Sorry, I suspect you're being sarcastic, but I'm being genuine in my question. Could they not have built a box with two processor sockets supporting up to 24 cores? Meaning if they stuck with a construction more like the classic mac pro?
I wasn't being sarcastic. One of the best reasons to get a dual socket late Intel system is that the PCIe lanes and the memory controller are on the processor chip itself.
Two processors can support twice as many DIMM slots (24) and PCIe 3.0 lanes (80). Since a number of PCIe lanes are used for system IO, this means that a dual has more than twice the number of available lanes.
At the high end, single socket systems are crippled compared to dual socket systems. If Apple only wants to play in the "low end workstation" space, the MP6,1 is a decent system (except for only 4 DIMM sockets, when 8 to 12 is more common).
Also note that the other vendors have switched to Haswell-EP CPUs (E5-x6xx v3), and support up to 18 cores per socket -
36 cores for a dual socket. Apple is still using previous generation v2 CPUs and is stuck at 12 per socket.
Yes, a twin socket machine would have a different design - but it wouldn't have to be "traditional", Apple could have fun.
Look at the Dell Precision line (
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-desktops?~ck=anav) or HP Z-series (
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z230.html) to see what other companies are doing to have a family of systems at several price/size/performance points.
Apple would not have to kill the MP6,1 in order to bring out a machine with competitive performance at the high end.
Because it's a lot more expensive, takes a lot more room ...
Wow, a much more powerful system is more expensive and takes up more room? Who would have guessed....
To repeat, Apple would not have to kill the MP6,1 in order to bring out a machine with competitive performance at the high end.
Performance on one processor is more predictable and better suited to stuff that is done on the desktop.
...and performance with a single core is even more predictable. Do you want performance or predictability? Are you more interested in the mean or the standard deviation?
adding a second processor has absolutely zero effect to its ability to execute single-core tasks. The only manner in which it would affect it is the fact a dual-cpu system, in order to be priced competitively, would be forced to use lower clock rate CPUs in the base configurations, which would lead to the point you are making. there might be some small deviation in performance, but not to the extent that it would make a noticable difference. a 3.5 dual-cpu hex core xeon will run a single-core app at the same speed as a single-cpu 3.5 hex core xeon.
Agree, but I'd say "almost zero" instead of "absolutely zero". There are some bizarre cases where there is a minor effect.
