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Any Interest in a New Modular Mac Pro Design?

Radiating said:
So let me get this straight guys, you are offered a cheaper, faster, better and more flexible platform that compared to the computer it replaces:

- 1/3rd the size or less

- 2/3rds the price

- 3 times the processor performance

- 6 times the graphics performance

- has up to 70 times the PCI express expandability

- has 70 times the storage expandability

And you are not interested.
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I'm interested !

Can you give me a quote for a configuration, say based on the current 6-core 3.33 Ghz MP, including all the ports, drive capacity and PCI slots it has, a nice GPU , and 24GB RAM ?

I'm so exited, I can't believe I'll get all that for cheaper and can upgrade it at little cost !
 
Tesselator said:
No. I haven't tried either of them. There's also a few other makes making PCIe expansion boxes too - so if you're thinking about going this route you might wanna do some searching.

They should work the treat with I/O cards like you're thinking about tho.
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Thanks. Always keeping my eyes open to the options out there, especially when figuring out what to do with upgrades moving forward. There's a slew of them coming to market, many from relatively unknowns in the Mac arena. Several of them work quite well on PC workstations, so I imagine they would work well. Basically a Mac Pro's version of Thunderbolt expansion, I guess? Maybe we need to come up with a better branded name for it to catch on in 3-4 years...
 
Tesselator said:
Well, I think the offerings aren't weak, per-say... You can install any card you like - just like a PC. The only difference is that you don't get a boot-screen with some cards. And really if you want that I don't think there is a card out there which can't be made to do it with a simple firmware upgrade (unofficial or not). Also I think there is like, a really massive difference between the GTX 680mx and a GTX 680.

Secondly, there is also a plethora of other types of cards out there. USB2, USB3, USB3 with RAID in mind, Firewire, eSATA, SATA II/III RAID, SAS RAID, Thinner-NET NICs, Fibre Channel, Pro Sound Cards, PCIe RAM Drives, SDI/Video editing cards, dedicated DSP Accelerator Cards, Multifunction Data Acquisition for CNC & Machine sensing & control, and Slot expansion boxes when ya run out of internal ones too:


Image​


So while I take your point that MacPro's are usually underused, one of the features that people are paying for when selecting a MacPro is the ability and potential to upgrade and configure however they like. There really is quite a lot more one can do with a MacPro.
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you kind of made my point for me.
SDI/video, DSP Accelerator Cards, Raid, Pro Sound cards, are all available as firewire or TB devices. It's only some of the more esoteric and specialized stuff that is only available on a PCIe card. I work in a broadcast facility, so I see plenty of both.

My point isn't that Mac Pro's aren't necessary, it is that the expansion capability is only important to a small minority of people that use them. Just imagine that Apple is running focus groups around this. If they get a dozen users with Mac Pros in a conference room, how many hands come up when they ask who uses more than one expansion card?
And how many hands are still up when they ask who uses 3 or more?
To be frank, do you think Apple is going to keep so many PCIe slots when they can tie those lanes to some other onboard devices?
Especially if the next Mac Pro has integrated video to go with the TB.

I'm certainly not anti Mac Pro. If you could see my current work area I have 3 of them!
 
calaverasgrande said:
To be frank, do you think Apple is going to keep so many PCIe slots when they can tie those lanes to some other onboard devices?
Especially if the next Mac Pro has integrated video to go with the TB.
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I dunno how many they will keep in the next MP (of course) but the chances that they would provide none is probably pretty close to 0%. IMO they only need two. One PCIe 3.0 16x and an expansion slot (32x?) is all they need. One for the video card and one for a connection to a PCIe expansion box or some other internal card with a converter (if needed). That would do it for me.
 
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Tesselator said:
I dunno how many they will keep in the next MP (of course) but the chances that they would provide none is probably pretty close to 0%. IMO they only need two. One PCIe 3.0 16x and an expansion slot (32x?) is all they need. One for the video card and one for a connection to a PCIe expansion box or some other internal card with a converter (if needed). That would do it for me.
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Thats kind of what I am speculating we will see too.
It's simply logical that as more devices are integrated to the motherboard you have less card slots. Heck, I remember a PC tower I had with PCI, ISA and AGP slots. Easily 10 slots in that one. And you had to fill up most of them if you wanted stuff like printer ports, USB, sound I/O, and so on.
I just hope that the Mac Pro isn't some kind of modular device which will be unwiedly in a commercial environment. Or some kind of form over function exercise (cough...imac cough) that looks smashing but isn't practical in office cube land.
We are already leaning towards HP Z series if that happens. And I hate HP!
 
Modular, yes. What you're describing...no.

I'd love to see a rack mountable machine with tons of I/O on the front and back.

When I say modular, I mean I want to be able to buy essentially a skeleton machine with a killer processor and pick and choose what I want in it--or just install those components myself.

There are lots of different pro users, in my case we do Audio, Video, Design etc. The machine in our recording studio needs a ton of RAM and a fast processor but an Intel HD4000 gpu would work just fine. For Video we would need all that plus a killer graphics card--or two. For the kind of graphic design we do we honestly don't need much. 11" MacBook Airs work without a hiccup hooked up to external monitors.

The key for me though is that it be rack mountable. Will it be? Probably not. But it would be great to stop banging my knee on the giant tower under the desk when I've got lots of open rack space available.
 
Why do you need modules? A tower form factor gives you plenty of room to add things as needed before you need to look at external stuff.

Surely cost is not an issue. For low to medium range models (sans monitor, as you may already have one) you are not talking that much more than an iMac. I routinely plan 3,000 to 4,0000 for any mac after I add all the bells and whistles to it. A pro is even better with that because, even though the cost is still there, I do not need to spend all that at once.
 
Tesselator said:
I dunno how many they will keep in the next MP (of course) but the chances that they would provide none is probably pretty close to 0%. IMO they only need two. One PCIe 3.0 16x and an expansion slot (32x?) is all they need. One for the video card and one for a connection to a PCIe expansion box or some other internal card with a converter (if needed). That would do it for me.
Click to expand...

Expansion slots are also there to enable future expansion, meeting needs you cannot identify today.

You can for instance install a USB 3.0 or an SSD PCIe card in a Mac Pro today, when you probably would have never thought of those options 5 years ago.
 
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fiatlux said:
Expansion slots are also there to enable future expansion, meeting needs you cannot identify today.
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Not. If there is no identifiable need there little need. The widely generic "Future proof for something I have no clue about" is well grounded as an expense.

There is little that can't be identified at all.

You can for instance install a USB 3.0
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The USB 3.0 standard took almost 3-4 years to finish completion. The standard passed in late 2008 and a wide variety of real products didn't show until 2010. That a USB 3.0 card couldn't be identified at all 6 years ago is just someone who wasn't paying attention.

or an SSD PCIe card in a Mac Pro today,
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All this is a RAID card with disk on board. It fits it the general RAID card classification.

when you probably would have never thought of those options 5 years ago.
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Perhaps try 25 years ago. But 5 is just not paying attention to industry trends.
 
I love the idea, but just don't see it happening. We are sadly well past the days of custom electronic designs being financially competitive. AMD seem to have drifted into the background, so for high end processors, it's Intel, or nothing. Their products are just so complicated that anyone with a smaller budget just can't compete. Remember, the processor in any computer, even high-end one cost hardly anything to build. Getting the first one off the line to work? Millions, if not billions.

The problem is that those processors are tied to chipsets with limited capabilities in terms of the number of lanes they can provide, and those can easily be used up inside a workstation sized desktop. Sure, Apple could find a way to divert some of those to an external chassis, but all you have then is a smaller box, tied to another box which then needs a separate power supply, case etc. Even the design to just allow an extra module would probably cost as much as just keeping the empty internal slots or drive bays. And then, if Intel change their specs, which they do every 2-3 years at least then its back to the drawing board.

This is the one downside to intel Macs - the cases and user experience can be, and are excellent, but the internals cant stray much from what intel has to offer.

David

P.S. What could be achieved is a smaller case with just a couple of HD bays and one or no ODD ones. There could then be a thunderbolt enclosure for more drives that fitted neatly onto the main case and piggybacked the PSU.
 
I think its also salient to note that no matter how outlandish Apples designs have been, they are almost all similar to some extent to one of Intel's reference designs. Compare the various Mac Pro cooling and power supply locations over the last 8 years to the ATX, BTX and other form factor variations. Apple is not stupid. They are prefectly happy to piggy back on other peoples R&D. Of course they add the design and elan that apple products have.
Since I see no intel concepts around modularity (well aside from server blades) I think the possibility of really modular approach is slim.
 
fiatlux said:
Expansion slots are also there to enable future expansion, meeting needs you cannot identify today.

You can for instance install a USB 3.0 or an SSD PCIe card in a Mac Pro today, when you probably would have never thought of those options 5 years ago.
Click to expand...

Very true. This is of course only common sense for those who can think. But at the same time an Expansion Box could handle all that as well.

Your would pay more for the expansion box when needed but you would pay less for the main unit box initially too so I suppose it would all just work out.
 
I think that with Thunderbolt 2 coming up this design is the only way to go. The ultimate in expandability is modular. A base enclosure with two CPU's + RAM + maybe one GPU and some storage for the OS. With Thunderbolt 2 a modular system makes a great choice for everyone.
If you try to put all of it in one enclosure your going to need a lot more cooling which creates more noise. Those GPU's create just as much heat as the CPU's. To put them in a separate enclosure makes more sense.
And what about the people who need it for a server. They don't need a whole bunch of GPU's or HD space that's all done externally.
I for one would welcome this.
 
Modular makes sense in so many ways, but it is different and it is difficult to do. This is probably why it took so long to come out.

Apple does not want to get into traditional tower wars and a modular design sets them apart from that.

This could be quite exciting and a big seller, much more so than yet another tower design.
 
calaverasgrande said:
Just imagine that Apple is running focus groups around this. If they get a dozen users with Mac Pros in a conference room, how many hands come up when they ask who uses more than one expansion card?
Click to expand...

You are giving Apple way too much credit here. They most likely aren't listening to anyone other than their tightly protected inner circle and they will produce whatever they deem fit and we will either suck it up and like it or not. They tend to want to be leaders or even dictators, not consensus takers.
 
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RoDe said:
I think that with Thunderbolt 2 coming up this design is the only way to go. The ultimate in expandability is modular. A base enclosure with two CPU's + RAM + maybe one GPU and some storage for the OS. With Thunderbolt 2 a modular system makes a great choice for everyone.
If you try to put all of it in one enclosure your going to need a lot more cooling which creates more noise. Those GPU's create just as much heat as the CPU's. To put them in a separate enclosure makes more sense.
And what about the people who need it for a server. They don't need a whole bunch of GPU's or HD space that's all done externally.
I for one would welcome this.
Click to expand...

Heat doesn't disappear in an enclosure, it rises. So the order with which you stack the modules would be important. It also sounds like you would need fans and power cords for every module (instead of sharing all cooling and power supply like in the current MP).

This sounds like a computer that is loud, is spread out over most of my dining room table and uses a ridiculous amount of power.

Making the imac, or MP thinner is stupidity. Its a desktop not a portable. I'd be fine with the MP getting bigger if it meant more dimm slots, more PCI slots and drive bays.

All most of us want is 2013 tech in the box.
 
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carlgo said:
Modular makes sense in so many ways, but it is different and it is difficult to do. This is probably why it took so long to come out.

Apple does not want to get into traditional tower wars and a modular design sets them apart from that.

This could be quite exciting and a big seller, much more so than yet another tower design.
Click to expand...

I have no problem with a modular design as long as they also do a professional tower design.
 
Modular makes almost no sense.
1. the technology doesn't easily support it
2. it's basically the antithesis of apple's quasi-fascist design philosophy. simplicity, elegance, unity, and iconic/monolithic design do not jive with lego block/choose-your-own-adventure style computing
3. it doesn't even make business sense. they would rather you buy a whole new machine than swap a piece out here and there. obsolescence is profit.

There is no freaking way they come out with a modular mac pro, and I don't even understand how this rumour got started.
 
clamnectar said:
and I don't even understand how this rumour got started.
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People were told thunderbolt was PCI-E outside the case and let their imaginations run wild. It's the only alternative to the big box they can think up so that is what they propose. Totally agree with your points by the way.
 
There will be a modular Mac Pro...

Once you assemble every modules available it will look like a minecraft version of a Steve Job bust.
 
Umbongo said:
People were told thunderbolt was PCI-E outside the case and let their imaginations run wild. It's the only alternative to the big box they can think up so that is what they propose. Totally agree with your points by the way.
Click to expand...

The only modular-ish thing I can possibly envision is a "power brick" concept, where each machine is a non-expandable XEON+GPU+SSD+RAM in the tightest package possible for a price like $2200, and you can buy multiple and link them together with a new and/or improved distributed processing protocol to make a little supercomputer. It would give the amateurs a high-powered mac mini at a not-crazy price, the pros a really powerful data cruncher at twice that price, and researchers and institutions a scalable supercomputer.

Still sounds pretty un-apple, but you never know.
 
RoDe said:
I think that with Thunderbolt 2 coming up this design is the only way to go. The ultimate in expandability is modular. A base enclosure with two CPU's + RAM + maybe one GPU and some storage for the OS. With Thunderbolt 2 a modular system makes a great choice for everyone.
If you try to put all of it in one enclosure your going to need a lot more cooling which creates more noise. Those GPU's create just as much heat as the CPU's. To put them in a separate enclosure makes more sense.
And what about the people who need it for a server. They don't need a whole bunch of GPU's or HD space that's all done externally.
I for one would welcome this.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt 2 is not fast enough for this modular design that people dream of.
 
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