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

[spaz8]

I think the significant investment in new silicon, for what is likely to be a dying product sector depends on how you look at it. Perhaps more than the Mac Pro would benefit from this approach? I agree that computers have gotten to a place that an M1 chip is plenty for 90%+ of the populations work. Perhaps in another decade mobile chips will cover 99% of use cases? but its gonna be a painful decade till the M10 arrives. As we are all aware the corner Apple has painted themselves into is the hubris of the ability to scale up a mobile SOC design to compete or be in the same zip code as its contemporary HEDT competitors - at least this quickly.

It was obvious to me that you can not die shrink forever, and you can't double transistors or glue 16x integrated Soc's together to compete with even a RTX 4080.. so there needs to be some sort of paradigm shift at least in the short term to bridge the gap to when M10 is a thing and all that's left unserviced by the ASi designs are scientific computing.

It all comes down to what apple actually wants to provide. Its been pretty sad to see them totally out of the ML/AI game for the last 7 yrs so. I am more than happy to entertain the rumours that some TPU add-on card for ML is in the works. The Mac Pro usually represents the best apple can/is willing to do. So it says a lot about what the company values or does not.

 

[Rnd-chars]

I could certainly see Apple investing in new silicon for Mac Pro especially since it would provide an iterative solution that could later be integrated into an SOC. After all, they did this with both their Afterburner and T1/T2 chips.

This approach has a number of benefits from an engineering and product perspective:
- faster time to market
- provides real world telemetry on solution
- development cost offset by high-end product
- can effectively test their solution in production and iterate on generalized approach
- allows category differentiating capabilities to “trickle down” to portable/mobile SKUs disrupting those markets.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You've really hit the nail on the head, it comes down to what different customers need, rather than what they want.

People seem to forget what the main selling point of the Mac Pro used to be - performance. If you wanted good performance in a variety of applications, you simply had to use the Mac Pro since consumer chips of the time couldn't keep up with software innovation and digital standards.

Years ago I was an audio engineer working both freelance and for smaller music/film studios. Mac Pros were the standard everywhere because they offered good value for the performance and software. The idea of using one of the iBooks/plastic Mac notebooks of the period would have been laughable.

But this is no longer the case. Today an M2 MacBook Air can handle multi-track Logic Pro and 4K timelines in FCP whilst barely breaking a sweat. These are only two examples of workflows, but it's clear that what defines a 'professional' today is very different to when having a tower Mac was crucial. Performance has been democratised, applications are more varied, and people make money in different ways.

Internal configuration was clearly another benefit - yet increasingly this is becoming less important again for specific market segments, as other solutions have become more suitable for modern workflows. More storage is accessed remotely, many PCIe features are being obsoleted by better technologies, and even the idea of having to replace graphics cards on a regular basis is becoming old hat. There are those in our community who like the idea of being able to open a Mac and replace a graphic cards, but it appears to me that many are hobbyists rather than professionals who would, for whatever reason, benefit from next years card.

Apple wants to be 'in control of the whole widget' as Steve Jobs put it, and who can blame them? I look on Mac Studio as more of a proof-of-concept than anything. Yes, it will continue to fulfil a lot of needs because the price-performance ratio is spot on, and it's proven that there is a segment needing performance but not internal expansion. But Apple has notoriously done as much as they can on their own terms and that is the price of being in their eco-system.

The harsh truth is that Mac Pro has existed not because Apple wants users to 'tinker' and replace components, but because for the longest time there was no other option if they wanted to provide good performance. 6,1 may have been an 'apology', but I would be fascinated to know how many owners have actually purchased another MPX module after the initial configuration.

Disagree. You just wave your hand saying people don’t need to configure internally. The very same audio industry you say would be dated by a MacBook Air needs many and great variety of disparate PCI cards.

Waving your hands of disinterest doesn’t make it so.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Disagree. You just wave your hand saying people don’t need to configure internally. The very same audio industry you say would be dated by a MacBook Air needs many and great variety of disparate PCI cards.

Waving your hands of disinterest doesn’t make it so.

I said a ‘specific’ segment, not every user.

 

[mode11]

As we are all aware the corner Apple has painted themselves into is the hubris of the ability to scale up a mobile SOC design to compete or be in the same zip code as its contemporary HEDT competitors - at least this quickly.

I'm not so sure even Apple has that much hubris. I think they were confident they could service the laptops / laptop-like desktops, which are the vast majority of sales, and the benefits of moving macOS to ASi were so compelling they just went for it. They likely thought they'd be able to work out something for the Mac Pro, but were cavalier as they're generally ambivalent about that product line anyway.

The Mac Pro usually represents the best apple can/is willing to do. So it says a lot about what the company values or does not.

Yes. The reveal, if and when it ever comes, will tell us a lot about Apple's long-term vision for ASi.

 

[theluggage]

The very same audio industry you say would be dated by a MacBook Air needs many and great variety of disparate PCI cards.

...which can be plugged into a MacBook Air - more likely a Mac Studio or MacBook Pro - via a TB-to-PCIe enclosure. You can already get external PCIe enclosures for Mac Mini/Studio, with rack mounting if you want to keep it neat. A M2 Max/Ultra "Mac Pro" with the audio industry in mind could sacrifice a couple of TB4 ports to provide enough 4-8 lane internal PCIe slots for specialist interfaces. That's not the problem for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The main complaint in this thread seems to be that that a M2 Ultra won't compete with the latest workstation-class GPUs that need the extreme PCIe bandwidth provided by the Xeon W. Then there's the >1TB RAM capability - which adds several thousand bucks to the price because it requires the M-suffix Xeon chips, BTW. Those are the problems facing an Apple Silicon Mac Pro (plus, even AMD GPU support would be second prize - its pretty clear that people want NVIDIA which might be politically difficult).

 

[theluggage]

I could certainly see Apple investing in new silicon for Mac Pro especially since it would provide an iterative solution that could later be integrated into an SOC. After all, they did this with both their Afterburner and T1/T2 chips.

Not sure about Afterburner but I'm pretty sure that the T1/T2 tech, neural engine and, indeed, most of the CPU and GPU tech in the M-series trickled up from the iPhone/iPad SoCs, not down from the Mac Pro.

 

[Mago]

Consider the Mac Pro (and whatever it may offer as compute accelerator) will be central for development using large language models, right now to run locally Meta's Alpaca 65B you need ideally an Nvidia A100 GPU but it also run on some Mac studio and MacBook pro (ok don't run actually walks slowly), that's because it needs near 80gb GPU assigned RAM, thus you may run it at 4 rtx4090 a single A100 rtx ADA or a Mac with at least 96gb "unified" ram.

Have someone toyed with chatGPT? When Siri will be capable on doing the same? I bet it will be this year.

Developing apps around LLM as alpaca or GPT-4 will be a thing specially next year smart AI features like m$ copilot ot Github copilot-x or funny things as dall-e midjourney etc are the new Big thing, Apple is betting high on AR/XR I think it will be a thing for training, fitness and some gaming, but what moves the money are gadget that enables new "superpowers" as the iPhone did putting a functional web 1.0 enabled computer in your pocket, or as was the original Apple II enabling individuals to run programs doing calculations or processing documents so they don't spend their time when previously an typo forced you to fully type again a simple letter.

That's where money is moving now AR/XR cool and it's implementations at training fitness entertainment likely to drag some people but there will be people asking an AI on how to fix his duties in order to get money to spend in cool fitness XR sessions.

Did I mention fitness and training are reality PRO's "winner apps"?... Sorry Mark 😔not my intention

 

[Rnd-chars]

most of the CPU and GPU tech in the M-series trickled up from the iPhone/iPad SoCs, not down from the Mac Pro.

I can see that perspective. I was approaching it from the fact that Apple confirmed that the T1 was the first SoC built for the Mac and whose functionality was later integrated into the Mx SoC. But you make a fair point that most of the functionality of the Mx chips came from earlier Ax iterations.

As for the Afterburner and its performance, I’m unaware of any products prior to it or Mx that offered similar performance (even accounting for performance per watt), which is why I referred to it as trickling down. As far as I know, the iPhone 13 Pro was the first to support ProRes and that wasn‘t release until two years after Afterburner.

Interestingly (at least to me) using FPGA provided them with a high degree of flexibility (e.g., ability to update instructions post ship) and (I speculate) informed their ProRes encoder/decoder design, allowing an M1 Ultra with its two ProRes encoder/decode engines to perform 5.6x faster than a 28 Core Mac Pro (384GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro W6900X graphics with 32GB of GDDR6, Afterburner, 4TB SSD) or an M1 Max MacBook Pro to perform 3X faster, which has only 1 ProRes encode/decode engine.

I’m curious if they’ll launch another FPGA-based accelerator (perhaps for AI), which could eventually trickle down to Mx chips.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I said a ‘specific’ segment, not every user.

ok

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

...which can be plugged into a MacBook Air - more likely a Mac Studio or MacBook Pro - via a TB-to-PCIe enclosure. You can already get external PCIe enclosures for Mac Mini/Studio, with rack mounting if you want to keep it neat. A M2 Max/Ultra "Mac Pro" with the audio industry in mind could sacrifice a couple of TB4 ports to provide enough 4-8 lane internal PCIe slots for specialist interfaces. That's not the problem for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The main complaint in this thread seems to be that that a M2 Ultra won't compete with the latest workstation-class GPUs that need the extreme PCIe bandwidth provided by the Xeon W. Then there's the >1TB RAM capability - which adds several thousand bucks to the price because it requires the M-suffix Xeon chips, BTW. Those are the problems facing an Apple Silicon Mac Pro (plus, even AMD GPU support would be second prize - its pretty clear that people want NVIDIA which might be politically difficult).

The main complaint is some people project the "I don't need/want it so you don't need it" or "I don't need/want it so I don't want you to have it" vibe endlessly and don't see themselves at all.

 

[mattspace]

I would be fascinated to know how many owners have actually purchased another MPX module after the initial configuration.

"Most" people probably trade in a car before they replace the brakes, so cars should have brakes, or indeed tyres that cannot be replaced, and cannot be upgraded to a higher specification by the car's owner?

The Mac Pro is in the pricerange of a car now.

 

[avro707]

Most" people probably trade in a car before they replace the brakes, so cars should have brakes, or indeed tyres that cannot be replaced, and cannot be upgraded to a higher specification by the car's owner?

The Mac Pro is in the pricerange of a car now.

I was thinking of it - just waiting to see what happens.

Before that I intend to upgrade it to a 2.5ghz 28 core CPU.

 

[theluggage]

The main complaint is some people project the "I don't need/want it so you don't need it" or "I don't need/want it so I don't want you to have it" vibe endlessly and don't see themselves at all.

...only if you cherry pick a few lame posts and ignore all the reasoned arguments here about why it might be difficult and expensive to appease people who want their dual NVIDIA 4090s and 2TB RAM, and how - in any case - the result would be a "me too" generic tower workstation with no market beyond a tiny and dwindling niche doing high-end 3D rendering and ML training with MacOS-only software. This in a world where the "heavy lifting" is likely to move into the cloud over the next few years, while laptops and small-form-factor systems now offer desktop-level performance.

Even then, the "lame" posts have a point because a Mac Pro that does support such extreme expansion would likely be priced out of the range of people with more modest needs - which is exactly what happened in 2019 when Apple doubled the entry price of the Mac Pro (...more like tripled by the time you expanded into something that could show the iMac a clean pair of heels). That was with most of the power and bandwidth coming courtesy of Intel and AMD rather than Apple needing to create a new CPU on their own dime. The Studio was a partial solution to that (if you can swallow the non-expandable pill) but now we have talk (hopefully wrong) about the Studio update being held back because of a forthcoming Mac Pro.

 

[AndreeOnline]

I would be fascinated to know how many owners have actually purchased another MPX module after the initial configuration.

I was very close to modernizing my Vega Pro II when OWC sold out a batch of various MPX modules (like 6800 Duos) for pretty much half price.

I didn't jump on it then but picked up another Vega Pro II for cheap on the used market locally.

But the possibility to scour the internet for deals "down the road" and pop the higher-end MPX modules in there, has always been the long-term goal—similar to how the 5.1 upgrades got really cheap at the end.
Even with the current MPX options—and especially if Apple would release another round of updates—the 7.1 could become a really tidy workstation for a certain group of users that rely heavily on GPU power and want to use macOS.

I'm not in love with the fact that the 7.1 single-thread performance seems to be dead in the water going forward, but it's also not worthless by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

...only if you cherry pick a few lame posts and ignore all the reasoned arguments here about why it might be difficult and expensive to appease people who want their dual NVIDIA 4090s and 2TB RAM, and how - in any case - the result would be a "me too" generic tower workstation with no market beyond a tiny and dwindling niche doing high-end 3D rendering and ML training with MacOS-only software. This in a world where the "heavy lifting" is likely to move into the cloud over the next few years, while laptops and small-form-factor systems now offer desktop-level performance.

Even then, the "lame" posts have a point because a Mac Pro that does support such extreme expansion would likely be priced out of the range of people with more modest needs - which is exactly what happened in 2019 when Apple doubled the entry price of the Mac Pro (...more like tripled by the time you expanded into something that could show the iMac a clean pair of heels). That was with most of the power and bandwidth coming courtesy of Intel and AMD rather than Apple needing to create a new CPU on their own dime. The Studio was a partial solution to that (if you can swallow the non-expandable pill) but now we have talk (hopefully wrong) about the Studio update being held back because of a forthcoming Mac Pro.

Only if "only if".

 

[spaz8]

...only if you cherry pick a few lame posts and ignore all the reasoned arguments here about why it might be difficult and expensive to appease people who want their dual NVIDIA 4090s and 2TB RAM, and how - in any case - the result would be a "me too" generic tower workstation with no market beyond a tiny and dwindling niche doing high-end 3D rendering and ML training with MacOS-only software. This in a world where the "heavy lifting" is likely to move into the cloud over the next few years, while laptops and small-form-factor systems now offer desktop-level performance.

Even then, the "lame" posts have a point because a Mac Pro that does support such extreme expansion would likely be priced out of the range of people with more modest needs - which is exactly what happened in 2019 when Apple doubled the entry price of the Mac Pro (...more like tripled by the time you expanded into something that could show the iMac a clean pair of heels). That was with most of the power and bandwidth coming courtesy of Intel and AMD rather than Apple needing to create a new CPU on their own dime. The Studio was a partial solution to that (if you can swallow the non-expandable pill) but now we have talk (hopefully wrong) about the Studio update being held back because of a forthcoming Mac Pro.

I guess I'm one of the red-headed step children that wants to continue to do 3d and try and do ML in a semi-meaningful way on OSX.

At this point I'll be impressed if the ASi Mac Pro supports up to 384 GB ram, and can match ONE GTX 3090 in compute. Certainly not expecting to see even 1 TB of ram or a single 4090 worth of compute power.

 

[prefuse07]

I guess I'm one of the red-headed step children that wants to continue to do 3d and try and do ML in a semi-meaningful way on OSX.

At this point I'll be impressed if the ASi Mac Pro supports up to 384 GB ram, and can match ONE GTX 3090 in compute. Certainly not expecting to see even 1 TB of ram or a single 4090 worth of compute power.

TBH -- I'll be impressed if they can match a bloody RX-6800XT in compute...

 

[backtopoints]

I don't know if the Mac Pro is coming at the WWDC, or what kind of machine it would be. Only thing I know is a pro class machine for 3D professionals should be like a Pro Machine! That's it! If a machine isn't upgradable it's a huge nonsense to us! that's it. We need more GPUs for Rendering, more Rams and cores for Simulations and previews, and more storage spaces for Render and Cache files. If Apple doesn't come up with a modular machine, this would be the last straw for many like us who have counted on Apple for many occasion but been walked out on due to the un-modular machines like the trash-can and abandoned softwares like Shake and Color. If the upcoming Mac Pro isn't modular, what's the point of developing it? You already have a semi-pro machine like Mac Studio which is an option for many pros up to motion graphics artists (which is arguable for many cases though). But when it comes to 3D, VFX, Compositing and Simulation, this is really something else you all know it. If Apple wants to come with an un-modular machine, Let them come to see the last nail on the coffin for the relationship between many pros and them.

 

[Mago]

Let's summarize And property interpret the most repeated rumours, it's plausibility and how could we assembly it as the Mac Pro we would love:

CPU, memory:

Gurman States Apple abandoned the M2 extreme (previously M2 Ultra Duo), bases it on apple needed m2 max to keep the MBP production output:

Everybody knows I'm Gurman anti-fan, from Mac mini m2-pro he lost his apple Mac hardware source and begin doing "educated" guessing to fill his column, happened one of his sources of educated guessing is YouTuber maxtech and his partner vardim yurgev, they miss informed the community about what's UltraFusion and how apple glue two mX-max chip, according his original guessing UltraFusion was just Two m2 baked at the same waffer fused at one Edge, as the believe an m2 ultra is made if said pair comes without imperfections then apple just cut the remaining silicon and allowed the working pair to stay fussed (monolithic), it's sounds quite plausible but was wrong as apple is using an silicon bridge on TSMC inFO-LSI technology which is known as 3D stacking, then later they figured how would Apple "glue" two monolithic M1 Ultra into a single sandwiched M2 quad (as they believe path length is an issues for Signal speed ... Uhhhh), then they invented that Dual m1 ultra duo theory (flawed just an reimagine on Intel similar idea), feedback among them and Gurman been continuous and I believe Gurman has a deal with them to early publish that guessing at their newsletter using the "I believe..." Language.

forget everything you know about the Mac Pro CPU so.

Good news is it comes very soon, bad news is no body reputable had a consistent image on its form factor, apple triple down on it, with quite good success.


I know people here don't believe me, but I'm ultra confident on my sources and I'm sure the mac pro comes with 4 m2-max arranged as a single MCM and should look very similar to AMD Epyc, Apple prototypes seems consumed std DDR5LP ram DIMMs so at least their prototypes (or apple sourced q bunch of DDR5 ram for his own cloud servers).

The Mac Pro without 4 m2max max it's an joke, but even with 4 slightly overclocked M2 max, it's GPU Power barely matches a single AMD RX7900 xtx or the New W7900 (i found notwithstanding AMD/Apple readies w7900 support at least for the 7,1, maybe as an new mpx upgrade), then is widely commented Apple is doing research (with some parents) on new multipurpose compute accelerator (not that compute device based on m1max), but that's Even more secretive than the AR glasses (IMHO over hyped, i agree with Gurman on that), and little is known beyond educated speculation.

Said that, I'm confident that the Mac Pro should include some likely air-cooled CPU/GPU complex slightly overclocked and surrounding 400W Max tdp (if included soldered RAM), it could provide either PCIe5 slots at least for non compute peripherals, but what about dGPUs? Ok there's is nothing in Mac os preventing mixed GPU architectures, and some sources had commented the Mac Pro Will still be providing support for new AMD dGPUs (at least), it makes me remind that w7900 xtx (arriving in good timing as ever weeks earlier than it's Mac version), if apple is willing to offer that GPU (Even rx7900xtx) Wich also offer something Apple doesn't have Now: hardware ray tracing. But don't expect more than two AMD GPU as California 100kwh/yr PC power restrictions likely to add power constrains and a smaller power supply could be allowed at max 1000W for whole system.

From that the form factor should logically being derived from the acclaimed 7,1 , and while I love the trashcan, admit it has no future unless Apple radically wants to kick off Pro Users.

but the same chasis, unlikely as the new ASi likely requires much less volume for CPU complex and California 100kwh restrictions won't allow a 1200+ power supply, actually I think it should be among 800-1000W, so I estimate the new Mac pro ASi will be much smaller but nothing radical as much 2/3 than 7,1 all offering that 400$ wheels.

that's for a classic chesse grater, but what about Lego-like Mac Pro?

Apple may still surprise with some modular approach as something like MPX modules loaded with m2 ultra or extreme, and allowing 2 to 4 modules share storage and peripherals as where a single system, same way allowing yearly reasonable upgrades even allow not just 4 m2 Mac, even eight, so apple won't care on support 3d GPUs (still no jw+


Possible M3? Personally I consider It highly unlikely, but if Apple had matured it's InFO-LSI skills like AMD then it's possible and likely will be an absolute revolution across all the Mac and ipads, relying on two different base soc apple could supply all variant needed across the Mac Ecosystem, but even for m3 I don't think the Mac Pro to be the first m3 Mac, it likely will be a MacBook mini or iMac, this case the Mac Pro likely will be delayed untill 2024. Which seems won't happen unless the leaked mac14,13 and 14,14 are new studios

 

[Boil]

Going back to the product strings, or whatever they are...

Mac14,8
Mac14,13
Mac14,14

The new identifiers are Mac14,8, Mac14,13, and Mac14,14, and they appear in a list alongside Mac14,3 and Mac14,12, the identifiers for the latest M2 and ‌M2‌ Pro Mac mini models. The list in Apple's configuration file relates to overriding "separation monitoring," which suggests these could be desktop Mac models that do not need to be actively tracked via ‌Find My‌ for separation from the user as portable Macs do.

So if these are all desktops, the Mac14,8 could not be a 15" MacBook (Air)...?

What if...?

Mac14,8 = M2 Ultra Mac Pro
Mac14,13 = M2 Max Mac Studio
Mac14,14 = M2 Ultra Mac Studio

Just a thought...

 

[Chancha]

9to5 already reported they got source correlating 14,8 as the Mac Pro code named J180 (though it says it comes with M2 Max, lol):

Unreleased Macs show up in Apple’s Find My

We’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about new Macs coming in the next few months, although some of them...

9to5mac.com

Even so, a new Mac Pro with M2 Max could arrive later this year. 9to5Mac has evidence that Mac14,8 listed in the Find My files is the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, code-named J180. But of course, there’s a chance that these files are old and are listing Macs that will never see the light of day.

 

[Mago]

9to5 already reported they got source correlating 14,8 as the Mac Pro code named J180 (though it says it comes with M2 Max, lol):

Unreleased Macs show up in Apple’s Find My

We’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about new Macs coming in the next few months, although some of them...

9to5mac.com

The hell will frozen when they dare to challenge Mark Gurman.

Maybe 14,8 is the only Mac Pro configuration with Lego like design so you can add more m2 extreme modules, and 14,13 & 14,14 new studios, it's an Way to provide quad single, dual M2 max Mac not overlapping each other market, but also increase the possibility for the ASi Mac Pro to come as a trashcan or cube barely upgradeable, if so it will be the final Mac Pro ever.

 

[Mago]

Going back to the product strings, or whatever they are...

Mac14,8
Mac14,13
Mac14,14



So if these are all desktops, the Mac14,8 could not be a 15" MacBook (Air)...?

What if...?

Mac14,8 = M2 Ultra Mac Pro
Mac14,13 = M2 Max Mac Studio
Mac14,14 = M2 Ultra Mac Studio

Just a thought...

What if...?



Mac14,8 = M2 Ultra Extremme Modular Mac Pro

Mac14,13 = M2 Max Mac Studio

Mac14,14 = M2 Ultra Mac Studio



Just a  thought...

 

[Boil]

What if...?

Mac14,8 = Modular (M2 Ultra / M2 Extreme) Mac Pro

Mac14,13 = M2 Max Mac Studio

Mac14,14 = M2 Ultra Mac Studio

Just a thought...

I would rather see the Mac14,8 as a M2 Ultra Mac Pro that was only one of the test beds, but not a shipping product...