MP All Models 40 core ASI with PCI-E slot is around the corner!!

[ZombiePhysicist]

Yes calling a product a joke/useless just because it does meet your demands is silly! Can I call the 7,1 a joke and useless because it does not meet my demands?

No because there are people out there that use a 7,1 and it meets their needs. Look I loved the Mac Pro until it lost CUDA support but I don't say something is DOA or useless just because it does not meet my needs.


It has no PCIe slots for starters but for most people in Mac community the Studio is enough for a desktop.

I want Apple to remember that apology tour and it will be clear sign if they did when the 8,1 launches.

I do apologise if stepped out of line but I just don't seem to trust Apple after they dropped CUDA support in the Mac Pro. So forgive me if I was jaded and annoying.


You won't see any more posts from me till the Mac Pro launches. I also don't be annoying to your friend prefuse07
and when you tell prefuse07 I aplogised to the guy for being negative and being an annoyance. (Probably blocked me so).

I think it’s silly to wring your hands trying to avoid saying it like it is. For some people it was DOA when CUDA died because they really needed that for their work. What’s wrong with them saying so. It’s just a data point. So we can agree to disagree and viva la differance.

For the record I was being rhetorical. No apologies required for genuine differences of opinion. Certainly no line you stepped out of…you’re arguing your point. It’s the entire point of forums imo. For different ideas to be hashed out. Some you like some you ignore, some you don’t. The point is to have a market full of lots of viewpoints and information to hopefully enrich ourselves with. Ain’t nothing wrong with disagreeing imo. I personally like strong arguments so long as points are fairly conceded when others make better arguments. I think there is nothing better for substantively improving knowledge in any given area. YMMV.

In the end, I think we can agree on something more than we disagree. Is none of us know squat, so let’s see what comes out and who guessed better.

 

[mattspace]

Well answer me this where is the eGPU support of the AMD cards in M1/M2 MacBooks?

My suspicion is that this isn't about whether ARM *can* use eGPU or PCI GPU, but more about forcing macOS developers to invest in optimising for ARM GPUs over a prolonged period.

It's to ensure no one thinks they can just wait it out for a "this app requires a dedicated AMD (Nvidia) GPU" option in the system requirements.

Those of us into VR can recall the debacle that was Apple "embracing" VR, only to find out one of the launch apps, Gravity Sketch, launched with a minimum GPU of Vega 64, so excluding the Vega 56 iMac Pro.

 

[spaz8]

I love the idea of there being some sort of upgradable GPU.. wether its an Apple board with GPU centric Soc's or wether its an AMD.. or super unlikely Nvidia option... the cynic in me thinks that there will not be an upgradable GPU.. and whatever the leakers detected is just there to be able to hook up the prototype to a more typical wider range of monitors to testing Would love to be wrong.. as I'm not sure how the Mac Pro can be in the same zip code as AMD or Nvidia in compute if they don't put some dedicated hardware toward graphics compute - needs to be more than just just sticking 4x M2 max's together as that strategy will not keep pace.

 

[deconstruct60]

Currently Im the only person in the world, as far as I can tell, that actually got an 8k tv display working on a Mac, and that is with a 3rd party graphics card only. Funny, apple talks so much about 8k work flows, and somehow have the gall not to be embarrassed that none of their machines with apple equipment alone can actually display on an 8k tv. It's actually not funny. It's beyond pathetic.

8K TV reference monitors with SDI do not work???

" ... The four 12G-SDI connections are bi-directional for quad link 8K capture or playback.
...The four 12G-SDI connections support up to 64 channels of embedded audio. DeckLink 8K Pro is perfect for the next generation of high resolution, high frame rate and high dynamic range workflows! ..."

DeckLink – Tech Specs | Blackmagic Design

DeckLink are high performance capture cards for Mac, Windows and Linux with support for 12G-SDI and 8K.

www.blackmagicdesign.com

8K computer monitors? No. 8K reference monitors for very high end movie making viewing video files? .... there are expensive options.
The Decllink 8K works on a MP 2019 now. It also mostly works on a M1/M2 Mac in a Thunderbolt PCI-e card enclosure. (it is on Sonnet Tech's compatible card list for M1 Mac in the tech specs the linked page above. ).
It has bandwidth limitation problems deployed there (footnote 8 on compatible card list), but if Apple provisioned a x8 PCI-e v3 (or better) slot in a M2 Mac Pro system the rest would probably start working.


You experiment was about hooking up a consumer 8K TV to a Mac. No, that is not likely to be a super high priority with the newer Mac Pro. I doubt that is going to block Apple much in the sky high end 8K reference market.

But I digress. Point is, once you strip out the pros/enthusiasts that do need/want 3rd party GPUs, not much of that community will remain.

If Apple put a DisplayPort 2.1 output on the upcoming generation ... who are they going to leave out in terms of resolution support in the computer monitor space?

All DisplayPort 2.0 products are now DisplayPort 2.1, VESA says [Updated]

VESA released DisplayPort 2.1 today, but you may already own certified products.

arstechnica.com

Apple was somewhat slow to move onto Thunderbolt 3, in part because there were some interoperability hiccups.
They may stay behind to curve on DP evolution a bit longer, but it wouldn't be surprising if the upcoming SoC got a display controller tweak that the 'plain' M2 skips ( to save cost and die space ).


Apple is charging $6-8K for workstations ... are they really after the bulk of the "enthusiasts" market with the MP 2019? No. For better or worse the Mac Pro is now being aimed at a smaller, more specialized , but wealthier segment.

And probably no part of the community will give you a free cameo in a the next Independence Day (at least not without apple paying for it). Once that community moves on, a lot of the halo force influence they have will flow elsewhere.

Boo hoo ... billion dollar Apple has to actually pay for advertising. How will they manage? *cough*. The days of Guy Kawasaki running around doing 'scrappy' gorilla marketing for Apple on the 'cheap' ... that stuff is over. Been over for more than a decade.

 

[deconstruct60]

Dude, you need to stop, you don't know that for sure, and you keep talking like you just came from the donut.

Look at what Amethyst has provided to us thus far -- it began with his friend trying an AMD 6K series card and it not even working to now what appears to be apple working on drivers to get that same RX-6900XT to show up in system settings on that very same prototype device -- why would apple even waste their time on that if they weren't planning on supporting 3rd party GPUs?!?!?!?!

Listed in the PCI-e card tree may not necessarily be substantive driver coverage. If just ask what the card is, then can likely get some top level meta data out of the card without 'thick' drivers. ( need to have 'something' informative at the meta data level to look up which driver to go get if had one. )

If Apple just IOMMU mapped a AMD/NVidia GPU card into a guest virtual machine running Linux or Windows they wouldn't really need much of a driver. If Apple is going to totally ignore 3rd party cards in macOS then it would be 'polite' to at least 'forward' the GPU card not using to any hosted VM image that does want to make direct use of it.
(e.g., if running Linux on macOS VM and want to do some ML apps that only work on Linux that has AMD/Nvidia drivers then that could work. And don't have to put much work into booting natively. ) . Essentially, do enough identification of the card to positively classify it as something that most of the macOS stack was going to ignore.

Apple put in some work to make Rosetta 2 work inside of Linux in a VM . This would be similar in enhancing the VM images so don't have to do more work on 'raw iron' native boot support.


Similarly, if they are just going to add it as a GPGPU 'compute' accelerator it could be weaved in as a simple PCI-e device. Plain PCI-e card driver support is already in macOS on Apple Silicon. What is missing the new DriverKit is a framework for "GPU graphics cards". There will be other computational accelerators over time that don't necessarily 'have to' drive the graphics stack at the same time.


If Apple is going to have slots, then some folks are going to try to slap a GPU card in there.


What might be more llluminating is what kind of resources are being provisioned to the slots. Like how is this 6800XT getting power. Is someone jury rigging power from an external supply? ( which would kind of make it obvious it really isn't an intended card even if it happens to present metadata in the device tree. ). Similar if these are six x8 PCI-e v3 slots. Again, high end GPU cards probably not an likely target market. Can stuff the card in there and maybe eventually it might "happen to work" but system isn't really targeting that market.

 

[Boil]

Gen4

• x4 (Apple I/O card)
• x4 (Audio I/O card)
• x8 (Video I/O card)
• x16 (M.2 SSD RAID card)

Gen5

• x16 (ASi MPX GPGPU card)
• x16 (ASi MPX GPGPU card)

 

[deconstruct60]

But at what gen and number of lanes?

6 slots at X4 each (in X16 I hope) is not really that much.

6 at X16 each seems like a lot for the apple chips

The Mac Pro 2019 has two CPU x16 PCI-e v3 bundles that feed into a one "dual in / multiple out" PLEX switch that provisions six out of the eight slots on the system. ( slot 1 and 3 have direct path to the CPU. ).

It isn't just only the PCI-e version and lane bundle width. It is also just how much it is overhsubscribed.


For example the M2 "Ultra" might provision x16 PCI-e v4 and the M2 "Extreme" provision two x16 PCI-e v4 .
Feed those into an updated PLEX switch. In the first system could run three x8 PCI-e v3 cards comfortably , but have more bandwidth contention problems with two x16 PCI-e v4 cards. Same number of slots, but with an Extreme SoC , the backhaul/latency would be better in both cases (i.e., use PLEX switch to isolate cards that might into contention; as on MP 2019).

The other issue that would be even easier to relay , but remains unanswered is what kind of AUX power is provided for these slots? If there are just one or two 6 pin power sockets inside then decent chance not looking at lots of x16 (electrical ) slots.

maybe it's 6 slots feed by an switcher with maybe an max of 32-64 lanes in?

Unless, Apple does a major refactor of their chiplet design, it seems like 64 lanes would be unlikely. UltraFusion connector follows a "slow and super wide approach". Their use of LPDDR RAM to implementation "poor man's" HBM is also a "slow and wide approach". They are eating up lots of die edge space just on those two. To also go 'very wide' on PCI-e lanes probably doesn't have any place to sit in the setup. ( there are workarounds... e.g. moving PCI-e controolers off the main die and flowing all that data back over some UltraFusion like connector.)

It could also be a bit 'lame' and these slots are being provisioned out of an overabundance ot 'too many' Thunderbolt controllers ( driven by maximizing laptop die reuse ). Haven't really gotten away from pouring too much Thunderbolt on the system. They are just economizing on having to pay extra for a TB expansion box ( just built inside the Apple wrapper/container. ).


six , single width slots would cut significantly down on the height. ( there are four double wides in the MP 2019. Pragmatically would/could be dropping 6 slot widths from 'old' 12; half . )

So could put a 3 or 3.5 wide, next gen, higher end GPU card in there, but would be covering up most of the PCI-e connectors. Might happen to work ,but wouldn't be a natural design fit.

 

[Amethyst]

Ok i've to explain an info about third-party GPU and PCI-E.

As my workflow heavily based on GPU, so the question about next mac
i've ask my friend is mainly point to GPUs thing.
So he tell me that all the thing to support 3rd party GPU is on the table.
the card is found on Mac, the pci-e slot is spot on <<every>> Mac pro prototype,
the driver is only last jigsaw to find.

In nutshell he tell me that if Apple want to support 3rd party GPU on AS,
it can available in just matter of days.

In the other hand, he believed that a next Mac Pro GPU option can make me
satisfied so i will not ask him about 3rd party GPU support again,
as well as majority of Mac Pro user.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

PCIe is obviously a given since expandability is a feature that separates the Pro from Apple's other desktops. I believe it will continue support stock AMD cards purely for choice and software optimisation, but that Apple's marketing focus will be on its own own GPU.

This begs the question: will the GPU be integrated into the SoC as a true scaleable architecture from Ultra, or will the machine have its own bespoke SoC? Gurman and Amethyst are leaning towards the former, yet I'm still not sure if this would be the most practical way to go, especially with regards to the number of efficiency cores and the size of the package with GPU cores added.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

8K TV reference monitors with SDI do not work???

" ... The four 12G-SDI connections are bi-directional for quad link 8K capture or playback.
...The four 12G-SDI connections support up to 64 channels of embedded audio. DeckLink 8K Pro is perfect for the next generation of high resolution, high frame rate and high dynamic range workflows! ..."

DeckLink – Tech Specs | Blackmagic Design

DeckLink are high performance capture cards for Mac, Windows and Linux with support for 12G-SDI and 8K.

www.blackmagicdesign.com

8K computer monitors? No. 8K reference monitors for very high end movie making viewing video files? .... there are expensive options.
The Decllink 8K works on a MP 2019 now. It also mostly works on a M1/M2 Mac in a Thunderbolt PCI-e card enclosure. (it is on Sonnet Tech's compatible card list for M1 Mac in the tech specs the linked page above. ).
It has bandwidth limitation problems deployed there (footnote 8 on compatible card list), but if Apple provisioned a x8 PCI-e v3 (or better) slot in a M2 Mac Pro system the rest would probably start working.


You experiment was about hooking up a consumer 8K TV to a Mac. No, that is not likely to be a super high priority with the newer Mac Pro. I doubt that is going to block Apple much in the sky high end 8K reference market.




If Apple put a DisplayPort 2.1 output on the upcoming generation ... who are they going to leave out in terms of resolution support in the computer monitor space?

All DisplayPort 2.0 products are now DisplayPort 2.1, VESA says [Updated]

VESA released DisplayPort 2.1 today, but you may already own certified products.

arstechnica.com

Apple was somewhat slow to move onto Thunderbolt 3, in part because there were some interoperability hiccups.
They may stay behind to curve on DP evolution a bit longer, but it wouldn't be surprising if the upcoming SoC got a display controller tweak that the 'plain' M2 skips ( to save cost and die space ).


Apple is charging $6-8K for workstations ... are they really after the bulk of the "enthusiasts" market with the MP 2019? No. For better or worse the Mac Pro is now being aimed at a smaller, more specialized , but wealthier segment.





Boo hoo ... billion dollar Apple has to actually pay for advertising. How will they manage? *cough*. The days of Guy Kawasaki running around doing 'scrappy' gorilla marketing for Apple on the 'cheap' ... that stuff is over. Been over for more than a decade.

Thanks for confirming every single point, and yet, still, that was not an airplane that flew over your head.

 

[singhs.apps]

In the other hand, he believed that a next Mac Pro GPU option can make me
satisfied so i will not ask him about 3rd party GPU support again,
as well as majority of Mac Pro user.

Does this mean that we won’t see that GPU option in the upcoming Mac Pro ?
In which case it means that Apple has its own solution that they’ll implement in 2nd gen Mx Mac Pro ?

Will it be a discreet variety ? Can it be installed in the 1st gen Mx Mac Pro ?

 

[EugW]

Does this mean that we won’t see that GPU option in the upcoming Mac Pro ?
In which case it means that Apple has its own solution that they’ll implement in 2nd gen Mx Mac Pro ?

Will it be a discreet variety ? Can it be installed in the 1st gen Mx Mac Pro ?

Up to 152 GPU cores built-in.

So far nobody has provided any convincing evidence that suggests discrete GPUs will be offered.

 

[prefuse07]

Thank you @Amethyst !

 

[goMac]

I believe it will continue support stock AMD cards purely for choice and software optimisation, but that Apple's marketing focus will be on its own own GPU.

This seems unlikely to me. Metal code written for Apple SoCs will not run on AMD cards. Stuff like tile based graphics and compute shaders is just completely incompatible and won't execute on an AMD device at all. Developers aren't likely to write compatible code going forward - and Apple won't want to distract developers.

Seems like the end of line for AMD cards to me. Otherwise eGPU would probably already be a thing.

The other thing that's going to start happening is developers dropping support for AMD GPUs. For the past few years it's been Apple GPUs that have been the minority in the ecosystem and require special Metal code. When AMD GPUs become less common on the Mac, AMD GPUs are going to be the odd ones that require special GPU code. Developers will just stop supporting these AMD GPUs that are incompatible with Apple GPU code and require extra time.

 

[innerproduct]

Yeah, apple already made octane x very hard to maintain on amd so they(otoy) seem to have made the choice to only support AS GPUs. Apple could oc make drivers that take AS optimized metal code and makes it compatible with amd. Seems very unlikely that we will see amd GPUs again. This means that apple really will have to have a gpu solution that will be in the same ballpark as amd at least. Not nvidia level but maybe 50% in real world scenarios? 152 GPU cores would mean about 50 teraflops in best case, half of a 1600 $ 4090. If no RT cores then that apple igpu will not be able to compare in any way to nvidia solutions. Maybe some mem bound sim
stuff will be excellent but for raw rendering probably worse than current mp 2019 with dual 6900xt and much worse that dual 6800 duo. Have a hard time believing apple would release something as underpowered as that. So….. apple mpx modules with extra gpu cores then? Making it modular etc?

 

[jscipione]

There will be no PCIe slots on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro nor any RAM slots nor any other expansion. It will be an appliance Mac like the rest. Get your Intel Mac Pro now while you still can, it is and will forever be the greatest Macintosh ever made.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

There will be no PCIe slots on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro nor any RAM slots nor any other expansion. It will be an appliance Mac like the rest.

Unlikely. Otherwise what would separate it from the Mac Studio? Performance only?

 

[MarkC426]

There will be no PCIe slots on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro nor any RAM slots nor any other expansion. It will be an appliance Mac like the rest. Get your Intel Mac Pro now while you still can, it is and will forever be the greatest Macintosh ever made.

I am in agreement with you on this.
Apple just don't want people upgrading....which is not very environmentally friendly if you ask me.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I am in agreement with you on this.
Apple just don't want people upgrading....which is not very environmentally friendly if you ask me.

Depends what they’re upgrading, though. Sure I understand RAM being soldered as that contributes huge gains to Apple Silicon performance, but adding PCIe support is a greater bet for Apple than eliminating it entirely. It’s more about satisfying an existing standard that isn’t going away any time soon, because it spans multiple platforms and has useful legacy.

The 2019 MP is remarkably engineered and the efforts Apple made to market its expansion suggest they misjudged how much professionals wanted the option to add sound cards, video decoders, SSD drives and much more.

As was said after the ‘trash can’ MP release; it’s not that people don’t want an all-integrated solution, it’s that they want the option of having that or internal expansion as their needs require.

 

[jscipione]

Unlikely. Otherwise what would separate it from the Mac Studio? Performance only?

Mac Studio has up to two m2 processors one one die in the Ultra version, Mac Pro will have up to four m2 processors on die in the Hyper (or whatever they call it) version. So yeah, more parallel performance. Of course you’ll be able to buy the base confit as well which will have little to no performance improvement over Mac Studio just as the Mac Studio base unit has little performance improvement over the Mac mini.

 

[EugW]

There will be no PCIe slots on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro nor any RAM slots nor any other expansion. It will be an appliance Mac like the rest. Get your Intel Mac Pro now while you still can, it is and will forever be the greatest Macintosh ever made.

Well, the author of this thread has stated it has PCIe slots.

 

[jscipione]

Well, the author of this thread has stated it has PCIe slots.

OP stated that he saw a dev unit that featured a single PCIe slot but did not indicate that the slot would actually ship in the final product. My bet is that it won’t.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Mac Studio has up to two m2 processors one one die in the Ultra version, Mac Pro will have up to four m2 processors on die in the Hyper (or whatever they call it) version. So yeah, more parallel performance. Of course you’ll be able to buy the base confit as well which will have little to no performance improvement over Mac Studio just as the Mac Studio base unit has little performance improvement over the Mac mini.

With respect, why would Apple release a new hardware infrastructure if the base performance is the same as the Studio? Currently there is a huge spec and performance difference between the Mini and Studio, and it’s likely Apple wants this because it forces people to upgrade if they need, for instance, better performance or more I/O.

 

[EugW]

OP stated that he saw a dev unit that featured a single PCIe slot but did not indicate that the slot would actually ship in the final product. My bet is that it won’t.

Later dev unit has 6 PCIe slots.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/40-core-asi-with-pci-e-slot-is-around-the-corner.2350872/page-11?post=31661274#post-31661274

In retrospect, given Apple's design choices for the existing Apple Silicon Macs, a Mac Pro with PCIe slots but no RAM slots (and no GPU support in the PCIe slots) makes the most sense. Otherwise there is not much point to the Mac Pro as it would just be a faster trash can, aka Mac Studio Extreme.

 

[jscipione]

Well maybe the processor will be slightly faster, an m2x of similar and more USB-C ports.

Mark Gurman has a long history of making bad predictions, take what he says with a grain of salt.