Do you think there will be a 2014 nMP?

[kwijbo]

Oh! Then I think everything is aligned for a 2014 Mac Pro. Haswell-EP is on schedule, and there is a new FirePro ready.

+DDR4+Thunderbolt 3

All of those upgraded technologies sound like it will be a substantial jump over the current model. Makes me wonder if this was the intended release combination for the new Pro but delays kept pushing everything back and Apple just couldn't wait any longer.

 

[iBug2]

Oh! Then I think everything is aligned for a 2014 Mac Pro. Haswell-EP is on schedule, and there is a new FirePro ready.

I still wouldn't expect a new Mac Pro in 2014.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I still wouldn't expect a new Mac Pro in 2014.

I agree, they're still having issues with supply on the current one alone. Plus the new FirePro w9100 is a power hog, and heat blaster, being based on Hawaii at the moment.

I'd love a nMP with all this tech for sure, although it seems unlikely this year. Eitherway I'll easily sell my current one and grab a new one when the time comes for me to need an upgrade.

 

[maflynn]

I'd say no, especially as they're still trying to get the orders out now, but you never know. Maybe a small spec bump or something

 

[handsome pete]

Thunderbolt 3

That's not coming this year.

 

[beaker7]

Do you think there will be a 2014 nMP with Haswell XEONs and upgraded GPU's?

No.

 

[goMac]

+DDR4+Thunderbolt 3

All of those upgraded technologies sound like it will be a substantial jump over the current model. Makes me wonder if this was the intended release combination for the new Pro but delays kept pushing everything back and Apple just couldn't wait any longer.

I think Thunderbolt 3 will probably be saved for the 2015s, and probably won't be ready in time. DDR4 is part of Haswell-E so that will happen.

Production troubles on the current won't have any bearing on doing a rev. If anything, if they can correct supply chain or production issues during the rev, it'll make it come quicker. There is a history of Apple doing this too. When the G4 had production troubles they would still rev machines.

The power usage of the W9100 looks to be in line with the W9000. Not sure how they pulled that off, but it looks usable for the Mac Pro.

 

[VirtualRain]

I think Thunderbolt 3 will probably be saved for the 2015s, and probably won't be ready in time. DDR4 is part of Haswell-E so that will happen.

Production troubles on the current won't have any bearing on doing a rev. If anything, if they can correct supply chain or production issues during the rev, it'll make it come quicker. There is a history of Apple doing this too. When the G4 had production troubles they would still rev machines.

The power usage of the W9100 looks to be in line with the W9000. Not sure how they pulled that off, but it looks usable for the Mac Pro.

Agreed, and by Q4 they will likely be in a position to bin the W9100 for better efficiency. For those that want it, it looks like support for 6 4K displays might be on tap

The only thing that might hold people back is the initial pricing on DDR4... What are the chances it will carry a hefty premium?

 

[MacVidCards]

Who knows? They might even make it faster than cMP finally.

 

[AidenShaw]

is v3 DDR4 only?

...

The only thing that might hold people back is the initial pricing on DDR4... What are the chances it will carry a hefty premium?

While we won't know until closer to release, some early stories on E5-v3 said that it would support both DDR3 and DDR4.

That could be true, it could be false, or it could have once been true but is now false.

 

[iMacmatician]

I'm guessing that the reason they skipped Sandy Bridge was because if they were to put those CPUs in the old design, they would have had a top-end model with 16-cores, but if they were to have put it in the redesigned Mac Pro, it would have had a top-end model with only 8 cores.

I'm sure they already had the tube redesign in mind, so if they had released the Sandy-Bridge oMP 16-core update first, the following Ivy-Bridge nMP would have been less powerful. If they were to have released the Sandy-Bridge nMP version first, it would have been less powerful than the Westmere version that preceded it as it would have had a maximum of 8 cores.

Also in both of your situations, they wouldn't be able to claim "up to 2x faster" in CPU FP performance compared to the previous Mac Pro.

I'd say that it's likely we'll see a Haswell-EP Mac Pro, probably not long after the chips are released. GPU-wise I think we may see a Hawaii-based FirePro Dxxx with 16 GB memory per GPU in this update (with probably 7.5-8 TFLOPS theoretical performance for 2 GPUs).

 

[Vanilla Face]

The only thing that might hold people back is the initial pricing on DDR4... What are the chances it will carry a hefty premium?

Apple made a fairly large payment to Micron, a memory maker, back in April. Speculation is that it is for DDR4 ram.

Also, what's the deal with everyone thinking that supply constraints on the current makeup would have any bearing on it being refreshed?

 

[HuntingPudel]

I really doubt that there will be a 2014 nMP unless it's another late year introduction that doesn't see the light of day until 2015 like the '13 didn't actually ship until a few months into '14. It's more likely that it'll be an early '15 model with a speed/spec bump. There may be a late year introduction '15 with architecture changes/improvements, but I'd bet on '16 for that.