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Mac Pro 2011 "Sandy Bridge E" everything we know

This is sad. I don't need to justify myself for believing that Apple should offer a lower-upper-class Mac Pro. That's what I think. You obviously don't agree with me and rather let people like me either buy the current Mac Pro which is just too much or get the iMac/Mini and not have enough OR switch to PC, that's fine -- you are obviously entitled to your own opinion. Let's not argue about it and instead see what Apple comes up with :)
 
Very long time reader. First time poster.

Here's my guess about what the new Mac Pro will hold. First up, Apple makes products to fulfill peoples computer needs, most people are are served by a laptop and so unsurprisingly they are apples biggest sellers. The Mac Pro has traditionally used by business in design/graphics, video, education & science.

The recent iMac and the Mac Mini are now seriously cutting into traditional Mac Pro areas. Mac Mini is a pretty decent server for small & medium business and now the high end has decent graphics for a mac gaming rig. The newest iMac is a beast. A 27" IPS screen and plenty of horse power for 90% of the graphics/design market. I'm a film editor on TV shows with 10+ editors, and it's not uncommon to have half the edit bays as iMacs these days. Plus with Thunderbolt, iMacs can capture and output uncompressed HD video and attached to the kind of raid drives that used to require a Mac Pro. In a year 90% of the things you needed a PCIe slot for will be available for Thunderbolt. The exception to this of course being high end graphics upgrades, but really people who are 'serious' about gaming on a Mac is a pretty tine market, compared to PC gaming or gaming consoles.

So the Mac Pro is becoming cannibalised for the mid to high end by the iMac and the Mac Mini. So who do you make a Mac Pro for? It becomes a machine for very high end. People who need Unix and the horse power only Xeons can bring. That means medicine, biotech etc, industries that used to used mainframes or workstations. In my industry, 3D & VFX workstations utilise every core a machine can spare and Color grading suites such as Davinci run best with an external chassis and as many Graphics cards as they can get. These are people willing to pay big money the most power, so if the Mac Pro is going to have a profitable market, it has to be the high end.

So I'd expect the new Mac Pro to be more high end focused. To do that it needs more storage options (drive slots & RAID) and more expandability (PCI slots). But as Apple is no longer interested in being in the server/SAN business and is focused on being a consumer electronics company, I expect the configuration to remain basically the same. Why waste resources redesigning something that worked for the last 8 years and it's purpose hasn't changed?

Personally, unless the next Mac Pro has 7 PCIe slots, I'm going to need get a Cubix expansion chassis. But I won't hold my breath.
 
wallysb01 said:
Well it is and it isn't but we're moving into a different discussion. The question they will be faced with is "do I want the iMac 27" with an i5 for ~$2000 or do I want a display-less 'Mac Cube' with a desktop i7 and room for extra hard drives, etc, for ~$1700?" We're going to get lost in all this Grandma (and seriously, who's grandma uses a $2000 computer?), Mom, 17-year old stuff.

Also, the argument is not that they are the "same", the argument is that they are similar enough that they would compete with each other.
Click to expand...

By your argument Apple should only have one model of mini, one iMac and one Mac Pro.

And why stop there? Why does Apple offer more than one model of iPod? Or iPhone? MacBook and MacBookPro? Let's simplify down to one model of each product. Everyone is the same. There is no Grandma, Mom or 17 year old. They all have similar enough needs that one size fits all.

You want Apple to be the one piece jump suit of the computer world. We want to be able to have a choice between casual attire, work clothes and suit and tie.
 
G4er? said:
I...
Some of us will never buy an all in one. But there are many who feel that a built in screen is a positive. I don't think offering people like me a product is going to take away sales of the iMac.
Click to expand...

The big question would appear to be that of if there is sufficient 'critical mass' to motivate Apple's continued interest. For example, recent reports are that significantly more than 75% of Apple's Mac sales are of "All-in-One" machines. The basis of this observation is that 75% of current sales are laptops (which are by definition, All-in-Ones), which leaves the remaining 25% of the pie divided up between the mini, iMac and Mac Pro. Common sense tells us that the MP doesn't sell as well as either of the other two, so a SWAG breakdown of {25% = 10% + 10% + 5%} is as good as anything else; All-in-Ones are thus probably at around 85% of Apple's Mac unit sales.



mherrick said:
Very long time reader. First time poster.

Here's my guess...

The recent iMac and the Mac Mini are now seriously cutting into traditional Mac Pro areas. Mac Mini is a pretty decent server for small & medium business and now the high end has decent graphics for a mac gaming rig. The newest iMac is a beast. A 27" IPS screen and plenty of horse power for 90% of the graphics/design market. I'm a film editor on TV shows with 10+ editors, and it's not uncommon to have half the edit bays as iMacs these days. Plus with Thunderbolt, iMacs can capture and output uncompressed HD video and attached to the kind of raid drives that used to require a Mac Pro. In a year 90% of the things you needed a PCIe slot for will be available for Thunderbolt. The exception to this of course being high end graphics upgrades, but really people who are 'serious' about gaming on a Mac is a pretty tine market, compared to PC gaming or gaming consoles.

So the Mac Pro is becoming cannibalised for the mid to high end by the iMac and the Mac Mini. So who do you make a Mac Pro for? It becomes a machine for very high end. People who need Unix and the horse power only Xeons can bring. That means medicine, biotech etc, industries that used to used mainframes or workstations. In my industry, 3D & VFX workstations utilise every core a machine can spare and Color grading suites such as Davinci run best with an external chassis and as many Graphics cards as they can get. These are people willing to pay big money the most power, so if the Mac Pro is going to have a profitable market, it has to be the high end.
Click to expand...

This is what I see the terrain coming to too ... Thunderbolt's performance pretty much obviates a lot of the "But I can't open the box" factor.

So I'd expect the new Mac Pro to be more high end focused. To do that it needs more storage options (drive slots & RAID) and more expandability (PCI slots). But as Apple is no longer interested in being in the server/SAN business and is focused on being a consumer electronics company, I expect the configuration to remain basically the same. Why waste resources redesigning something that worked for the last 8 years and it's purpose hasn't changed?

Personally, unless the next Mac Pro has 7 PCIe slots, I'm going to need get a Cubix expansion chassis. But I won't hold my breath.
Click to expand...

This is one potential direction. My thoughts were somewhat similar in that it could move to become much more Grid computing friendly, although it may be more astute to say "Cloud" friendly: envision an operator who's sitting on his MacBook Air and simply orchestrating the work over a WiFi connection ... the heavy lifting is delegated to a bunch of Mac Pro Cubes (MPC's) sitting in the closet. As that business's workload increases, just buy a couple more MPC's and plug them in.

Frankly, I see the Apple technologies of Xgrid and of Grand Central Dispatch (in particular) as having been too quietly kicking around in the background for far too long without any "killer App" breakout. They wouldn't exist without a good reason, so what's Apple's likely 5 year technology-business plan for how they would be used?


-hh
 
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-hh said:
Frankly, I see the Apple technologies of Xgrid and of Grand Central Dispatch (in particular) as having been too quietly kicking around in the background for far too long without any "killer App" breakout. They wouldn't exist without a good reason, so what's Apple's likely 5 year technology-business plan for how they would be used?
Click to expand...
I see it as a sort of "Chicken and the Egg" situation. Most software vendors weren't going to do anything before the tools existed if they hadn't already done so (some would develop their own tools out of necessity = preempted Apple's new API's in order to utilize what they needed as a means of improving performance), so Apple realize they'd have to provide them in order to increase the amount of software that could leverage the available hardware. But there hasn't been any real increase in software that can take advantage of these new API's from what I've seen.

So if vendors don't take advantage of the new API's and improve their offering's performance, then Apple (or any other OS developer), could decide to drop such support, and focus their efforts on a more lucrative market (better ROI on the money spend on development).
 
G4er? said:
By your argument Apple should only have one model of mini, one iMac and one Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

No, you're creating a strawman. Its one thing to offer options inside a particular design, its quite another to offer entirely different product. Basically, its quite easy to take the same case, the same mobo, the same display and set of other peripherals, then add in a couple different chip types. Its fairly difficult to just offer an entirely new product line.

You want Apple to be the one piece jump suit of the computer world. We want to be able to have a choice between casual attire, work clothes and suit and tie.
Click to expand...

The fact that you feel the need to distort my argument in order to attack it says about all that needs to be said.

----------
Tanax said:
This is sad. I don't need to justify myself for believing that Apple should offer a lower-upper-class Mac Pro. That's what I think. You obviously don't agree with me and rather let people like me either buy the current Mac Pro which is just too much or get the iMac/Mini and not have enough OR switch to PC, that's fine -- you are obviously entitled to your own opinion. Let's not argue about it and instead see what Apple comes up with :)
Click to expand...

Hey, I'm not trying to force anything on you, and as a consumer I would certainly love to see Apple offer a wider variety of computers. (Personally, I'd like to see something like a mini tower with an i3 2100 offered under $500, but I highly doubt we'll see such a thing). I'm just saying that in doing so, that may work against their objective of earning as much money as possible.
 
nanofrog said:
I see it as a sort of "Chicken and the Egg" situation. Most software vendors weren't going to do anything before the tools existed if they hadn't already done so (some would develop their own tools out of necessity = preempted Apple's new API's in order to utilize what they needed as a means of improving performance), so Apple realize they'd have to provide them in order to increase the amount of software that could leverage the available hardware. But there hasn't been any real increase in software that can take advantage of these new API's from what I've seen.

So if vendors don't take advantage of the new API's and improve their offering's performance, then Apple (or any other OS developer), could decide to drop such support, and focus their efforts on a more lucrative market (better ROI on the money spend on development).
Click to expand...

Ah, I see; agreed.

Of course, what it almost sounds like this conversation is trying to avoid calling out Adobe specifically, although Adobe in reality has to consider how to minimize their expense of maintaining their applications' code base across two different OSs. Of course, there's also Apple's in-house tools (eg, Final Cut) which are unable to employ this excuse.


-hh
 
Tanax said:
This is sad. I don't need to justify myself for believing that Apple should offer a lower-upper-class Mac Pro. That's what I think. You obviously don't agree with me and rather let people like me either buy the current Mac Pro which is just too much or get the iMac/Mini and not have enough OR switch to PC, that's fine -- you are obviously entitled to your own opinion. Let's not argue about it and instead see what Apple comes up with :)
Click to expand...

No you don't. It is just an old argument. It is not Apple's style and it will most likely never happen.
 
I just wonder how many people settle for the iMac as their computer of choice because there is no mid range alternative offered by Apple?

When OSX users find themselves with limited choices they either have to accept those choices or give up OSX. Most will take the iMac. Some will accept the limitations of the mini and others will spend extra money for power they don't need and get the Mac Pro. A few will go Hackintosh.

But I bet that a lot of those people feel they had to settle for something and live with the cons of their purchase than be truly satisfied with Apple limited mid range product line.
 
-hh said:
Ah, I see; agreed.

Of course, what it almost sounds like this conversation is trying to avoid calling out Adobe specifically, although Adobe in reality has to consider how to minimize their expense of maintaining their applications' code base across two different OSs. Of course, there's also Apple's in-house tools (eg, Final Cut) which are unable to employ this excuse.
Click to expand...
Such a situation is applicable to more than just Adobe, or even just the professional creative market.

But in their case, they're in a different dilemma IMO. That is, they develop for both platforms, and have had to develop their own tools. Then they port the Windows versions over to OS X, which means it's neither optimized for OS X, and some of the features under Windows may not be available, as the API calls don't match (so they just "void" those sections out via comment syntax in front of the code I would suspect). It's a way of better using their development funds, as they're not going to write two different platform versions from the ground up, as it's too expensive (they're not willing to pay for that many man hours of development time, simultaneous or otherwise). Just not enough ROI from their POV, whether it would still be profitable if they did do totally different platforms or not.

In Apple's case, there could be practical reasons, such as all the API's they need aren't actually written yet. Another would be that they're short handed, and can't get the talent shifted onto this particular project (can't get it all done within the specified deadlines). Unfortunately, I've not seen a major hiring spree either in terms of software engineers on their site.

But there is another, less savory alternative explanation, which is they're too cheap to pay for the necessary man hours to get it done by the planned deadline (perhaps why they've not gone out looking for additional bodies/talent to get it done).
 
G4er? said:
I just wonder how many people settle for the iMac as their computer of choice because there is no mid range alternative offered by Apple?
Click to expand...

I would think quite a few.

G4er? said:
When OSX users find themselves with limited choices they either have to accept those choices or give up OSX. Most will take the iMac. Some will accept the limitations of the mini and others will spend extra money for power they don't need and get the Mac Pro. A few will go Hackintosh.

But I bet that a lot of those people feel they had to settle for something and live with the cons of their purchase than be truly satisfied with Apple limited mid range product line.
Click to expand...

This is what it means to be in a "closed" ecosystem. Users open things up and Apple closes things down. It is cat and mouse. I don't mind the dynamic, others do and so they run Linux or Win because of the flexibility. This problem with Apple people are alluding to is not a problem at all it is just Apple being Apple. They've always been like this. There are so many newbies using Mac's these day's I forget others do not know this. They are not going to open up. Their model is very successful. When they opened up in the 90's they almost lost the company.
 
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Eidorian said:
MSI just got real on what PCI-Express support truly means for the LGA 1155 platform.
Click to expand...

Chuckle.... given the remaining I/O controller core chip has PCI-e 2.0 lanes now and the CPU package (CPU + PCI-e 3.0 + memory controllers) has PCI-e 3.0 lanes .... what are PCI-e switches doing on the motherboard at all ? Other than amuse the socket hoarders.

The far more sockets than bandwidth "Power user" boards are always amusing.
 
Tanax said:
I don't need a work-station or a server. I just want a regular desktop Mac.
Click to expand...

me, too. an imac without the "i" or a mac pro without the "pro."

a plain old mac... tower. not too big... not too small... medium. yeah. that's it. a mac medium. or mac midi, for short.

please, apple?

i seriously cannot fork for a 2500 mac pro. some people just need a regular mac. to do regular work with enough cores and gpu and expandability.

for ~$ 1500? the apple tax would be included in there considering it is a headless top end imac and a bigger/taller mac mini.

thanks.

--------

update:

ok. i just realized how this is not possible. something about cannibalizing sales. ok. i was just dreaming, folks. move on.
 
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deconstruct60 said:
Chuckle.... given the remaining I/O controller core chip has PCI-e 2.0 lanes now and the CPU package (CPU + PCI-e 3.0 + memory controllers) has PCI-e 3.0 lanes .... what are PCI-e switches doing on the motherboard at all ? Other than amuse the socket hoarders.

The far more sockets than bandwidth "Power user" boards are always amusing.
Click to expand...
The switches might be there to split the single x16 lane into x8/x8. Though I always thought the processor and PCH handled that anyways.

In other news Xbitlabs has performance estimates for Sandy Bridge-E.
 
Tanax said:
This is sad. I don't need to justify myself for believing that Apple should offer a lower-upper-class Mac Pro. That's what I think. You obviously don't agree with me and rather let people like me either buy the current Mac Pro which is just too much or get the iMac/Mini and not have enough OR switch to PC, that's fine -- you are obviously entitled to your own opinion. Let's not argue about it and instead see what Apple comes up with :)
Click to expand...

would love as well a Mac Pro with a non server specs. for gaming and daily use. even for work i may need that hexacore CPU.
an iMac without the monitor would be good around ~$1600 - 2000 base price would be great
 
robertbrian23 said:
would love as well a Mac Pro with a non server specs. for gaming and daily use. even for work i may need that hexacore CPU.
an iMac without the monitor would be good around ~$1600 - 2000 base price would be great
Click to expand...

This is probably the millionth time but the server parts are priced the same as equivalent non-server parts. The only difference would come from ECC RAM but Apple includes so little RAM that we are talking about $5 or so.
 
derbothaus said:
I hope no E3. How sad would that be?
Click to expand...
Extremely, as the E3's don't have enough PCIe lanes for a graphics workstation.

The E5's are the only real possibility for such usage (40 lanes in an SP variant, and possible for 80 in a DP system, though Apple is extremely unlikely to provide lanes from the second PCIe controller in CPU B = DP MP's will still only offer 40 PCIe lanes).

So we'll have to wait however long it takes in the end.... :eek: ;)
 
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