2nd PCIe slot on new Mac Pro

[prvt.donut]

Looking at the photo with the second GPU, there seems to be another PCIe slot in front of it at the bottom.

They show a shot of a card inserted in front of one, but if you look at the other one, then you see what looks like another white slot.

Maybe that is why they are saying 1.25GB/s read and 1GB/write. In a Raid 0 array, that is the kind of speed you can expect from current SSD tech. Which makes sense, otherwise, where is Apple getting this insanely fast SSD from?

 

[peabo]

Looking at the photo with the second GPU, there seems to be another PCIe slot in front of it at the bottom.

They show a shot of a card inserted in front of one, but if you look at the other one, then you see what looks like another white slot.

Maybe that is why they are saying 1.25GB/s read and 1GB/write. In a Raid 0 array, that is the kind of speed you can expect from current SSD tech. Which makes sense, otherwise, where is Apple getting this insanely fast SSD from?

Yes, that's where the flash module slots in.

 

[Bear]

Looking at the photo with the second GPU, there seems to be another PCIe slot in front of it at the bottom.
...

Actually if you look carefully only one of the GPUs has a white socket. It's shown with and without the SSD in it depending on which picture you are looking at.

 

[violst]

Actually if you look carefully only one of the GPUs has a white socket. It's shown with and without the SSD in it depending on which picture you are looking at.

Thats true. I was hoping they were going to put another slot on the second GPU so you can upgrade to 2 SSD's but it looks like no such luck.

 

[Bear]

Thats true. I was hoping they were going to put another slot on the second GPU so you can upgrade to 2 SSD's but it looks like no such luck.

It's possible this could change by the time the system is released.

 

[theluggage]

They show a shot of a card inserted in front of one, but if you look at the other one, then you see what looks like another white slot.

Depends which photo - in one of the photos of the demo model at WWDC it looks like only one GPU card has the PCIe socket for the SDD, but under the other GPU you can see the solder contacts for a second PCIe socket.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the system can support it - just that they're using much the same circuit board layout for both GPUs.

On the Apple website, there's no sign of a place for a second socket, but everything there is either CGI or heavily re-touched.

where is Apple getting this insanely fast SSD from?

They've got a SSD controller that connects directly to PCIe without going via SATA, so they're not limited by SATA speeds (for one thing, SATA has to work over a cable). They'll probably be using higher spec flash memory than you get in consumer SSDs. Who knows, they may even have implemented something like RAID on a single card.