2016 nMP

[Zarniwoop]

Some thoughts about why nMP is what it is:

nMP was built to meet the most (general) workstation needs. Especially in media content creation area. In big companies, the IT stuff (which is most likely outsourced) doesn't come on-site to change a display card, unless it is broken, to upgrade the machine. It's too expensive that someone comes on-site, takes the card out, puts new in, installs drivers and leaves.. if someone needs more graphics horse-power (and it has to be a real reason, not just to extend the manhood) someone else will get your machine and you'll get a new one, with a standard image inside. There are a lot of managers lurking like a hawk that IT-support is used as little as possible.

This is how things happen in a big international company that employs thousands of people. It is not important for middle-managers that you could expand your workstation in the future. The machine comes with three-four year lease, and then it has been written off the accounts and a new one arrives. Apple seems to be thinking similar way with their nMP; updates every three years and not so much user replaceable parts.

For us who have always been building or tweaking our own computers this is not a nice concept. But where the big money runs, this is the daily living...

 

[tuxon86]

Some thoughts about why nMP is what it is:

nMP was built to meet the most (general) workstation needs. Especially in media content creation area. In big companies, the IT stuff (which is most likely outsourced) doesn't come on-site to change a display card, unless it is broken, to upgrade the machine. It's too expensive that someone comes on-site, takes the card out, puts new in, installs drivers and leaves.. if someone needs more graphics horse-power (and it has to be a real reason, not just to extend the manhood) someone else will get your machine and you'll get a new one, with a standard image inside. There are a lot of managers lurking like a hawk that IT-support is used as little as possible.

This is how things happen in a big international company that employs thousands of people. It is not important for middle-managers that you could expand your workstation in the future. The machine comes with three-four year lease, and then it has been written of the accounts and a new arrives. Apple seems to be thinking similar way with their nMP; updates every three years and not so much user replaceable parts.

For us who have always been building or tweaking our own computers this is not a nice concept. But where the big money runs, this is the daily living...

It's a FCPX and Logic Pro X dongle, nothing more...

 

[ManuelGomes]

Funny how I don't see anyone here complaining about the cost of the 1080.
If it was made by Apple I'm quite sure there would have been someone pointing it out.
Milking while they can, are they? I'm sure some will say this is ok, since they have no competition and the card performs.
Still a mainstream card.
Enjoy cashing out your greenies
[doublepost=1464377984][/doublepost]http://wccftech.com/intel-broadwell-e-core-i7-processors-specs-prices-launch/

 

[koyoot]

Zarni, yes you are right. In the same way as a person who works in a international company in which they change hardware as the needs are getting bigger.

There is no one right path here. I have always tried to understand why Apple decided to build this design. The only logical thing that I have came across after consulting it with people from silicon industry is HSA and Internet of Things, and the fact that because of increased manufacturing cost of silicon on smaller nodes you will not get bigger than 350mm2, and 180W-200W GPUs. The only way to get higher performance on smaller nodes is by using multiple GPUs.

Think about this: TSMC was selling 28 nm wafers for 6-8K$, a piece, and buying them for 5K$. Wafers for 16nm they buy for 15K$, and sell for 20K. Projections are that at the end of this process, TSMC will see the wafers for "only" 12-15K$ depending on volume. And on smaller nodes the increases in prices are similar 2 to 3 times, per wafer. You might know now why Nvidia is charging more, than ever before...

P.S. What was the cost of 8 Core Intel Haswell-E CPU? 999$
What will be the cost of 10 core Broadwell-E CPU? 1723$
You get the bigger picture...

Funny how I don't see anyone here complaining about the cost of the 1080.
If it was made by Apple I'm quite sure there would have been someone pointing it out.
Milking while they can, are they? I'm sure some will say this is ok, since they have no competition and the card performs.
Still a mainstream card.
Enjoy cashing out your greenies

Nah, it is a very good card. It has some flaws(Thermal throttling, etc.) but performance is good enough to justify the price.

 

[MacVidCards]

Yeah, don't get the 1080 is like Apple thing.

Yes, they both are expensive.

Here's the difference.

The 1080 that Nvidia ships is THE FASTEST GPU ON THE PLANET.

The machines that Apple ships are NOT the fastest.

See how that works?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Anyway, the users are not running the industry. Sadly. It's driven by a marketing teams which tries to create new needs. "It has to be slimmer, thinner and lighter - and rose gold".

Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy had an opinion about the Marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporations. It's pretty close to the truth. =)

 

[tomvos]

He's a programmer... He can do is job with an atom based PC if GCC and VI is install on it...
Not the same as running some heavy engineering and design software package...

Don't be so eager to judge. I bet you want the developer of your "heavy engineering and design software package" to have a really powerful workstation. Because if your software is designed on a atom PC, I doubt that it will have scalable threading and simultaneous dual GPU OpenCL code that actually speeds up the application.

 

[rockyromero]

This is how things happen in a big international company that employs thousands of people. It is not important for middle-managers that you could expand your workstation in the future. The machine comes with three-four year lease, and then it has been written off the accounts and a new one arrives. Apple seems to be thinking similar way with their nMP; updates every three years and not so much user replaceable parts.

If this is accurate, then the Mac Pro life would extend for a long time.

The bigger money and revenue stream is with larger organizations.

The potential corporate Apple ecosystem would mean ongoing sophisticated software connectivity.

With the IBM alliance, a lot more potential opens up in the Mac world, provided there is a smooth cloud integration as well.

I'm starting to get the future.

 

[AidenShaw]

The bigger money and revenue stream is with larger organizations.

The potential corporate Apple ecosystem would mean ongoing sophisticated software connectivity.

Apple has never understood the needs of corporate IT departments. (Or, they understood but didn't care.)

Apple's doing OK with laptops, because those are mostly stateless, disposable browsing machines.

For heavier lifting, IT wants stability and the ability to forecast - which is the opposite of Apple's "next big surprise" culture.

 

[pat500000]

Apple has never understood the needs of corporate IT departments. (Or, they understood but didn't care.)

Apple's doing OK with laptops, because those are mostly stateless, disposable browsing machines.

For heavier lifting, IT wants stability and the ability to forecast - which is the opposite of Apple's "next big surprise" culture.

Disposable indeed. No passion from Apple.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Disposable indeed. No passion from Apple.

There's pretty good second hand market for Macs. I have had no problem to the get rid of three-four year old Mac for a decent price. Cannot say that for other PC's.

 

[tuxon86]

Funny how I don't see anyone here complaining about the cost of the 1080.
If it was made by Apple I'm quite sure there would have been someone pointing it out.
Milking while they can, are they? I'm sure some will say this is ok, since they have no competition and the card performs.
Still a mainstream card.
Enjoy cashing out your greenies
[doublepost=1464377984][/doublepost]http://wccftech.com/intel-broadwell-e-core-i7-processors-specs-prices-launch/

If it was made by apple it would cost twice the price and perform half as welll.... But it would come with easy to remove screws!
[doublepost=1464388553][/doublepost]

Don't be so eager to judge. I bet you want the developer of your "heavy engineering and design software package" to have a really powerful workstation. Because if your software is designed on a atom PC, I doubt that it will have scalable threading and simultaneous dual GPU OpenCL code that actually speeds up the application.

The coder don't need a workstation. The users do.

 

[MacVidCards]

If it was made by apple it would cost twice the price and perform half as welll.... But it would come with easy to remove screws!

Great, another person who thinks that Torx Security Bits are "the most user friendly standard screws available".

I climb the mountain, just to climb it again...

 

[tuxon86]

Great, another person who thinks that Torx Security Bits are "the most user friendly standard screws available".

I climb the mountain, just to climb it again...

Err... I was making fun of those who think those screws are indicative of the nmp upgradability... That's the second time today that someone read my comment wrong...

 

[rockyromero]

The coder don't need a workstation. The users do.

I thought it was the other way around.

Shouldn't power coders get the power workstations?

Users get just enough to do their work and not be on the cutting edge?

 

[ITguy2016]

I thought it was the other way around.

Shouldn't power coders get the power workstations?

Users get just enough to do their work and not be on the cutting edge?

Applying that thought process end users would be using Mac Pros and coders would be using the latest iMac

 

[flat five]

Again that's only your limited perception of how things work in the field and not the reality for the majority of workstation users in the industry. You keep pushing your use case as if it mattered. You are a single guy working on a single project at a time. I have thousands of engineers working on many major energy project at a time. They aren't working on a single thing at a time and they can't wait for one task to finish before being able to work with their machine. In short, their needs in performance vastly out pace yours.

what, exactly, are these engineers waiting on?
what are their tasks that are causing such holdups?
what software, exactly, is being used?

here's the thing.. in my experience with the type of software i think you're talking about, your argument holds very little weight and is actually a little backwards in the conclusion.

because in just about every scenario (like high 90s percentage) with an engineer/designer sitting at their terminal.. if this person was using some crazy awesome computer.. a 44core HP Z for example.. and they came to you with "hey, my computer is lagging and i'm waiting on such&such task to finish"... to speed them up, you could put an imac in front of them.. and they'd be like 'oh, thanks.. that's a improvement'.. the faster imac will make their work to go smoother..

(the only way for them to end up saying "holy crap.. this is an incredible performance enhancement.. night&day difference!" would be through changes in the software)

with the type of software i think you're talking about, they can do maybe 1200 different things.. of which, about 4 of those things would show better performance on the 22core cpus.

....
and look, i'm asking questions for clarity.. i'm not telling you you're wrong.. when i see what you write towards me as a means to point out my limited perception, your example usages are completely opposite of what i find to be true..
if what you're saying is true then yes, my perception is limited.. so i'm asking for you to clarify what exact scenarios- software and tasks.. are these engineers waiting around in? and further, what hardware solves the issue?

 

[Mago]

I thought it was the other way around.

Shouldn't power coders get the power workstations?

Users get just enough to do their work and not be on the cutting edge?

No, actually High-end non HEDT pc are the best for coding, reason: Faster Single Thread.

R&D stations as much needs some representative hardware of production systems (A.E. Compute
Acceleraators, DSPs) but not need to be the same, Intel sells "entry level" Xeon Phi useless for serious compute, but excelent for code testing, same for nVidia, do you think programmers has to invest 5000$ on a Tesla GPU just to try some CUDA code? thry test on Modest (and dual purpose -aka gaming capable-) GeForce, they dont need 2:1 Fp64 (maybe one exception when production hw is required for profiling and fine-tune some intense algorithm, that's another thing very precise and almost matter for HPC Super Clusters but unlikely programmers will use the cluster, as much one "leased" node by short time, a typical HPC node exceed 40K$).
[doublepost=1464396290][/doublepost]

Applying that thought process end users would be using Mac Pros and coders would be using the latest iMac

not a joke, its very common.

 

[goMac]

He's a programmer... He can do is job with an atom based PC if GCC and VI is install on it...
Not the same as running some heavy engineering and design software package...

This response is about as dumb as saying he could use an Apple II as long as it ran GCC and VI. Did you think about this before you posted it? Compilers are very CPU heavy.

 

[MacVidCards]

Err... I was making fun of those who think those screws are indicative of the nmp upgradability... That's the second time today that someone read my comment wrong...

actually got it, was having fun

all good

 

[flat five]

You're still sporting a 1.1,

yes, i own one. i don't use it though.. it's been retired.
i'll give it to someone for free if they would use it and can pick it up in greenpoint.

and readily admit your biggest file of the year is around 250 Megs, so there's really no reason you would ever need a workstation. I crank out bigger files than that before my second sip of coffee in the morning, my Quad Mini would be overkill for your work.

hmm.. when i 'readily admit' my files sizes, i'm not 'admitting' anything.. i'm bragging.

since when did file size become indicative of file content?

i can tell you i have a 5MB file.. and based off that alone, you have very little to absolute zero clue as to what the content is, how much human effort or skill went into creating the content, how much time or resources the computer spent processing the data.. nothing.

so you can crank out big files by 9:10a ? you've worked 10 minutes.. congratulations?

 

[mattspace]

Biggest surprise would be, that Apple will sell these new GPU's also for the current model at Apple Authorized Service Provider... but would they?

The only reason I can think of, is to cut down future warranty claims. Right now, they're selling the 2013, which with Applecare would be warranted till 2019, and certainly in my country the statutory warranty could be well past 2020, given how expensive it is, and the observed longevity of previous Mac Pros.

Every one of those machines is a potential black hole of burned out GPUs, and after they go 2, 3 or 4 times regardless of age, Apple is going to be looking at refunds / exchanges for the new machine.

A GPU upgrade program, even if it's a downclocked version with only marginal improvements to fit within a power envelope, would be an efficient solution, rather than keeping the old cards in production. Though maintaining intergenerational card compatibility might be more expensive at that scale than just swapping machines.

 

[flat five]

Biggest surprise would be, that Apple will sell these new GPU's also for the current model at Apple Authorized Service Provider... but would they?

what about a 2nd internal SSD?

surprising? or is the consensus if it comes more like "well, yeah.. they left it out on purpose to begin with.. should of been in 6,1"
?

is this something people would like to see in the next mp?

 

[MacVidCards]

TB2 vs TB3, EFI and BIOS on current cards is contained in main boot rom, not on cards.

And the PCIE SSD is routed through the GPU.

I don't think you will ever see anythign but the same sad 3 choices. No matter what type of screws they built it with.

 

[flat five]

idk.. it just looks sort of lopsided with the one ssd in there.

and not lopsided on purpose.. more like lopsided by mistake if we never see the idea realized of 2 SSDs.

pretty much every cubic cm inside nmp is used for something.. but there's empty space where it seems a mirrored drive was meant to be.