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

[singhs.apps]

What evidence do we have over the effort they are willing to put in? A lot of the same things were being said about the 7,1 and it surprised everyone. We basically got everything we asked for. It was a cheese grater with more slots.

Now if that is your supposition, I can say it's not an unfair supposition. But that's different than some evidence of effort.

Frankly, if they dont put in the effort to make this also a modular machine, they should just forget it. Because the pros/enthusiasts will abandon apple and this was just a wasted exercise. So I'm going to be more optimistic and say, they're going to put in a lot of effort to make this what pros/enthusiasts want.

Hopefully we'll find out this year who guessed better.

There are also other aspects to look into :
If the Mac Pro is to be nothing but an Soc with one PCIe slot, apart from the AS ‘extreme’ version, what’s to differentiate between a Mac studio AS ultra and a Mac Pro with an AS Ultra ?? Just one PCI-e ?

If a Mac Pro is ‘by definition modular’ then attaching a keyboard, mouse and a monitor can fit that definition, which the Mac studio already addresses. It’s plenty for the closed box paradigm that some peeps wanted a Mac Pro to be. The tcMP fit that bill too.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

There are also other aspects to look into :
If the Mac Pro is to be nothing but an Soc with one PCIe slot, apart from the AS ‘extreme’ version, what’s to differentiate between a Mac studio AS ultra and a Mac Pro with an AS Ultra ?? Just one PCI-e ?

If a Mac Pro is ‘by definition modular’ then attaching a keyboard, mouse and a monitor can fit that definition, which the Mac studio already addresses. It’s plenty for the closed box paradigm that some peeps wanted a Mac Pro to be. The tcMP fit that bill too.

I think “modular” has been proven beyond any doubt to mean slots. I see no reason to change its definition to be the failed guesswork/headless trashcan/meaning that was proven incorrect by the 7,1. This narrative that It could mean something else was, again, a proven failed speculation by reeality/7,1.

I think the 1 slot machine is likely a pre-production and incomplete testing platform. Apple makes many dead-end pre production units. Nothing in this report suggested it’s a final design, and many things suggest it’s not a final design.

To your point, making a machine that is essentially the studio, with just one slot, seems rather dumb as they are essentially the same machine and a single slot does not offer enough modularity/marketing differentiation.

To somewhat put this on its head, perhaps this one slot design is not a prototype of the Mac Pro, but a variation of the Mac studio apple considered and didn’t pursue. A studio with some limited expansion.

 

[kvic]

If the Mac Pro is to be nothing but an Soc with one PCIe slot, apart from the AS ‘extreme’ version, what’s to differentiate between a Mac studio AS ultra and a Mac Pro with an AS Ultra ?? Just one PCI-e ?

Given what we know so far, analysing and predicting the new Mac Pro is no longer an interesting career on this forum. lol. However, you raised a good question and I'll give it a shot.

First of all, marketing ppl at Apple will come out with interesting/artificial metrics for product differentiation for sure. IMO, other than different combinations of CPU & GPU cores, essentially it may come down to two things:

• higher memory capacity, possibly with some sort of ECC exclusive to the new Mac Pro
• FOUR slots of PCIe v4.0 (two slots of x16 lanes, two slots of x8 lanes), that's what I think Apple can squeeze out of M2 Max die with little change to its design

This fits the bill of a 'half-sized' Mac Pro that Bloomberg Gurman spearheaded the rumour but has stopped mentioning it ever since.

 

[singhs.apps]

To somewhat put this on its head, perhaps this one slot design is not a prototype of the Mac Pro, but a variation of the Mac studio apple considered and didn’t pursue. A studio with some limited expansion.

Yes. Either the studio was an in between solution until they could push out a better than 7’1 system, or they bungled the Mac Pro m1 variety (it just wasn’t powerful enough).
That said, on the CPU side of things, the AS extreme version would/will be very competitive in the workstation market. It will be on par with single socket xeons and pretty decent against a Threadripper.

The weak links in the chain are the GPU…

…And the expansion dilemma

 

[singhs.apps]

Given what we know so far, analysing and predicting the new Mac Pro is no longer an interesting career on this forum. lol. However, you raised a good question and I'll give it a shot.

First of all, marketing ppl at Apple will come out with interesting/artificial metrics for product differentiation for sure. IMO, other than different combinations of CPU & GPU cores, essentially it may come down to two things:

• higher memory capacity, possibly with some sort of ECC exclusive to the new Mac Pro
• FOUR slots of PCIe v4.0 (two slots of x16 lanes, two slots of x8 lanes), that's what I think Apple can squeeze out of M2 Max die with little change to its design

This fits the bill of a 'half-sized' Mac Pro that Bloomberg Gurman spearheaded the rumour but has stopped mentioning it ever since.

I can live with that.. just give us Threadripper class and 2x 4090 performance (Soc + dGPU)…

 

[mattspace]

I think the 1 slot machine is likely a pre-production and incomplete testing platform. Apple makes many dead-end pre production units. Nothing in this report suggested it’s a final design, and many things suggest it’s not a final design.

The original iMac shipped with a motherboard slot - the "Mezzanine" slot that was never a supported expansion slot, and in the second version they removed the access port through the case, so that it couldn't be practically used. For a short time, there were 3rd party Mezzanine cards available for the iMac, even though it wasn't a sanctioned slot.

 

[kvic]

I can live with that.. just give us Threadripper class and 2x 4090 performance (Soc + dGPU)…

You can always dream of it..

Seriously though. I think professionals should migrate to PC workstations if user expansion, modularity, 3rd party GPUs & etc are important for their businesses. The underlying OS carries little relevance to professionals & businesses. It's applications and application environment where you spend 99% of your revenue driving hours.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You can always dream of it..

Seriously though. I think professionals should migrate to PC workstations if user expansion, modularity, 3rd party GPUs & etc are important for their businesses. The underlying OS carries little relevance to professionals & businesses. It's applications and application environment where you spend 99% of your revenue driving hours.

It’s not just that. It’s the crazy ones. The influencers. The movie makers that slip macs into their movies. They have an outsized effect. Once you force them out of apple and into pc/Linux products, you have a decay of that influence.

I want to use apple products. But if they treat us like children and don’t deliver on what we ask for, we will leave. Be careful what you ask for. There are lots of consequences to it that are not immediate, but may be profound.

 

[kvic]

It’s not just that. It’s the crazy ones. The influencers. The movie makers that slip macs into their movies. They have an outsized effect. Once you force them out of apple and into pc/Linux products, you have a decay of that influence.

I want to use apple products. But if they treat us like children and don’t deliver on what we ask for, we will leave. Be careful what you ask for. There are lots of consequences to it that are not immediate, but may be profound.

I'm afraid the new Mac Pro is very likely a 'half-sized' Mac Pro (w.r.t. MacPro7,1) with four PCIe slots and soldered memory and no dGPU (Apple or 3rd party; compute or display) support.

Every cloud has its silver lining. People (especially existing MacPro7,1 users) seem to neglect the probability that with a weaker than usual MacPro8,1, your welfare with MacPro7,1 is perhaps prolonged and enriched in some way. At the very least, you might get a few extra new versions of x86_64 MacOS.

For quite a lot of people I would imagine, the last point is sufficient to kick the can down the road. And see if Apple can sort out the problem in the next Mac Pro after MacPro8,1.

 

[singhs.apps]

I'm afraid the new Mac Pro is very likely a 'half-sized' Mac Pro (w.r.t. MacPro7,1) with four PCIe slots and soldered memory and no dGPU (Apple or 3rd party; compute or display) support.

Every cloud has its silver lining. People (especially existing MacPro7,1 users) seem to neglect the probability that with a weaker than usual MacPro8,1, your welfare with MacPro7,1 is perhaps prolonged and enriched in some way. At the very least, you might get a few extra new versions of x86_64 MacOS.

For quite a lot of people I would imagine, the last point is sufficient to kick the can down the road. And see if Apple can sort out the problem in the next Mac Pro after MacPro8,1.

What would be the logic of not wanting to release a dGPU or support an AMD one ? Considering their own Soc variety won’t be as powerful as the latest ones from Nvidia/AMD, why deny support for even one mpx module through the four PCI-e slots you say might be available?

Why wouldn’t a 7’1 want an opportunity to buy an 8’1 ? just because they have already invested in the 7’1, so a truncated 8’1 makes them feel better about their investment in the previous gen ?

I think at some point we will see an apple dGPU.

 

[kvic]

What would be the logic of not wanting to release a dGPU or support an AMD one ? Considering their own Soc variety won’t be as powerful as the latest ones from Nvidia/AMD, why deny support for even one mpx module through the four PCI-e slots you say might be available?

I mentioned Apple dGPUs a lot in the first few pages of this thread. I also raised the need of a 'Apple dGPU expansion bus'.

Imagine the bus is Apple's better version of 'Infinity Fabric' or 'NVLink' with excellent & additional property that it also directly connects to CPU clusters.

IMO, this new bus need to exist to solve 'unified memory' programming paradigm which Apple is focussed on right now. Also it'll allow Apple to economically reuse current SoC dies or part of chiplets dies in future as dGPUs. Without this new bus/connectivity, I don't see Apple will do dGPUs.

dGPUs over PCIe such as MPX violate the 'nice and feverishly bragged about' unified memory programming paradigm Apple preaches. I thought while possible but very unlikely Apple would do dGPUs over PCIe. The lack of MPX slot in the leaked info ruled out the slightest possibility of this happening in the next Mac Pro.

 

[singhs.apps]

I mentioned Apple dGPUs a lot in the first few pages of this thread. I also raised the need of a 'Apple dGPU expansion bus'.

Imagine the bus is Apple's better version of 'Infinity Fabric' or 'NVLink' with excellent & additional property that it also directly connects to CPU clusters.

IMO, this new bus need to exist to solve 'unified memory' programming paradigm which Apple is focussed on right now. Also it'll allow Apple to economically reuse current SoC dies or part of chiplets dies in future as dGPUs. Without this new bus/connectivity, I don't see Apple will do dGPUs.

dGPUs over PCIe such as MPX violate the 'nice and feverishly bragged about' unified memory programming paradigm Apple preaches. I thought while possible but very unlikely Apple would do dGPUs over PCIe. The lack of MPX slot in the leaked info ruled out the slightest possibility of this happening in the next Mac Pro.

A dGPU doesn’t violate the unified memory Apple wants to brag about.
A dGPU doesn’t replace the Soc GPU.
It’s an extra compute module, perhaps with it’s own onboard ram communicating over PCI-e 5.
Whether that’s an AMD card or Apple’s own.

 

[kvic]

A dGPU doesn’t violate the unified memory Apple wants to brag about.

Wrong.

A dGPU doesn’t replace the Soc GPU.

Make sense.

My view is Apple won't back down on their way, and would rather come up with something innovative & unique like I would imagine or abandon dGPUs for now.

 

[singhs.apps]

Wrong.



Make sense.

My view is Apple won't back down on their way, and would rather come up with something innovative & unique like I would imagine or abandon dGPUs for now.

Read the second line of my previous post.
A dGPU is NOT a replacement for SOC GPU. Hence its existence doesn't violate the claimed unified memory

 

[kvic]

Read the second line of my previous post.
A dGPU is NOT a replacement for SOC GPU. Hence its existence doesn't violate the claimed unified memory

you missed an important point: Apple wants GPU programming to happen in a single address space aka unified memory

 

[singhs.apps]

you missed an important point: Apple wants GPU programming to happen in a single address space aka unified memory

Pointless if the soc GPU lags seriously behind other alternatives.

 

[kvic]

Pointless if the soc GPU lags seriously behind other alternatives.

yeah, quite childish both you and Apple if you ask me

 

[singhs.apps]

yeah, quite childish both you and Apple if you ask me

Don’t get personal, son

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

It's still not out the realm of possibility that they'll continue with the existing enclosure. If you really think about it Apple only needs to redesign the motherboard to get the most of their silicon, but the rest of the device - casing, steel frame, fan housing - is very much reusable.

 

[macsplusmacs]

It's still not out the realm of possibility that they'll continue with the existing enclosure. If you really think about it Apple only needs to redesign the motherboard to get the most of their silicon, but the rest of the device - casing, steel frame, fan housing - is very much reusable.

The old Mac 2 desktops from the 80's 90's had six nuBus slots, I remember seeing some article that said apple did a survey and it turns out on 1.2 slots were ever used by customers on average.

I can see Bloomberg's prediction of a smaller Mac Pro being something along the lines of, current Mac Pro customers only use 1.2 of the PCI-E slots, so our MX Mac pros will go down to 3 slots.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I'm afraid the new Mac Pro is very likely a 'half-sized' Mac Pro (w.r.t. MacPro7,1) with four PCIe slots and soldered memory and no dGPU (Apple or 3rd party; compute or display) support.

Every cloud has its silver lining. People (especially existing MacPro7,1 users) seem to neglect the probability that with a weaker than usual MacPro8,1, your welfare with MacPro7,1 is perhaps prolonged and enriched in some way. At the very least, you might get a few extra new versions of x86_64 MacOS.

For quite a lot of people I would imagine, the last point is sufficient to kick the can down the road. And see if Apple can sort out the problem in the next Mac Pro after MacPro8,1.

What evidence do you have that 3rd party GPUs won’t work other than your speculation? What evidence do you have of only 4 slots? This seems a repeat of all the wrong speculation of what the modular 7,1 would be.

 

[edanuff]

What evidence do you have that 3rd party GPUs won’t work other than your speculation? What evidence do you have of only 4 slots? This seems a repeat of all the wrong speculation of what the modular 7,1 would be.

the disappearance of eGPU support

 

[kvic]

What evidence do you have that 3rd party GPUs won’t work other than your speculation?

By 'your speculation', I take it as my explanation of dGPUs over PCIe in conflict of Apple's 'unified memory' GPU programming paradigm. You may call it speculation or whatever you like. I see it as a justification of the lack of 3rd party dGPUs support as of now, and possibly why Apple won't do it.

I know some of you hoping 3rd party dGPUs support. The burden of proof is on you to find some sort of evidence in MacOS to make your dream sound more plausible. Hypothetical assertion such as Apple iGPUs won't be as good as X number of Y brand dGPUs are not reasonable nor considered evidence.

What evidence do you have of only 4 slots?

I feel like typing out is penalising myself. Why should I? In a nutshell, I think one M2 Max die will support one PCIe 4.0 slot. Hence, four in total. Now do your own imagination. Or just label mine as speculation. I'm fine with it. lol.

This seems a repeat of all the wrong speculation of what the modular 7,1 would be.

I wasn't here. Don't know what happened. Don't want to know what happened. I perhaps could imagine what have happened though.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I think one M2 Max die will support one PCIe 4.0 slot.

Out of curiosity, how did you come to this conclusion?

 

[goMac]

Every cloud has its silver lining. People (especially existing MacPro7,1 users) seem to neglect the probability that with a weaker than usual MacPro8,1, your welfare with MacPro7,1 is perhaps prolonged and enriched in some way. At the very least, you might get a few extra new versions of x86_64 MacOS.

The real risk is if Apple stops updating the AMD drivers for new cards. Then the 7,1's life is going to be capped. If the 6900 XT drivers are the last ones we get - thats a problem.