Let's design our own marquee ARM Macs!

[awesomedeluxe]

Do you guys want to dream up the perfect ARM Mac? Do you think about it all the time? Same.

I made this thread for nothing but wish-builds of Macs. Apple is releasing two ARM-based Macs this year: what would you make? Feel free to craft something crazy – anything is OK as long as it follows the laws of thermodynamics. My first one is an implementation of a popular idea: “Surface Book” style hybrid Macbooks, which we’ll call the Powerbook 12 and 14.

The inside of the tablet half looks a little like this!

Thanks iFixit!

That’s an iPad Pro! The SoC is in the middle there. The biggest change between this and our Powerbook tablet is we move that SoC to the bottom, and of course, we're using an A14.

Tablet SoC – “A14Z”

8x Firestorm Cores @ 3GHz (high perf CPU)

4x Icestorm Cores (power efficient CPU)

8x Apple GPU Cores

12+ GB shared Samsung LPDDR5 RAM (you can mortgage your house for more and you will)

The hardware in the top half is a variant of Apple’s upcoming A14 chip. The Firestorm cores are clocked as high as TSMC’s 5nm process allows, but the GPU puts everything into power savings.

Note that our thermal capacity isn’t a lot different than the iPad 12. In tablet mode, we never run all 8 firestorm cores and the iGPU together; instead, we use a 4+4 fire/ice configuration almost identical to the iPad.

We’ll also make the battery ~20% thinner. This is to make room for a Mini LED display, make it lighter, and of course make it thinner: the iPad 12 is .59cm, and our Powerbook Tablet is .5cm. The Powerbook 12’s other screen dimensions are the same, but the 14 is wider and 16:10.

Powerbook 12: 26.2cm x 19.7cm (1.33:1 & 12.9”)

Powerbook 14: 31.5cm x 19.7cm (16:10 & 14.6”)

The lower half. Like the Surface Book, our lower half houses an external GPU, keyboard, touchpad speakers, controllers, and more battery.

Thanks again, iFixit!

That’s a Surface Book! The chip-thing up there is an nVidia GPU. See how it’s at the top so it can communicate easily with the SoC at the bottom of the tablet when they’re connected? We’re doing the same thing, except we’re using a custom-made Apple GPU. The rest is standard-fare, so let’s just talk about the GPU.

Apple dGPU (14”)

• 36x Apple GPU cores
• 8GB HBM2E
• 1x Fan

Taking advantage of the 30% 22% power savings from TSMC’s 5nm process, I estimate each GPU core uses about .7W. Sparing 5W for a stack of HBM2E, we have a TDP of 30.2W - pretty much the same as the 940M in the original Surface Book. We need a fan for active cooling, but just one: we want to avoid venting hot air onto the 8 firestorm cores in the tablet.

Apple dGPU (12”)

• 16x Apple GPU cores
• 8GB HBM2E
• 4GB LPDDR5

A lot less cores! I envision the Powerbook 12 as totally fanless, top-to-bottom. Since our Firestorm cores and GPU cores are in totally different bodies, it’s possible to run 8x Firestorm cores and 16 Apple GPU cores with no active cooling – that’s a lot of power for a fanless machine! Using LPDDR5 is not ideal, but probably the best we can do in this space.

Thanks to everyone who read this far. What would you build for your dream machine? An MBP with a mechanical keyboard, or an iMac with an AMD GPU? I want to hear your ideas!

 

[leman]

My dream “realistic” 16” model:

- CPU: 8 P cores @ 3.5 ghz + 4 efficiency cores
- 16-24 core Apple GPU
- 32GB HBM2 unified system RAM

SoC TDP 70-80Watt

Anyway, that’s what I expect Apple to release next year.

 

[Danny82]

I do think that Apple will be carrying on using AMD dGPU as leaks have shows drivers in latest Big Sur having Navi31 drivers.. probably the mbp16, iMac and mac pro..

My dream:

Business model for macbook to be same as this year iphone.. 2 normal macbook ideally the air (hope they make something new like 12 and 14 inch) and 2 pro macbook 14 and 16.. iMac line up will be similiar to ipad straight line increment way..
24 with only SOC and 27 to be SOC and dGPU..

Since I'm only interested in the MBP 14 (sadly no dGPU here because of cost).. I hope to see:

1) Face ID
2) iPhone front facing camera
3) mini led 120hz (I know it will probably be 60hz)
4) CPU 12 core able to compete with at least i7-9700k while maintaining within notebook battery of 12hrs
5) iGPU of around 2.5 tflops (dreaming again as apple have this year licensed Imagination again and Imagination only quote 2 tflops in their latest X1 chip, but hope Apple does its magic)
6) I for one do not really like the touch bar.. hope they do something better about it..
7) virtual desktop can run windows 10 all application.. or Rosetta can run all x86 application with reduce speed (dreaming yet again).. if Rosetta could run x86 at 65% SOC speed I will be really happy..

If all this are given, I will be happy to get the 1st gen.. if not will probably wait till 2nd gen and see reviews to be safe
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[cmaier]

It needs to be a cube. A purple cube.

 

[Boil]

There should be a new Cube, but not purple...

I outlined a Cube during the run-up to the newest Mac Pro, but that was based on a cluster of iPad Pro APUs, four baseline & the ability to add daughtercards and have a 16-way cluster...

Seems clustering is not where things are going, so now I would propose a Cube with a high core count arm64-based HPC APU, dedicated audio & video I/O & DSPs, a MXM slot (or two) for dGPU(s)...

This would be a perfect entry-level DCC workstation, one that could be beefed up a bit (more RAM, more storage, up to two discrete GPUs), saving the Big Chungus chassis for the real power users...

 

[Moonjumper]

I would like to see a new Mac Mini with the performance of a high end iMac.

I see the SoC having:
32 performance CPU cores
8 efficiency CPU cores
64 GPU cores

It would also have an accessible slot for a second NVMe SSD (I will be surprised if the first isn't fixed because of the T2 chip (or Mac equivalent)).
RAM would also be accessible and upgradeable.
The full array of ports currently on the Mac Mini.
A decent fan system for when pushing the machine, but will be silent most of the time.

 

[Boil]

I would like to see a new Mac Mini with the performance of a high end iMac.

I see the SoC having:
32 performance CPU cores
8 efficiency CPU cores
64 GPU cores

It would also have an accessible slot for a second NVMe SSD (I will be surprised if the first isn't fixed because of the T2 chip (or Mac equivalent)).
RAM would also be accessible and upgradeable.
The full array of ports currently on the Mac Mini.
A decent fan system for when pushing the machine, but will be silent most of the time.

LOL, I have been thinking of a high end APU for awhile now:

32 P cores / 16 E cores / 64 GPU cores / 32GB HBM2e UMA / 300W

But this would be in an all new Mac Pro Cube!

Thinking of it more, I could see some pretty potent Apple Silicon APUs:

64 P cores / 16 E cores / 80 GPU cores / 64GB HBM2e UMA / 600W

Who knows...?!? Time will tell...

 

[Moonjumper]

LOL, I have been thinking of a high end APU for awhile now:

32 P cores / 16 E cores / 64 GPU cores / 32GB HBM2e UMA / 300W

But this would be in an all new Mac Pro Cube!

Thinking of it more, I could see some pretty potent Apple Silicon APUs:

64 P cores / 16 E cores / 80 GPU cores / 64GB HBM2e UMA / 600W

Who knows...?!? Time will tell...

It would be nice to have a cube, and perhaps should have mentioned it in a dream specification thread, but I thought I'd ground it a little in reality. I cannot see Apple using bigger enclosures than they do now when saying Apple Silicon is more efficient.

 

[Boil]

It would be nice to have a cube, and perhaps should have mentioned it in a dream specification thread, but I thought I'd ground it a little in reality. I cannot see Apple using bigger enclosures than they do now when saying Apple Silicon is more efficient.

Where is the larger? a Mac Pro Cube would be taller than a Mac Mini (like a stack of five or six of them), but much smaller than the current Mac Pro Big Chungus chassis...

 

[Moonjumper]

Where is the larger? a Mac Pro Cube would be taller than a Mac Mini (like a stack of five or six of them), but much smaller than the current Mac Pro Big Chungus chassis...

The mythical xMac. I so wish it were true.

 

[Richdmoore]

The mythical xMac. I so which it were true.

I have started getting back into flight simulation, and am really bumping up with the limitations of both macOS & iMac design in particular. (Multiple screens to have separate simulated avionics devices, touch screen support, hardware that should work but nobody cared enough to write macOS plugins.....)

I would love the rumored xmac, and would find a way to afford it soon after launch. Unfortunately I don’t see this happening from Apple, they have done very well with only externally expandable devices (via thunderbolt/usb/earlier ports such as FireWire.)

I like macOS, and the integration with other ecosystem devices too well to want to switch to windows. I also don’t want multiple computers on my desk if possible, and I can’t use my 27” iMac as a dumb display to use with a windows pc as well.

First world problems to be sure.

 

[Falhófnir]

If we're starting from scratch, on the notebook side I say have just 3 chassis options (12", 14", 16") and have them all scale from absolute base specs to absolute top of the line. For base spec (A14M, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, no extra features) something like $999, $1099, $1199 for the three sizes, For top spec (A14MX, 64GB+ RAM, 8TB+ SSD, P3, ProMotion, HDR etc etc etc) sky's the limit but maintain $100 gap for equivalent specs.

This might be quite difficult to pull off in practice, but a full a la carte MacBook menu would be the ultimate computer offering!

 

[tdar]

I expect the Mac mini to look just like it does now.
inside it will have a 16 core CPU. It will be interesting to see how they break up the cores between power and efficiency. Being a ac powered desktop, I hope its 12 power and 4 effecency. the io will be a Ethernet port (hopefully 10g),a hdmi 2.1 port and 4 USB 4 ports. Without the need for a T2 chip, I hope that both ram and SSD are user upgradable. That would be the best mini ever!

 

[Waragainstsleep]

I'm going to go mad and spec a whole range:

When Apple moved to Intel they changed some model names. I have my doubts they will do so again but for fun, I will. As much as I'd love to bring back PowerBook and PowerMac, I don't see Apple revisiting those. I'm going to bring back one though.


Portables. Apple's most important market segment.

AirBook:

12" like the last MacBook, super thin, great battery, ideal for very basic use cases. Office admin, schoolwork, home users who don't like tablet, people who move around a lot and want ultra portability;

It plays 4K movies, runs MS Office, iMovie and does anything an iPad Pro can do except touch. I'd love to see Apple bring back some real colour to the line up. The later edition iPod Minis and Nanos had some great, vivid aluminium enclosures. Lets have bright red, electric blue, a deep purple, gold will be popular in the middle east, plus the classic space grey and silver. Probably wise to do a pink one too.

iBook (its back baby):

The fabled 14" just like how the 15" went to 16".
All of the above, a little more storage and a little more horsepower. Remove some colour options if you absolutely must.

ProBook (MacBook Pro was always a little cumbersome to say. We've gotten used to it but its no PowerBook):

16", state of Apple's hardware art. They don't need to change a whole lot from the current 16", just more power and more battery. Everything we can get.

I'd want all of these to have 24 hour + batteries if possible. The Pro probably won't get there but the other two should prioritise it higher.


Desktops:

Mac Mini has always felt like a slightly cumbersome name to me too. Absolutely love the little Mac but the name never felt quite right. MiniMac sounds a bit infantile, AirMac would be consistent but makes no real sense. Lets go weird:

aMac:

The Mac Mini doesn't need to change all that much IMO. Just update with the new tech, equivalent to the iBook above.
Lets add colours again. I love the idea of loads of little brightly coloured squares adorning offices everywhere. Match the corporate branding too.
I'd like the idea of a Pro version but it would cannibalise other Mac sales.

iMac:
I like the idea of a full screen version with minimal bezel, If I could manage it somehow, I'd make it display an Apple logo in the middle of the screen when it was off. I'll resist the urge to make it a glowing one, something along the lines of the paper display in a kindle maybe, built into the glass layer on the front of the screen. Just a cool little detail.
Otherwise it doesn't need to change very much. Lets include the colour options though, go full retro in homage to the original.

ProMac:
Can't see them changing the enclosure at all. I like it anyway. Again, if they made a gold one as an option at the top end they'd sell a few in certain countries, so why not let people pick a colour like the rest of the desktops?
Having said that, would an Apple Silicon ProMac need such a big case?

I'm going to spin off the rack mount version though....

sMac:

A new Mac server range. It could be based on the existing aMac and ProMac cases, but the little one would be like a pro version of the aMac so maybe Apple won't go for that so readily.
I want a secure, convenient small business server, and something big and powerful that can be used in large rack environments.

Maybe the small one looks like a Mac Mini, but with an extended enclosure to make it a cube(!). The enclosure allows the addition of full size PCI-E or even MPX modules for storage purposes mainly, but perhaps you could pick an afterburner or two of them in order to farm out some hard work from your iMacs? I dunno, this might not be super practical, maybe I'm just catering for the cube lovers.
I might get a 3rd party to provide a solar power option. (Yes it would be roof mounted)

The big one is for any rack based use you may have. Audio racks, in house server racks, data centres, whatever. I'd like to see great options for storage, throughput & networking, number crunching nodes, something with really versatile options. Maybe some special SoCs with extra specialist modules for Machine Learning or whatever people need them for. I'm seeing all the current uses, some niche but fast growing ones and something for data centres which gives amazing performance per watt compared to the competition.


I want the Touch Bar added to the cases for these rack mount Macs. Super handy to see temp and performance stats at a glance and you could include convenient headless reboot and update commands on them too. Most useful case for the touch bar yet.

Given the low cost, I might also consider throwing an iPhone or iPad battery into each of the desktop range of new Macs to act as battery backup in the case of power cuts or fluctuations. Apple has loads of them on hand anyway and with the low power features of their SoCs, this could be a nice little bonus feature even to home users.

 

[Boil]

MPX modules are not small, so your Cube is gonna be more like a NeXT Cube than a G4 Cube...

 

[Waragainstsleep]

MiniMPX then

 

[Boil]

To be small enough to fit into a Cube (we will even say slightly larger than the original G4 Cube, use the current Mac mini as a footprint & scale it up in the vertical). When you get to the size of PCB that would fit in a modern Cube, there is only room for the PCIe slot, not the MPX slot behind it. So I am afraid MiniMPX cannot be a thing.

If an end user wants expansion via PCIe / MPX slots, they will need to go with the Mac "Big Chungus" Pro chassis. iMac Pros & Mac Pro Cubes will use HPC APUs, with expansion via USB4 ports.

I could see a Mac Pro Cube with a single internal expansion slot, intended for an Apple Silicon compute / render GPU. A/V DSPs & I/O could be handled via external units off of USB4. Could make a really powerful DCC workstation in a compact desktop package.

Please make it in Space Grey & offer a matching monitor (at a reasonable price).

APUzilla - Small - 32 P cores / 4 E cores / 48 GPU cores / 16GB HBM2e UMA
128GB DDR5 RAM
4TB (2@2TB blades) NVMe SSD
600W Platinum-rated PSU
Apple Silicon Compute / Render card - Medium - 64 GPU cores / 24GB HBM2e
32" 6K3K Ultrawide Apple Monitor (built-in speakers, microphone, & webcam)
Apple Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard
Apple Magic Mouse 3D
2 year AppleCare on Cube & Monitor

US$9,999.00


Other APUzillas:

Small - 32 P cores / 4 E cores / 48 GPU cores / 16GB HBM2e UMA
Medium - 48 P cores / 6 E cores / 64 GPU cores / 32GB HBM2e UMA
Large - 64 P cores / 8 E cores / 80 GPU cores / 64GB HBM2e


Apple Silicon Compute / Render cards:

Small - 48 GPU cores / 16GB HBM2e
Medium - 64 GPU cores / 24GB HBM2e
Large - 80 GPU cores / 32GB HBM2e


Yeah, all A/V expansion (DSPs & I/Os) via USB4, a secondary GPU that is compute / render specific (no display output); kinda like the trashcan Mac Pro...!

 

[Joe The Dragon]

A new Mac server range. It could be based on the existing aMac and ProMac cases, but the little one would be like a pro version of the aMac so maybe Apple won't go for that so readily.
I want a secure, convenient small business server, and something big and powerful that can be used in large rack environments.

Needs to have hot swap storage (Not T2 tied) and for boot as well. IPMI that can load install images, etc

 

[ek9max]

I expect the Mac mini to look just like it does now.
inside it will have a 16 core CPU. It will be interesting to see how they break up the cores between power and efficiency. Being a ac powered desktop, I hope its 12 power and 4 effecency. the io will be a Ethernet port (hopefully 10g),a hdmi 2.1 port and 4 USB 4 ports. Without the need for a T2 chip, I hope that both ram and SSD are user upgradable. That would be the best mini ever!

This would be ideal for me too. I still have a 2018 mac mini under desk mount hanging waiting to be filled again.

I sold my 2018 macmini to use a 2013 Mac pro. I'd like to go back to a mac mini as soon as it can drive a scaled 4k display.

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Needs to have hot swap storage (Not T2 tied) and for boot as well. IPMI that can load install images, etc

I think in some environments a T2 tied boot drive would be a plus. Any big storage is going to be independent though. I don't see Apple re-entering the RAID market any time soon. Unless they have an A series chip that's a world-beater at managing and moving data.
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To be small enough to fit into a Cube (we will even say slightly larger than the original G4 Cube, use the current Mac mini as a footprint & scale it up in the vertical). When you get to the size of PCB that would fit in a modern Cube, there is only room for the PCIe slot, not the MPX slot behind it. So I am afraid MiniMPX cannot be a thing.

My vision for MiniMPX would be full speed but only shorter PCI-E cards (like the Xserves used to) with a focus on things like network interfaces, modest sized but rapid NVMe RAID storage or perhaps a Mini-Afterburner with fewer FPGAs on it in order to fit. I figure you could fit three PCI-E cards under the Mac Mini sized motherboard on top of the cube.
You could configure one as a home media server or stack them in data centres for moving lots of data very quickly. Plus all sorts of other things. You could maybe build one to capture video before being sent to edit stations or SAN storage. Maybe to run a rack of audio gear for gigs?

No room for giant GPUs means those users are forced to stick to the big tower units which suits the sales figures.

 

[Pressure]

If we use the A13 as the baseline we can get something like this for the low-end. Numbers based on the A13 made on the TSMC 7NP node.

We have straight up doubled the cores (2 small -> 4 small and 4 big -> 8 big) and enlarged the GPU from 4 cores to 16 cores (twice that of the A12X/Z).

Type	Size (mm²)	Total (mm²)
Quad-core Thunder (small)	0.58 per core	2.32
8-core Lightning (big)	2.61 per core	20.88
L2	4.41	8.82
16-core GPU	3.25 per core	52
GPU uncore	9.12	9.12
NPU	4.64	4.64
SLC SRAM	6.36	12.72
Miscellaneous (PCIe/TB/etc)	20	20
		~131mm²

5nm has a 84% higher transistor density but not all transistors scale similarly. Then take whatever architectural improvements they have in store for Apple Silicon, 20% increase in IPC and 20%+ increase in clock speed afforded by higher TDP and 5nm node (just to pull some numbers completely out of thin air). That would give the Lightning cores a clock speed of 3.2GHz and Thunder cores 1.9GHz. I'm lowballing here but you should get the idea of what is possible and "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".

I'm not worried about performance but software initially. People are definitely looking back at Rosetta v1 with rose-tinted glasses. Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office were plain horrible. Then came the trouble with Carbon versus Cocoa.

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Office when it ran on Rosetta was using a codebase that was horribly outdated when it was on PPC. It was never going to run well on Rosetta. I don't recall using Creative Suite much.

 

[awesomedeluxe]

EDIT: I've been relying on a +15% clockspeed boost from TSMC's N5 process, and a lot of you have quoted that after me. This was incorrect. TSMC is citing a 15% increase from N7, but the A13 is on N7P. The boost from the A13 should be more like 8%. Power savings at iso speed should also be closer to 20%.

If we use the A13 as the baseline we can get something like this for the low-end. Numbers based on the A13 made on the TSMC 7NP node.

We have straight up doubled the cores (2 small -> 4 small and 4 big -> 8 big) and enlarged the GPU from 4 cores to 16 cores (twice that of the A12X/Z).

Type	Size (mm²)	Total (mm²)
Quad-core Thunder (small)	0.58 per core	2.32
8-core Lightning (big)	2.61 per core	20.88
L2	4.41	8.82
16-core GPU	3.25 per core	52
GPU uncore	9.12	9.12
NPU	4.64	4.64
SLC SRAM	6.36	12.72
Miscellaneous (PCIe/TB/etc)	20	20
		~131mm²

5nm has a 84% higher transistor density but not all transistors scale similarly. Then take whatever architectural improvements they have in store for Apple Silicon, 20% increase in IPC and 20%+ increase in clock speed afforded by higher TDP and 5nm node (just to pull some numbers completely out of thin air). That would give the Lightning cores a clock speed of 3.2GHz and Thunder cores 1.9GHz. I'm lowballing here but you should get the idea of what is possible and "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".

I'm not worried about performance but software initially. People are definitely looking back at Rosetta v1 with rose-tinted glasses. Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office were plain horrible. Then came the trouble with Carbon versus Cocoa.

This is a really interesting die-size analysis. I think it's an important consideration; Apple wants to make money with these machines and smaller dies are more profitable and more versatile. This part is too hot for an iPad, but not too big, and with some cores disabled (and the perf cores at 3GHz lower) would fit just fine. All great from a manufacturing standpoint.

I don't know a lot about multi-die package designs, so let me ask your opinion on this. Do you think it would make sense to print a dGPU die, maybe a little bigger than that APU - say, 48 cores - put it on the same package, and have it share a pool of HBM2 memory sitting between the APU and dGPU? This would allow Apple to use the same APU die for ~5 products without giving up the advantages of a unified memory design. I outlined what I have in mind below.

My dream “realistic” 16” model:

- CPU: 8 P cores @ 3.5 ghz + 4 efficiency cores
- 16-24 core Apple GPU
- 32GB HBM2 unified system RAM

SoC TDP 70-80Watt

Anyway, that’s what I expect Apple to release next year.

Chalking up 10W to the two stacks of HBM2E, .8W to the 24 GPU cores... I think this is reasonable. You can probably get the Lightning cores close to 3.5GHz for 4-5W a core, but it's also OK if they end up .1GHz short. On second thought this is clocked too high. 3 - 3.2GHz is more in line with what we can expect from TSMC's 5N process.

The 24-core GPU isn't great for Apple, since it's a little big, cutting into yield and making it difficult to reuse in other devices. I know your thinking has probably evolved on this some since you posted (I know mine has since I first suggested putting a 60-core GPU in a book-style 14" base). What do you think of an APU like Pressure outlined above, paired with an on-package GPU sharing on-package HBM2E? I think this is better for Apple in terms of cost and opens up the possibility of a better GPU for the consumer. But I'm also lacking key information, like whether Apple has access to a high-speed interposer design like AMD's Infinity Fabric, and what complications might be posed by a multi-die package design in general.

The package for my dream 16" right now looks like this:

[A14Z APU: 8 Firestorm Cores @ 3.2GHz | 4 Icestorm Cores @ 1.9GHz | 16 Apple GPU Cores]
. ||
[Memory: 16GB HBM2E + 16GB HBM2E]
. ||
[dGPU: 48 Apple GPU Cores]

Stray thoughts:

• I don't see these GPUs clocked higher than what's in the iPhone 11 right now. Guess is .8W/core, 38.4W total.
• dGPU uses less power than the Radeon Pro 5500M, but is a lot closer to superdense system memory and an APU.
• The APU and dGPU graphics cores are the same cores using the same memory. Using them together seems feasible but may not be worth the effort given the thermal constraints of keeping Firestorm Cores at max clock.
• I don't know how big a stack of HBM2E is, but making a guess, this package is like 400mm².

 

[JMacHack]

Can we not bring the cube back? I know it's fun to look back at it nostalgically but we need to remember that it was a market failure. As was the Mac Pro 6,1. Gorgeous design, wrong implementation.

But this is fun so I'll have a go:
Mac Pro 8,1:

Base:
• 16-core, 16-thread cpu at 3.0GHz Turbo up to 4.0GHz. Insane amounts of cache, much bigger space dedicated to the Neural Engine
• MPX AMD Radeon Pro (whatever the designation is by then) el cheapo GPU, 2x Thunderbolt out, 2x HDMI out 16gb GDDR6 RAM
OR
• MPX Apple Pro GPU, 4x Thunderbolt out, Afterburner ASICs on board. 16gb GDDR6 RAM
• 512gb storage
• 64gb DDR5 ECC RAM (up to 1tb)
• 7 PCI-E 4 slots
• 1400 watt PSU
• $5000 (maybe $4,000 depending)

Mid:
• 64-core, 64-thread cpu at 3.2Ghz turbo up to 4.3GHz. Even Insanely-er amounts of cache, enormous amount of space for Neural Engine
• MPX AMD Radeon Pro (whatever the designation is) decent-tier GPU 16gb HBM2 RAM same output
OR
• MPX Apple Even-More-Pro GPU, same output, Afterburner, 32gb HBM2 RAM
• 3tb storage
• 512gb DDR5 ECC Ram (up to 1.5 tb)
• yadda yadda same as above
• $9,000-$10,000

Max:
• 128-core, 128-thread cpu at 2.8GHz boost up to 3.8GHz. Xbox hueg amount of Cache, Big thinky Neural engine
• 2x MPX AMD Radeon Pro top-tier GPU 64gb HBM2 RAM
OR
• MPX Apple Pro-est GPU, Afterburner, 64gb HBM2 RAM
• 10tb storage
• 3tb DDR5 ECC Ram (max'd out)
• same as above
• If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

 

[awesomedeluxe]

Can we not bring the cube back? I know it's fun to look back at it nostalgically but we need to remember that it was a market failure. As was the Mac Pro 6,1. Gorgeous design, wrong implementation.

But this is fun so I'll have a go:
Mac Pro 8,1:

Base:
• 16-core, 16-thread cpu at 3.0GHz Turbo up to 4.0GHz. Insane amounts of cache, much bigger space dedicated to the Neural Engine
• MPX AMD Radeon Pro (whatever the designation is by then) el cheapo GPU, 2x Thunderbolt out, 2x HDMI out 16gb GDDR6 RAM
OR
• MPX Apple Pro GPU, 4x Thunderbolt out, Afterburner ASICs on board. 16gb GDDR6 RAM
• 512gb storage
• 64gb DDR5 ECC RAM (up to 1tb)
• 7 PCI-E 4 slots
• 1400 watt PSU
• $5000 (maybe $4,000 depending)

Mid:
• 64-core, 64-thread cpu at 3.2Ghz turbo up to 4.3GHz. Even Insanely-er amounts of cache, enormous amount of space for Neural Engine
• MPX AMD Radeon Pro (whatever the designation is) decent-tier GPU 16gb HBM2 RAM same output
OR
• MPX Apple Even-More-Pro GPU, same output, Afterburner, 32gb HBM2 RAM
• 3tb storage
• 512gb DDR5 ECC Ram (up to 1.5 tb)
• yadda yadda same as above
• $9,000-$10,000

Max:
• 128-core, 128-thread cpu at 2.8GHz boost up to 3.8GHz. Xbox hueg amount of Cache, Big thinky Neural engine
• 2x MPX AMD Radeon Pro top-tier GPU 64gb HBM2 RAM
OR
• MPX Apple Pro-est GPU, Afterburner, 64gb HBM2 RAM
• 10tb storage
• 3tb DDR5 ECC Ram (max'd out)
• same as above
• If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Looks good. I think this CPU definitely calls for a Threadripper-style chiplet design. You can put 16 Firestorm cores on one die and surround an on-package I/O die with 1 or 4 or 8 of them.

How do you envision the Apple GPU looking? The Pro Vega II Duo is actually also a chiplet design with two GPU dies on the package... is that what you would envision for Apple?

I really hope Apple does create some kind of multidie beast soon because I want to know what their high-speed interposer solution looks like.