MP All Models Is Apple ****ing themselves over the ThreadRipper 3 yet?

[deconstruct60]

56% performance increase in Vega by taking it to 7nm.

That is more than just 7nm. AMD got no where near that increase with Vega 20 u-arch over Vega 10 u-arch . ( e.g., Radeon VII single precision versus Vega 64 ) The clock/power range, memory subsystem design/implementation, and incremented design (implementation clean up) are components also.
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AMD doesn't use Global Founderies - They use TSMC.

They use both. The I/O chip is GF. it is only the CPU chiplets that are TSMC in the non-iGPU models.

The new APUs are largely a distraction in the Mac Pro context. Those are bigger more uniform dies. ( lower power consumption by just more deeply integrating the subsystems..... and there is no PCI-e v4 to deal with. )

 

[goMac]

I've always thought that Apple could release some ARM Macs in ultra mobile and low-end categories without getting in the software trouble they'd get in if they tried to build, say, an ARM MacBook Pro. Simply lock those machines to the Mac App Store and don't even offer emulation. On a 1.8 lb MacBook, most users aren't going to care that the Word that's available is a Catalysted version of Word for iPad, and nobody's going to TRY to do much with Photoshop.

On an ARM Mac, porting existing Mac apps is going to be way easier than building a Catalyst version.

Switching the Mac to ARM doesn't get rid of all the problems blocking Catalyst ports. All the problems with Catalyst are software, not hardware.

I know, off topic. But I keep seeing people here refer to Catalyst as if it automatically runs iOS apps. It does not. A lot of porting is still required. And it would make no sense for Microsoft to not port the Mac app when that's a way easier job.

 

[cube]

That is more than just 7nm. AMD got no where near that increase with Vega 20 u-arch over Vega 10 u-arch . ( e.g., Radeon VII single precision versus Vega 64 ) The clock/power range, memory subsystem design/implementation, and incremented design (implementation clean up) are components also.

We are talking about the APUs. That is what Anandtech said.

Maybe it is about the cache and the LPDDR4X.

 

[GamerZer0]

Can I have one of those? 😆😆😆

64 Cores only please...

 

[koyoot]

The new AMD laptop CPUs are interesting - assuming available quantities line up, Apple could now potentially go AMD across the Mac line, except for REALLY low-power laptops (where ARM is a viable option) and with a tradeoff in the Mac Pro - many more cores, but very slow base and boost clocks (EPYC).

The iMac and iMac Pro would be big winners (Ryzen 9 and Threadripper respectively).

The other big winner is the 13" MBP - those 15 watt Ryzen 4000 mobiles seem to offer a lot of performance per watt...

I've always thought that Apple could release some ARM Macs in ultra mobile and low-end categories without getting in the software trouble they'd get in if they tried to build, say, an ARM MacBook Pro. Simply lock those machines to the Mac App Store and don't even offer emulation. On a 1.8 lb MacBook, most users aren't going to care that the Word that's available is a Catalysted version of Word for iPad, and nobody's going to TRY to do much with Photoshop.

Apple even has existing branding to cover this situation - use the word Pro to identify Intel/AMD Macs - anything without the Pro brand is ARM. A MacBook Pro is exactly what you expect it is - there's a powerful Core or Ryzen CPU, and it runs software from wherever. A MacBook is super-light, and it runs software from the Mac App Store (which is required to have an ARM binary.

AMD Dali is 6W design, with 4C/8T and 6(?) Vega CUs.

Would that fit "REALLY low-power" Laptops, lika MacBook Air? .

 

[Pressure]

56% performance increase in Vega by taking it to 7nm.

It’s different from VEGA10 and VEGA20, so the number is simply comparing to the iGPU it replaces and not any specific VEGA ISA.

 

[koyoot]

I have never seen a situation in my life in which new technology has made last gen, and their competition look so inadequate as 64 Core Threadripper did with WHOLE Intel HEDT and Server lineup.

People who buy Intel CPUs in 2020 should give me their numbers. I have a Big Clock in Central London to sell them.

P.S. I still forgot that I have an Intel platform build to finish...

 

[cube]

AMD Dali is 6W design, with 4C/8T and 6(?) Vega CUs.

Would that fit "REALLY low-power" Laptops, lika MacBook Air? .

The Athlon slide with the two new dual core 14nm 15W mobile parts says Dalí.

 

[danwells]

If Dali really is a 6W quad, then yes - 6W should be fanless, assuming a decent idle power. I didn't see any 6W intros at CES, though. If they slipped such a processor in without talking about it much, and they can ship in quantity, then they have the whole line covered.

As for the Mac apps porting architectures to ARM vs. iOS apps getting Catalysted, a very well-behaved Mac app should make the architecture jump with just a compiler switch - but MANY Mac apps are not well behaved. Notably, both Office and the big Adobe stuff are massive piles of legacy code.

Office for Mac has long contained a substantial portion of Windows - rather than rewriting Office, Microsoft has included large pieces of Windows so something close to Office for Windows will run on a Mac. I'm not absolutely sure of the latest version, but I think it still does (Office for Mac is (still) several times the size of Office for Windows, which, of course, doesn't need to include Windows).

Office is a sufficient stewpot of code that Microsoft couldn't easily port it to THEIR OWN Surface Pro X - the lousy benchmarks in Office on the Pro X are largely because much of it is emulated. That is "just" Office for Windows - remember that Mac Office is several times the size, and that the difference may very well include tough to port Windows OS code.

Photoshop has historically contained routines written in x86 Assembly Language - if it no longer does, that's relatively recent. Whether or not there's still Assembly in there, there's certainly a mess of languages.

Monsters like that will require a huge amount of hand-coding to port to ARM.

Some little calendar app that lives in the Mac App Store already, and has Mac and iOS versions running off a common code base? Sure, that'll go ARM Mac with a simple compiler switch! Photoshop? Years of hand-tuning!

On the big things where performance matters, that's exactly where Catalyst is easier than porting Mac apps. We'll see Mac apps where there's really no difference between Mac and iOS anyway - but iOS-derived apps instead of the legacy monsters like Office and Photoshop.

 

[koyoot]

They haven't talked about Dali yet, officialy .

But Dali has already been leaked, and it is 7 nm part. The engineering silicon is changing hands currently.

 

[cube]

They haven't talked about Dali yet, officialy .

But Dali has already been leaked, and it is 7 nm part. The engineering silicon is changing hands currently.

So the slide was wrong?

And a Linux patch said it was based on Raven. I guess they meant that it was Vega.

 

[koyoot]

So the slide was wrong?

And a Linux patch said it was based on Raven. I guess they meant that it was Vega.

What you are talking about is Athlons that are 3000 Series still. Guess why they are 3000 series still?

 

[cube]

What you are talking about is Athlons that are 3000 Series still. Guess why they are 3000 series still?

And the slide says Dalí, not Raven2.

The naming seems wrong if they are not Zen+.

 

[beaker7]

deleted

 

[koyoot]

And the slide says Dalí, not Raven2.

The naming seems wrong if they are not Zen+.

Ok, now I see everything. Which means that the design that was supposed to be Dali: 4C/8T+Navi GPU is something else, named differently.

AMD quite possibly renamed RavenV2 as Dali APUs, and called it a day.

Nomenclature changes. But also gives a little perspective, into something. This is quite interesting how everything unfolds.

 

[cube]

Ok, now I see everything. Which means that the design that was supposed to be Dali: 4C/8T+Navi GPU is something else, named differently.

AMD quite possibly renamed RavenV2 as Dali APUs, and called it a day.

Nomenclature changes. But also gives a little perspective, into something. This is quite interesting how everything unfolds.

They don't really need 4C 6W APUs. 2C Zen+Vega would be a big upgrade already.

But offering Excavator FDX for semi-custom could be interesting. The main problem to use that for ultra-mobile would be that one would expect Polaris or Vega to be backported to 22FDX.

 

[sapralex]

Hey everyone) I’ve seen many explanations that Apple actually might have chosen Xeons because of the high RAM limit. I’m just really curious, why could they choose RAM over performance ?
I’m an audio engineer and a maximum of 256GB of RAM with a more powerful processor will always be a better choice for me. Mac Pro is made for professionals, but in which industry professionals really choose RAM capacity over CPU performance ? Is it really so essential and helpful for most industries to have more than 256GB of RAM ?

 

[fendersrule]

I'm reading everywhere that Threadripper theoretically supports 2TB of ram. Not sure where this 256GB number is. Agree with poster above....that's a boatload of RAM already.

I suppose it's all up to mainboard support at that point--maybe that is what's putting the limits into play....

 

[Kpjoslee]

Go watch some testing of intel CPUs (anything from i3 and up) and see how their actual power consumption fares vs. rated TDP.

Compare to how AMD's products fare on the same tests.


i.e., learn what the power consumption vs boost is in real life, vs. what intel's marketing department would have you believe.


edit:
we aren't in 2015 any more. the whole "AMD = furnace, nuclear power required" meme isn't a thing any more. It's now intel facing that situation.

How many times I have to say repeatedly that I am specifically pointing to Xeons, not consumer i3, i7, or i9 line of product. Xeons are not designed go over rated TDP even when running with RATED all-core turbo boost.

Do I need to repeat again that I am specifically talking about Xeons only?
Learn to read other people's post properly

 

[defjam]

Hey everyone) I’ve seen many explanations that Apple actually might have chosen Xeons because of the high RAM limit. I’m just really curious, why could they choose RAM over performance ?
I’m an audio engineer and a maximum of 256GB of RAM with a more powerful processor will always be a better choice for me. Mac Pro is made for professionals, but in which industry professionals really choose RAM capacity over CPU performance ? Is it really so essential and helpful for most industries to have more than 256GB of RAM ?

The strength of the Mac Pro comes in its ability to be configured to the users needs. Some users will need high core count processors, others will need large amounts of memory, while others may need GPU power. The Mac Pro allows the user to configure it to their needs and it's likely most users aren't going to need a system with a fully configured system.

Unfortunately this also increases the cost of any base system as the platform needs to be capable of supporting all configurations.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

The thread title could substitute "HP" for Apple, as the HP Z8 does not offer any AMD option CPU-wise.

I wonder why not?

 

[goMac]

I think Apple is probably using Xeons for business reasons. They may still be under an exclusive agreement with Intel (wasn't rumored to end until 2020), the design might have been in motion for a while, it's hard to switch CPU vendors mid stream, etc etc. Apple isn't unaware, but they do have an exclusivity agreement with Intel, and likely couldn't have shipped with AMD in 2019 even if they wanted to.

Technically... AMD still doesn't have AVX512. And that's the one weakness of Threadripper, Xeon still beats it for vectorized workloads. And audio and video is highly vectorized. So if AMD was an option that the business side allowed, Apple would probably want a Threadripper with AVX512. Apple has heavily invested in AVX512 optimizations for pro apps.

Hard to tell what Apple will do with the Mac Pro after Intel exclusivity ends. We don't know if they're cutting Intel entirely, or just ending exclusivity. Maybe they'll have 10 nm Xeons by then or maybe Intel will still be lost in the wilderness.

 

[08380728]

Hey everyone) I’ve seen many explanations that Apple actually might have chosen Xeons because of the high RAM limit. I’m just really curious, why could they choose RAM over performance ?
I’m an audio engineer and a maximum of 256GB of RAM with a more powerful processor will always be a better choice for me. Mac Pro is made for professionals, but in which industry professionals really choose RAM capacity over CPU performance ? Is it really so essential and helpful for most industries to have more than 256GB of RAM ?

I very much doubt this has anything to do with the topic at hand.
Apple probably started R&D and design of this Mac Pro 2-3 years ago, Apple would have been designing around Intels internal roadmaps that they’d share with Apple. AMD’s roadmap would have been less secure because they didn’t have proven marketable Zen architecture back then.

All in all, it’s probably the time lines being out of sync, those being, Apple’s Mac Pro development and AMD’s CPU development and time to market.

It’s a bit unfair to be ripping Apple to shreds for not choosing AMD for the Mac Pro.

If Apple had have pulled their finger out years ago and shipped this Mac Pro, where, in 2019 it would be due a refresh, then sure, Apple, deservedly so, should be slayed for choosing Intel now, fsck.

Lets see what decisions Apple make in a year or so when the Mac Pro is up for a refresh.

 

[cube]

Technically... AMD still doesn't have AVX512. And that's the one weakness of Threadripper, Xeon still beats it for vectorized workloads. And audio and video is highly vectorized. So if AMD was an option that the business side allowed, Apple would probably want a Threadripper with AVX512. Apple has heavily invested in AVX512 optimizations for pro apps.

Just use double the cores. And Intel throttles with AVX2 and AVX-512.

 

[08380728]

With such a passionate user base, Apple has great wealth of users willing to share their needs and expectations, I do wonder how Apple manage to repeatedly fsck things up.

Last time they backed themselves into a thermal corner, this time they backed themselves into a both a price and performance corner, this Mac Pro is bad value for money considering the p!sspoor performance.

Because of these things, getting a Mac Pro out to the rest of us, you know the $3k, 4x PCIe tower on AMD Ryzen 9 3950X will murder the Mac Pro in both price and performance.

How do they fsckup so bad, I got to wonder rolling eyes...