasts 7.1 TFLOPS of FP64 performance peak with 144 cores, 960GB of LPDDR5X memory, and up to 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes
www.servethehome.com
144 CPU cores(arm64)
960GB RAM
128 PCIe lanes Gen5
It's launching in 2023 and since it's nvidia and not Intel its possible it may come this year.
What do you guys think will Apple do this for M3 Extreme??
Of course Apple will have a CPU and GPU and NPU and various others things nomal M chips have.
That is a server/cluster config and I doubt Apple will build something that big. Are you just referring to the structure of having to connected CPUs? I think Apple might do something like that but is more likely to continue down the Ultra fusion route and try to have everything appear to be 1 chip with no NUMA.Apple should have done something like this for the Mac Pro but with their own CPU IP:
View attachment 21528NVIDIA Grace Superchip Features 144 Cores 960GB of RAM and 128 PCIe Gen5 Lanes
The NVIDIA Grace Superchip boasts 7.1 TFLOPS of FP64 performance peak with 144 cores, 960GB of LPDDR5X memory, and up to 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes
144 CPU cores(arm64)
960GB RAM
128 PCIe lanes Gen5
It's launching in 2023 and since it's nvidia and not Intel its possible it may come this year.
What do you guys think will Apple do this for M3 Extreme??
Of course Apple will have a CPU and GPU and NPU and various others things nomal M chips have.
exoticspice1
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yeah, so instead of CPUs it would be SoCs. That 960GB LPDD5 will be useful for some in a Mac Pro too. Apple has to have a big show and make a statement that Apple Sillcon can go big as well. After all the Mac Pro is their "halo" product.
A Mac Pro with just an M2 ultra would be boring. Where is the innovation there??
I suspect if the extreme doesn’t come to the Pro in the M2 generation then it will come eventually because I fundamentally agree - simply a slightly tweaked Ultra with a PCIe slot that most won’t use without a GPU won’t cut it. The product would be a very hard sell. So as I think everyone here has noted and @Cmaier had some suggestions above … Apple would have to do *something* to justify the existence of the product.
Jimmyjames
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I hope the answer is (2j. It’d be a shame if the studio was on hiatus even if only for one generation. I am fine with continual, gradual improvements.
Why do you say the slots are useless? I'm recalling @mr_roboto 's post in which he linked this video:
Essentially, the slots allowed the user to go from this:
to this:
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I said “mostly” useless. Certainly the vast majority of cards plugged into Mac Pros are graphics cards. And if those won’t work, then, for most people, those slots aren’t very useful.
Moreover, most of the remaining types of cards that WOULD work would work just as well as thunderbolt devices or in a thunderbolt PCI enclosure. The number of cards that require the full speed of a slot solution and which aren’t GPUs is pretty small.
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BTW... Neil Parfitt is the real deal as a score editor and music composer/producer for a variety of well-known films. I used to follow him a few years ago being curious about his craft and the tech used in his process.
Somewhere back in time he released a pretty neat unboxing of the rack mount MacPro.
Edit: Found it, worth a watch ->
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I'm half-way through watching Parfitt's unboxing video again (last time was a couple years ago).
Apple should hire him as a consultant as his thoughts about what works and doesn't work regarding internal MacPro layout would be valuable information with respect to Apple's next rack mount MacPro.
OTOH, perhaps Apple did that for the upcoming rack mount MacPro.
Apple should hire him as a consultant as his thoughts about what works and doesn't work regarding internal MacPro layout would be valuable information with respect to Apple's next rack mount MacPro.
OTOH, perhaps Apple did that for the upcoming rack mount MacPro.
Sonnet does have a 3-card TB box for $1100, so if you needed to plug in eight (?) cards like in the picture, that would be three boxes for $3300. But that doesn't seem like a clean solution compared to plugging them directly into the machine; plus I've read complaints these PCIe TB boxes use small fans and are noisy.
Echo III Desktop (3 PCIe slots for full size cards)
Desktop Thunderbolt 3 adapter box with three PCIe expansion slots for audio, video, fibre, RAID and ethernet PCIe cards.
www.sonnetstore.com
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Sonnet does have a 3-card TB box for $1100, so if you needed to plug in eight (?) cards like in the picture, that would be three boxes for $3300. But that doesn't seem like a clean solution compared to plugging them directly into the machine; plus I've read complaints these PCIe TB boxes use small fans and are noisy.
Echo III Desktop (3 PCIe slots for full size cards)
Desktop Thunderbolt 3 adapter box with three PCIe expansion slots for audio, video, fibre, RAID and ethernet PCIe cards.
At the end of the Parfitt unboxing video above, he makes a case for having everything in one box rather than using external boxes over to his MacPro using TB.
Sure hope Apple comes out with an AS rack mount with slots MacPro. I love the blank sheet of paper aspect of it. And I sure hope Apple consulted with Parfitt if they do release one. Would be a tempting purchase.
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