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

[mattspace]

Correction? I don't think anything I said precludes your assertion. My point was that, by using Apple Silicon, the Mac is more vertically integrated, with proprietary parts across the entire stack, hardware and software, beyond which Steve Jobs could have only dreamed of. As I said, whether that is a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective.

Jobs was interested in curing Apple of its love of proprietary parts. What happening now to Apple is literally the nightmare scenario he warned about when he was still at NeXT & Pixar.

Jobs pushed the Mac to be just an Apple-flavoured premium PC - Apple's value, was adding value to standards, not in creating its own evolutionary backwaters. The start of the decline in the Mac is the 2013 Mac Pro, which is a post-Jobs product. What is happening now, is the reassertion of the diseased corporate culture Apple had prior to NeXT putting their NIH tendencies into remission.

 

[Colstan]

There was 3rd party gpu support in the pre intel days as well.

I know. I just don't think Apple is going to start using third-party GPUs anytime in the future. By all indications, they're doing the exact opposite, and I don't see them changing course.

Jobs was interested in curing Apple of its love of proprietary parts. What happening now to Apple is literally the nightmare scenario he warned about when he was still at NeXT & Pixar.

I think that had more to do with desperation over the failure of the AIM alliance, but we shall disagree on this point, which is fine.

What is happening now, is the reassertion of the diseased corporate culture Apple had prior to NeXT putting their NIH tendencies into remission.

I haven't followed this thread long enough to know where you are coming from, but you seem rather salty over Apple's recent decisions. As I said, I have sympathy for those who invested in the Intel Mac Pro, but comparing Apple's business choices to a virulent infection is a bit much.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Jobs was interested in curing Apple of its love of proprietary parts. What happening now to Apple is literally the nightmare scenario he warned about when he was still at NeXT & Pixar.

Jobs pushed the Mac to be just an Apple-flavoured premium PC - Apple's value, was adding value to standards, not in creating its own evolutionary backwaters. The start of the decline in the Mac is the 2013 Mac Pro, which is a post-Jobs product. What is happening now, is the reassertion of the diseased corporate culture Apple had prior to NeXT putting their NIH tendencies into remission.

Agreed. If they do not allow 3rd party GPUs, it will be confirmation on how right you are as above.

And with that, apple will be returning to the bad old NIH times of their near bankruptcy (but even worse as they did at least have 3rd party GPUs back then), before Jobs came back to save the company. And that is a VERY bad thing. Because this time, there is no Steve Jobs to come back and save the company (unless Scott Forstall is some how pulled back in, and even then, he ain't no Jobs).

Great recall/insight on this Matt!

 

[mattspace]

I haven't followed this thread long enough to know where you are coming from, but you seem rather salty over Apple's recent decisions. As I said, I have sympathy for those who invested in the Intel Mac Pro, but comparing Apple's business choices to a virulent infection is a bit much.

I'm salty that the quality & stability of Apple's Mac products is directly proportional to how much stuff they do inhouse. The higher the Apple-only content, the less stable the product is, and the more integrated it is, the harder it is to fix once they decree it is no longer to be serviced.

This is the reality of Apple's software culture - the less they have to work with standardised parts, the less open they have to be about how their systems work, the more shortcuts they can, and do take.

 

[kvic]

You can see his breakdown chart here and ask him about it if you'd like.

This is interesting. Possibly another leak.

 

[macsplusmacs]

The difference between the M1 Ultra and the M2 Extreme in regards to UMA and Bandwidth (GB/s) would certainly put at ease the issue of the memory bandwidth saturation that MaxTech spoke of (re Mac Studios) in his video.

If the chart is true.

 

[Colstan]

I'm salty that the quality & stability of Apple's Mac products is directly proportional to how much stuff they do inhouse. The higher the Apple-only content, the less stable the product is, and the more integrated it is, the harder it is to fix once they decree it is no longer to be serviced.

This is the reality of Apple's software culture - the less they have to work with standardised parts, the less open they have to be about how their systems work, the more shortcuts they can, and do take.

As I said, I don't have skin in this game, I'm not the target for a Mac Pro. I currently use a 2018 Mac mini, and will likely replace it with an M3+ generation mini, particularly if Apple releases a Pro version. That being said, if the NIH thing is true, and I get Mac cooties from Tim Cook, then I'll see a doctor about it.

Speaking seriously, I understand the concerns that you and @ZombiePhysicist have. Apple is a company that you clearly care about, but don't like the direction that they are taking. I don't necessarily agree, but that doesn't mean your thoughts on the matter are any less valid. It may be cathartic to express your concerns on the MR forum, but I'm not sure how fruitful it will be. Regardless, I wish you the best in your future computing endeavors, even if you believe that Apple has left you behind.

Like I said, I just don't want good-intentioned folks getting upset when the boring Mac Pro is announced with an M2 Extreme and handful of PCIe slots later this year. Perhaps I am wrong, and Apple will shock us with all manner of exotic delights, but I don't see the Mac Pro following anything other than the obvious pattern that Apple Silicon has already taken.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

As I said, I don't have skin in this game, I'm not the target for a Mac Pro. I currently use a 2018 Mac mini, and will likely replace it with an M3+ generation mini, particularly if Apple releases a Pro version. That being said, if the NIH thing is true, and I get Mac cooties from Tim Cook, then I'll see a doctor about it.

Speaking seriously, I understand the concerns that you and @ZombiePhysicist have. Apple is a company that you clearly care about, but don't like the direction that they are taking. I don't necessarily agree, but that doesn't mean your thoughts on the matter are any less valid. It may be cathartic to express your concerns on the MR forum, but I'm not sure how fruitful it will be. Regardless, I wish you the best in your future computing endeavors, even if you believe that Apple has left you behind.

Like I said, I just don't want good-intentioned folks getting upset when the boring Mac Pro is announced with an M2 Extreme and handful of PCIe slots later this year. Perhaps I am wrong, and Apple will shock us with all manner of exotic delights, but I don't see the Mac Pro following anything other than the obvious pattern that Apple Silicon has already taken.

Appreciate the well wishes. This forum, I believe, was key in the backlash against the trashcan Mac. Although many said exactly what youre saying about what the 7,1 would be. They didn't 'see' modularity being PCI slots, etc etc etc.

The point being, it makes a difference, IMO, to rage and complain here. It did so in the past, and our hope is this feed back will continue to do so. Apple has eaten humble pie not listening to the pros in the past and did an apology tour as part of their penance. The only question here is, how will it turn out this time. Should be interesting.

 

[mattspace]

Like I said, I just don't want good-intentioned folks getting upset when the boring Mac Pro is announced with an M2 Extreme and handful of PCIe slots later this year. Perhaps I am wrong, and Apple will shock us with all manner of exotic delights, but I don't see the Mac Pro following anything other than the obvious pattern that Apple Silicon has already taken.

Boring is good, boring is what people who depend on their machines want. Secrecy and obfuscated roadmaps are the opposite of boring.

An M2 Extreme and a handful of slots is fine, but if it brings with it an utterly unnecessary soldered processor, no ram dimms, no user-upgradable off-the-shelf graphics etc, then we have a problem, because despite what the hype would lead you to believe, all these things that are integrated in the M-series silicon, are slower and less performant than the user-upgradable off the shelf alternative versions, unless you're doing a very, very narrow range of Apple-specific stuff, which is just as fast on a Mac Studio, or laptop.

Take RAM for instance, while there may be a margins of error speedup in integrating RAM, the much lower ram ceiling (especially at first-release prices) means we're much more likely to hit swap, and that is MUCH slower than DIMM ram, so in reality, that integrated RAM will make our computing experience slower.

Same with graphics - it doesn't matter how good Apple Silicon graphics are, they're still slower than dedicated cards, and more expensive for the product step-up price deltas.

There's literally no upside to the Apple Silicon paradigm for a workstation. I don't care how much "power" the AS processor has, the system's integration means it lacks "torque", and torque is what matters to my (computing)truck.

And most importantly, when it comes to calmly being passive and just accepting whatever inevitable fate Apple has decreed for us, pardon my French, but f^&k that. I will rage against this until the cows come home, because Apple Silicon and custom chipsets & hardware is the same paradigm that almost killed the Mac in the 1990s, it's the same paradigm that killed the Amiga, the ST, the NeXT, every unique and interesting computing platform that ever came about. They all died because their weird, unique hardware doomed them to evolutionary backwaters, when they couldn't match the development of the entire rest of the computing industry.

 

[mi7chy]

All those coors and probably still no AV1 hardware decode.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Boring is good, boring is what people who depend on their machines want. Secrecy and obfuscated roadmaps are the opposite of boring.

...

And most importantly, when it comes to calmly being passive and just accepting whatever inevitable fate Apple has decreed for us, pardon my French, but f^&k that. I will rage against this until the cows come home, because Apple Silicon and custom chipsets & hardware is the same paradigm that almost killed the Mac in the 1990s, it's the same paradigm that killed the Amiga, the ST, the NeXT, every unique and interesting computing platform that ever came about. They all died because their weird, unique hardware doomed them to evolutionary backwaters, when they couldn't match the development of the entire rest of the computing industry.

When you have computers like the MacBook Air, ok, we get it. You'll use it like a disposable diaper, and in 3 years you'll get a new one.

With regard to the above quote, it is PARTICULARLY applicable to the professional/enthusiast space. You need to interoperate. To use and stretch the platform for many years. And software platforms will stretch out for many years requiring one or another kind of sets of standard and NO ONE CARES that you have a new wizbang proprietary thing'y that is better on some artificial periwinkle chosen benchmark. They need their workflow to keep on trucking, and if anything gets in the way of that, it's DEAD ON ARRIVAL.

Also, beyond it's arrogance, it's also hypocritical. I hear a lot of talk of diversity, well NIH is completely antithetical to that. Solutions come from so many angles that you cannot anticipate. And if you are not an idiot, you welcome all the different ideas you cannot get to with open arms. It makes everyone richer and better.

And yes, that includes GPUs, and to cut off that ability, is beyond moronic. If apple wants to release a GPU with just it's dedicated graphics cores, KUDOS, that would be additive. But if they prevent other (at least commonly used) GPUs from working on the machine, they are DOA. It's over. COMPLETELY.

At that point, the pro market will have had it. There will be no one left around for another apology tour. At that point, people will consider Apple's pro market to be the equivalent of their enterprise support--a non starter joke punchline.

 

[Romain_H]

And yes, that includes GPUs, and to cut off that ability, is beyond moronic. If apple wants to release a GPU with just it's dedicated graphics cores, KUDOS, that would be additive. But if they prevent other (at least commonly used) GPUs from working on the machine, they are DOA. It's over. COMPLETELY.

At that point, the pro market will have had it. There will be no one left around for another apology tour. At that point, people will consider Apple's pro market to be the equivalent of their enterprise support--a non starter joke punchline.

Agreed.
Actually, though, it looks Apple is doing just that. They kicked Nvidia off their platform already, which, as a matter of fact, is the head honcho of compute.

 

[kvic]

The difference between the M1 Ultra and the M2 Extreme in regards to UMA and Bandwidth (GB/s) would certainly put at ease the issue of the memory bandwidth saturation that MaxTech spoke of (re Mac Studios) in his video.

If the chart is true.

These chips have tremendous bandwidth. Haven't seen any benchmarks that can saturate the theoretical bandwidth. For one, seems internally some allocations are done between CPU and GPU clusters so that no one will be starving each other at any time. Then there is claimed software optimisation issue as well as suspected sub-par performance in translation look-aside buffer. One way or the other, I believe by the time of M3 or M4, things will look mature and software/hardware issues ironed out.

All those coors and probably still no AV1 hardware decode.

Looks like M2 is the 'tock' in a tick-tock cadence.

 

[Colstan]

And most importantly, when it comes to calmly being passive and just accepting whatever inevitable fate Apple has decreed for us, pardon my French, but f^&k that.

Fair enough. As I said, I'm not among the target market for the Mac Pro, hence I am trying to understand the sentiment here. I don't know how influential the MR forums may be with Apple. I'm not downplaying it; I literally don't know. According to Cliff Maier, the CPU architect who knows many folks inside Apple, most Mac Pros are purchased by companies, not individuals. Make of that what you will.

I'm simply looking at this from the perspective as an outsider who is observing the pattern that Apple has followed thus far, as well as the rumors that have leaked. From what I can gather, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to be the M2 Extreme, doubling of the Ultra, and a few PCIe slots for non-GPU cards.

Obviously, it's not up to me to decide whether this is satisfactory, nor what Apple considers best to fill that market niche. As I said, I just don't want well-intentioned folks to get their hopes up, especially if the fate of the Mac Pro is eternally linked to the new Apple Silicon cadence. Whether expressing displeasure on this forum will create the change you desire, or amounts to tilting at windmills, is history yet to be written. Nevertheless, I wish you well on your quest.

 

[Boil]

First ASi Mac Pro will most likely be based on the M2 Ultra / Extreme SoCs...

Max RAM 384GB, hyperspeed storage, snappy graphics; totally not upgradable, compute appliance pro...

I mean, yeah, PCIe slots, but only for a/v i/o, raid stuff, networking, and the below...?

Possible ASi GPGPU cards available, possible Afterburner 2.0 cards, Apple throw us a bone and sanction third-party storage upgrades...! Lol, if they do, it would be for the Mac Pro only, because virtually all Apple products are not really designed for end user access to the interiors...

But we probably have to wait for the M3-based ASi Mac Pro for hardware raytracing...? ;^p

 

[macsplusmacs]

possible Afterburner 2.0 cards,

What could, in theory be plugged into something like that. Anyone know what limitations compared to the obvious different size slot than the PCI-E slots.

Any hint if Afterburner card support in current architecture?

 

[kvic]

But we probably have to wait for the M3-based ASi Mac Pro for hardware raytracing...? ;^p

I know PC gamers care a lot about ray tracing. To them, it's the best thing since bread & butter. I recall before RDNA2, literally everyday there will be one post on AMD sub-reddit asking when RTX (pun intended) will be available on AMD GPUs.

What could, in theory be plugged into something like that. Anyone know what limitations compared to the obvious different size slot than the PCI-E slots.

Any hint if Afterburner card support in current architecture?

OP's friend mentioned Apple may produce some Afterburner cards for Apple silicon Mac Pro, to be inserted into standard PCIe slots that will come with it. So as long as there is driver for Intel Mac, should be usable. I would say it's pretty sure thing exclusive to Apple silicon Macs.

I have no idea what Boil is specifically referring to. I think new 'afterburner card' in this case are a generic term. Carries little resemblance to the Afterburner Card before it. So think of all sorts of accelerators (except GPU/Compute) that people can imagine.

'Afterburner card' won't be new and only to Apple. In fact, the PC world will be moving to all sorts of accelerator cards in the cloud & enterprises. One example of such card is a 'smart NIC' that embeds a powerful CPU which could do stock transaction in micro seconds.

 

[Colstan]

I know PC gamers care a lot about ray tracing. To them, it's the best thing since bread & butter. I recall before RDNA2, literally everyday there will be one post on AMD sub-reddit asking when RTX (pun intended) will be available on AMD GPUs.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, Opteron architect and swell guy, Cliff Maier believes that ray tracing will come with the M3 generation, due to the increase in transistor budget thanks to TSMC's 3nm process.

 

[Boil]

I was thinking maybe an Afterburner 2.0, that allowed loading/programming the arrays by third-parties; ie - Red format acceleration, stuff like that...?

It seems like the original Afterburner is kinda part of the ASi SoCs now, with M2 getting media engines...?

 

[Boil]

Hmm...

M2 is 5nm+...

M2 Pro / Max / Ultra / Extreme said to be 3nm...

Is Apple selling what might basically be engineering samples with the 5nm+ M2 SoCs...?

Just stirring the pot...! ;^p

 

[Romain_H]

Possible ASi GPGPU cards available, possible Afterburner 2.0 cards, Apple throw us a bone and sanction third-party storage upgrades...! Lol, if they do, it would be for the Mac Pro only, because virtually all Apple products are not really designed for end user access to the interiors...

But we probably have to wait for the M3-based ASi Mac Pro for hardware raytracing...? ;^p

We‘ll see. Judging from Mac Studio pricing the MP 8.1 is priced more like the 7.1 as opposed to the cMP 5.1, outpricimg a lot of potential customers (just like the 7.1 did)

 

[killawat]

The point being, it makes a difference, IMO, to rage and complain here. It did so in the past, and our hope is this feed back will continue to do so.

Absolutely. We know with complete certainty that Apple reads these forums. (Hey Apple). Arn confirmed this years ago with heuristics. Looking at leaks? maybe a little here and there to get a pulse of where the customers are feeling. all the complaining in the MacBook Pro forum haha. No looking at the complaints in the Mac mini forum, it would seem.

 

[Boil]

We‘ll see. Judging from Mac Studio pricing the MP 8.1 is priced more like the 7.1 as opposed to the cMP 5.1, outpricimg a lot of potential customers (just like the 7.1 did)

Mid 2010 model introduced 2010.07.27 at $2,499 with one 2.8 GHz CPU, $3,499 with two 2.4 GHz 4-core CPUs, and many build-to-order options

Mid 2012 model introduced 2012.06. at $2,499 with one 3.2 GHz CPU, $3,799 with two 2.4 GHz CPUs

CPUs: single CPU model uses 2.8 GHz Intel “Nehalem” Xeon 3530, 3.2 and 3.33 GHz options (at $400 and $1,200 additional, respectively); dual CPU model use 2.4 GHz “Westmere” Xeon 5620, 2.66 and 2.93 GHz 6-core options (at $1,400 and $2,600 additional, respectively)

So it looks like a $4K+ starting price for a M2 Ultra equipped ASi Mac Pro would be in line with pricing from the 5.1 era...?

I would expect Apple to price the M2 Ultra ASi Mac Pro at $4,999 and the M2 Extreme (four M2 Max SoCs) ASi Mac Pro at no less than $5,999; these would probably be at minimal RAM & storage configurations, and most likely also with the lower GPU core count options...

Maxxed out M2 Extreme ASi Mac Pro with 160-core GPU, 384GB RAM, 16TB storage (four SSDs...?), dual 10GbE, & four PCIe slots; an easy $25K...?!?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Absolutely. We know with complete certainty that Apple reads these forums. (Hey Apple). Arn confirmed this years ago with heuristics. Looking at leaks? maybe a little here and there to get a pulse of where the customers are feeling. all the complaining in the MacBook Pro forum haha. No looking at the complaints in the Mac mini forum, it would seem.

Not that apple inc 'proper' necessarily reads these forums, although I wouldn’t be surprised of pockets of apple employees do so. And in fact know a few employees that have, and others im friends with that I relay interesting developments from this forum to, that I know got relayed even further within apple. Which is not to say apple gives a fig about the forums in and of themselves in any official or important way.

That said, that doesnt stop this forum from having an outsized influence. This forum very much has a lot of very hard core techies (eg netkas, tsialex, joevt etc) that have solved impossible problems (countless impossible 5,1 updates), and layers of other techies come here to take advantage of that work, solving serious pro problems. Things here tend to reverberate beyond. Lots of commercial/pro shops have benefitted and relied on work/breakthroughs that were pioneered by hard core folks in these groups. As such, opinions in these groups tend to have outsized influence into important and high spending pockets in the pro world. Some of that led to critical articles, and critical feedback from those pro shops.

There were lots of arrogant know-it-alls here too, that have the most pessimistic know-it-all outlooks, that were proven 100% wrong by their pessimistic prognostications about the 7,1. Being wrong hasn’t humbled them. But there was enough discord by many here that I do believe it moved the dial way beyond the forum. Of course, that’s just my $0.02

 

[exoticSpice]

X

Boring is good, boring is what people who depend on their machines want. Secrecy and obfuscated roadmaps are the opposite of boring.

An M2 Extreme and a handful of slots is fine, but if it brings with it an utterly unnecessary soldered processor, no ram dimms, no user-upgradable off-the-shelf graphics etc, then we have a problem, because despite what the hype would lead you to believe, all these things that are integrated in the M-series silicon, are slower and less performant than the user-upgradable off the shelf alternative versions, unless you're doing a very, very narrow range of Apple-specific stuff, which is just as fast on a Mac Studio, or laptop.

Take RAM for instance, while there may be a margins of error speedup in integrating RAM, the much lower ram ceiling (especially at first-release prices) means we're much more likely to hit swap, and that is MUCH slower than DIMM ram, so in reality, that integrated RAM will make our computing experience slower.

Same with graphics - it doesn't matter how good Apple Silicon graphics are, they're still slower than dedicated cards, and more expensive for the product step-up price deltas.

There's literally no upside to the Apple Silicon paradigm for a workstation. I don't care how much "power" the AS processor has, the system's integration means it lacks "torque", and torque is what matters to my (computing)truck.

And most importantly, when it comes to calmly being passive and just accepting whatever inevitable fate Apple has decreed for us, pardon my French, but f^&k that. I will rage against this until the cows come home, because Apple Silicon and custom chipsets & hardware is the same paradigm that almost killed the Mac in the 1990s, it's the same paradigm that killed the Amiga, the ST, the NeXT, every unique and interesting computing platform that ever came about. They all died because their weird, unique hardware doomed them to evolutionary backwaters, when they couldn't match the development of the entire rest of the computing industry.

Why do believe in Apple being open or having DIMMs? The day Apple went custom and not AMD for CPUs is the day the Mac desktop died.

NVIDIA Are the kings of compute. Not silly AS iGPUs. I will say it one more time. The Mac DESKTOP is dead if Apple GPUs don't improve. If the Mac pro will has a non-upgradeable CPU then it's a JOKE. What kind of workstation does not have a replacement CPU.

ARM can be socketed. Don't let Apple fool us. Google it.

Apple will though rule the premium laptop space with their ARM chips. It's so obvious that designed Apple sillcon for their ipads and macbooks.

Apple has to make a real workstation CPU that supports many pcie slots and 1.5TB RAM.