I didn't realize that people missed this announcement. I believe these will be the cards used in the Mac Pro up dates when we get them.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AMD Releases Polaris Based Radeon Pro Graphics Cards
- Thread starter xsmi123
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Wowowww this looks amazing.
$10,000 for the development kit alone, though! It'll be released in 2017 at the earliest. So unfortunately it probably won't be coming to a Mac Pro near you – not in the next couple of years, anyway
$10,000 for the development kit alone, though! It'll be released in 2017 at the earliest. So unfortunately it probably won't be coming to a Mac Pro near you – not in the next couple of years, anyway
It would almost certainly be doable.
The questions are whether it can be done within the space/power/thermal constraints of the cylinder, and whether it would be very expensive with few applications that could exploit it.
Any task that depends on the result of another task can't be run in parallel.
Last edited:
I wouldn't want to see it in a cylinder. I, for one, am hoping that No One was telling the truth about the test mule he saw with four PCI slots and cards the same color as the case.
This card and the Mac Pro's cards intersect in one interesting way: One of the Mac Pro's graphics cards already holds up to 1 TB of SSD (and the other makes reservations for it). The Pro's cards have actually been working towards this sort of solution.
Yep, I forgot about that, thanks for reminding me.
However, how big is the market in this specific scenario? Because I think that solution we are discussing is for 99% of users that want powerful Mac, and have need for it, and have money for it. Apple is going all in with parallel computing, so I do not think Amdahl's Law is accurately used in this particular case.
I didn't miss it, I just don't think it's relevant to anything in the Mac line up, but we'll see.
That's just where the nMP's hard drive is, as it's probably the only place they could find room for it. Not the same as the AMD tech.
So you feel the nMP will continue... I don't. At least, I hope not.
Or do you feel that the D series is not a true Firepro Card?
Last edited:
No, not the same, of course. But it's there. And the other card has vestigial support for a second connector. I'm just pointing out the curious "coincidence."
Personally, I don't think that it's entirely a mere accident of fate (e.g., couldn't fit otherwise). On the other hand, SSD on the graphics cards is probably a little premature for mainstream use.
Parallel computing isn't a new thing. Thing is, only relative few task can effectively be parallelized. Graphics can and have been using it since they can be splitted in distinct unrelated rendering task. But for most other task that we use computer for the overhead of making sure task don't depend on the result of other task make it not worth the effort.
In future, more and more specialized tasks will be given to co-processors. Currently many tasks need a lot of single threaded non-parallel CPU time but same time the process needs access to unified memory to talk with different devices. Today that takes expensive CPU time to transport data from here to there.
The co-processor future is already happening with Apple's' Ax SoC series; there are M9/DSP/ISP... etc. but they are difficult to benchmark, and comparing Apple's' Arm-chips to Intel variants is not fair. Most likely A9X could run Logic Pro X same speed as Intel desktop CPU, because DSP could take most of the CPU load.
For Mac's, Intel is the road block preventing Macs to be fully HSA compliant and so co-processors can create a lot of overhear on CPU and limits its use. The main problem is Intel's closed memory architecture; it cannot share / doesn't want to share memory with co-processors. No support for universal heterogeneous Unified Memory Access architecture.
So, it could be that Apple wants AMD to make a good x86 CPU for them to replace Intel. To fund this, they've used AMD only GPU's for years now. Zen or a custom chip could give Apple the key to be different in personal computing space. They first fully HSA compliant computer. Maybe this is why we havn't seen a lot of updates recently? Because Apple want's to make a jump?
Second tech blocking Apples way to create HSA architecture (where they'd have keys for the system) was CUDA. So it had to go too... sure, latest CUDA supports HSA, but it is a closed system. OpenCL 2.0 supports shared virtual memory, which is a key component coming with HSA. So, no proper openCL 2.0 support before macOS and Mac hardware are HSA ready.
Well, this is my theory? Got better?
The co-processor future is already happening with Apple's' Ax SoC series; there are M9/DSP/ISP... etc. but they are difficult to benchmark, and comparing Apple's' Arm-chips to Intel variants is not fair. Most likely A9X could run Logic Pro X same speed as Intel desktop CPU, because DSP could take most of the CPU load.
For Mac's, Intel is the road block preventing Macs to be fully HSA compliant and so co-processors can create a lot of overhear on CPU and limits its use. The main problem is Intel's closed memory architecture; it cannot share / doesn't want to share memory with co-processors. No support for universal heterogeneous Unified Memory Access architecture.
So, it could be that Apple wants AMD to make a good x86 CPU for them to replace Intel. To fund this, they've used AMD only GPU's for years now. Zen or a custom chip could give Apple the key to be different in personal computing space. They first fully HSA compliant computer. Maybe this is why we havn't seen a lot of updates recently? Because Apple want's to make a jump?
Second tech blocking Apples way to create HSA architecture (where they'd have keys for the system) was CUDA. So it had to go too... sure, latest CUDA supports HSA, but it is a closed system. OpenCL 2.0 supports shared virtual memory, which is a key component coming with HSA. So, no proper openCL 2.0 support before macOS and Mac hardware are HSA ready.
Well, this is my theory? Got better?
Last edited: