MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...

[avkills]

Another thing that people need to realize about Xeon CPUs is that they are really good at multi-tasking and multi-threading. Even more so when you have a boat load of RAM.

Not that I suggest it, but one can be rendering things in After Effects or 3D apps and still actually use the computer for mundane tasks such as email and web browsing.

Since I have no Apple Silicon machines; I can not comment on the ability of them to multi task like Xeons; but I can say that Xeons are much better than the i9 in my Mac Book Pro, even when I had RAM parity on both.

 

[mode11]

Again, what you consider is wrong. It has been proven that "cant innovate my ass" turned into "we designed ourselves into a thermal corner" and they misjudged what was feasible (ie by way of large failures of overheated graphics cards in the trashcan). And you admitted it was a technical failure, and yet...

There's two types of mistakes here. One was the overall concept, i.e. a non-expandable Mac Pro. The other was the detail design, i.e. making it too small. If it had been 50% bigger, it would have had a lot more breathing room / room to grow. The latter is a classic Apple mistake that they've made time and again with MBPs, iMacs etc. - too compact / slim, yet still with quiet fans, so the machine inevitably overheats and proves unreliable.

So apparently when they said "cant innovate my ass" their entire plan was to make technical mistake because it's not 'plausible' that they would do so, and yet they did.

You're conflating my different arguments. When I talked about what's 'plausible', I was referring to AS, not the MP 6,1.

As for sacrificing the Mac Pro. True that could be possible, but in the past with their apology tour, that clearly was not the intent, even if it was the result. I don't see why, here, it also couldn't be the unintended consequence.

I suppose it comes down to how incompetent one imagines Apple could be. It would be a massive blunder if they effectively killed off the Mac Pro because they hadn't taken the time to plan out the AS transition. That said, Disney didn't plan out the Star Wars sequel trilogy in advance, which I'd have also considered impossible.

Was it bleedingly obvious that the 2 mediocre graphics cards would also have high failure rates from overheating? I guess that was their intent? Youre arguing around yourself.

That's a separate issue, with lots of potential solutions. Turning up the fan by 30%, for one. Or replacing the GPUs entirely with e.g. (slightly underclocked) Vega 56s.

As for the studio being the original plan. I pray that's not the case. Agree, I think they intended to get some version of the Mac Pro out similar to the 7,1 but with their chips. I think somewhere along that way, they experienced some unplanned for technical problems. *IF* the rumor is true on them dropping the core count, that would be some evidence (if that pans out) IMO.

I certainly don't dismiss the possibility that they thought they had it all worked out, but then ran into technical issues e.g. very poor yields. In that scenario, I assume / hope the fundamental strategy wouldn't need to change, it would more a case of delays, reduced clockspeeds etc.

Regarding a purported inability to support 3rd party graphics cards. I don't know what to think about that, and it's an interesting question. Did they always want to support 3rd party graphics cards and are running into technical trouble? Is there just sloth and laziness preventing them from writing drivers to support 3rd party cards? Is is a strategic miscalculation? All or some of the above? Good question. I do not know.

And who knows, they may surprise us and actually support 3rd party graphics, at which point, the discussion is moot. If not, I suspect a technical miscalculation, which they have proven capable of with thermal failures of the trashcan, but I cannot know...it could be poor choices too.

As one of your earlier posts correctly stated, time will tell.

I would have thought simply supporting AMD GPUs would be a lot less effort than competing with AMD and Nvidia's best in this space. Especially if PCIe lanes are already in place to support audio / video capture cards etc. But perhaps they will surprise us with a GPU solution we hadn't thought of.

 

[Mac3Duser]

I5 13600k is more and less better than the xeon 16-cores of the mac Pro (except for the ram), and according to some benchs near to the xeon 24 cores
and better on single core performance, as usual. Pci lanes and amount of ram are the main lack.
xeons and core I are very different, it's obvious, but last gen of core I is a big step.

 

[avkills]

Apple designing their own external GPU would actually be better in the long run since they could tune it specifically for Metal.

Opening the door again for nVidia and continued support of AMD cards is what *should* happen; but Apple does not deal in *should happen* scenarios because they live in a vacuum and distorted reality.

 

[avkills]

I5 13600k is more and less better than the xeon 16-cores of the mac Pro (except for the ram), and according to some benchs near to the xeon 24 cores
and better on single core performance, as usual. Pci lanes and amount of ram are the main lack.
xeons and core I are very different, it's obvious, but last gen of core I is a big gap.

I was not referring to synthetic benchmarks that mean nothing in the real world. I am referring to personal experience using both in actual real world scenarios. The Xeon in my Mac Pro is way better at dealing with multiple processes than the i9 in my laptop; which is the way it should be since one is a laptop vs. workstation. The Xeon is also better than the i9 in my windows desktop. All off them are more or less from the same period in time. Of course the newer Core chips are going to be better with single core; they have newer designs.

 

[PauloSera]

Apple designing their own external GPU would actually be better in the long run since they could tune it specifically for Metal.

Opening the door again for nVidia and continued support of AMD cards is what *should* happen; but Apple does not deal in *should happen* scenarios because they live in a vacuum and distorted reality.

No, that's not what should happen. What should happen is they should continue to make integrated GPUs that outperform similarly priced systems with GPUs that hog immense amounts of power, as they have already done.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You're conflating my different arguments. When I talked about what's 'plausible', I was referring to AS, not the MP 6,1.

I'd argue you conflated them in your original statement which made no differentiation between them (strategic blunders vs technical blunders):
You said:
“Apple would have broadly understood all the implications when it committed to switching to Apple Silicon; it's not like they started the transition, then started thinking about how it might apply to the Mac Pro.

If the Mac Pro is important to them, they would have had a solid plan in place for it from the start. Even if it is though, perhaps the various benefits of porting macOS to iOS hardware were so tempting, they were willing to forego the Mac Pro as we know it.”

We can disagree about how plausible it is for them to be incompetent on strategy/technical-mistake and fair and reasonable people can disagree. My overall point is they could mess up either or BOTH and did mess up on both counts with the trashcan. So being dubious of apple and what they 'plan' to do with the ASi Mac Pro, IMO, is a reasonable position.

Your point (not quoted) re: (roughly paraphrased) 'just how stupid do you think apple is', is also a fair one, in that one would think, after the trashcan debacle, they would have learned to not make similar mistakes. I certainly *hope* you are right. My only remaining point is it's not unreasonable for folks to be dubious and nervous that they could again make mistakes they have proven to be capable of making in the past.

As to the rest of your post, we very much agree.

 

[jmho]

No, that's not what should happen. What should happen is they should continue to make integrated GPUs that outperform similarly priced systems with GPUs that hog immense amounts of power, as they have already done.

Agreed. If Apple wanted to support "x86" GPUs, they should have stuck to using x86 at the highest end.

Trying to make AMD / nVidia cards work on Apple Silicon would be far more work than just keeping the current x86 support around (which is starting to look like maybe what they should have done - at least until their high-end GPUs are more competitive)

The main selling point of Apple Silicon is supposed to be unification. They want it so that devs just need to write something once and then it runs on every Apple device from the iPhone all the way up to the most expensive Mac Pro. I really can't see them fragmenting things for a very small number of users.

 

[avkills]

No, that's not what should happen. What should happen is they should continue to make integrated GPUs that outperform similarly priced systems with GPUs that hog immense amounts of power, as they have already done.

Except that every "released" Apple silicon chip gets easily mopped by nVidia and AMD dedicated graphics. The only GPUs Apple is beating is whatever integrated silicon Intel and AMD are slapping on CPU laptop parts.

Laptops are the only place this makes sense IMO.

 

[PauloSera]

Agreed. If Apple wanted to support "x86" GPUs, they should have stuck to using x86 at the highest end.

Trying to make AMD / nVidia cards work on Apple Silicon would be far more work than just keeping the current x86 support around (which is starting to look like maybe what they should have done - at least until their high-end GPUs are more competitive)

The main selling point of Apple Silicon is supposed to be unification. They want it so that devs just need to write something once and then it runs on every Apple device from the iPhone all the way up to the most expensive Mac Pro. I really can't see them fragmenting things for a very small number of users.

To who? Apple doesn't care that much about this. They've already addressed the markets they care most about. What's left is like 5% of Mac users.

 

[avkills]

Agreed. If Apple wanted to support "x86" GPUs, they should have stuck to using x86 at the highest end.

Trying to make AMD / nVidia cards work on Apple Silicon would be far more work than just keeping the current x86 support around (which is starting to look like maybe what they should have done - at least until their high-end GPUs are more competitive)

The main selling point of Apple Silicon is supposed to be unification. They want it so that devs just need to write something once and then it runs on every Apple device from the iPhone all the way up to the most expensive Mac Pro. I really can't see them fragmenting things for a very small number of users.

What do you mean "x86" GPU. Any PCI based GPU can be made to work in any computer system that supports PCI and has drivers written for it, regardless of the OS.

Your idea of iOS and MacOS converging is a slippery slope that aims to dumb down MacOS. It has already happened in Ventura with the re-vamping of the System Preferences and lots of "useful, but maybe not used by a lot of people" features removed because people are too stupid to learn how stuff works.

It is really becoming sad what Apple is doing with MacOS. But oh well, here we are.

 

[innerproduct]

So tired of this cucked apple.. 🥲 They have one chance more to prove to me that they want people like me as customer (well, according to their adds I sure as hell ain’t fitting their target demographic anymore)

 

[jmho]

What do you mean "x86" GPU. Any PCI based GPU can be made to work in any computer system that supports PCI and has drivers written for it, regardless of the OS.

The reason I put x86 in quotes is because the drivers for those cards are written for x86 systems. I'm sure Apple / AMD nVidia can write drivers for Apple Silicon if they want, but it'll be a herculean effort, and one which Apple couldn't do alone.

Also I'm not talking about merging iOS and macOS at the UI level, and it has nothing to do with "dumbing down". I'm talking about at the level of Metal and the drivers - there is no good reason why Metal should work differently for an M1 GPU in an iPad vs an M1 GPU in a Mac Studio / Mac Pro.

Currently if you're writing an app in Metal it's very tempting to just completely drop support for AMD / Intel GPUs because it's more complex than just writing everything for Apple Silicon.

 

[AlphaCentauri]

Currently if you're writing an app in Metal it's very tempting to just completely drop support for AMD / Intel GPUs because it's more complex than just writing everything for Apple Silicon.

That’s what Apple has been doing since the inception of M1, actively encouraging developers to move to Metal and unified memory (no place for dGPUs or eGPUs anymore). There is simply no place in Apple’s current plan for support of AMD dGPUs. There’s also no drivers being written for those. They could provide drivers but then they would have to tell developers to do complete U-Turn again.

IMHO, it’s either going to be SOC graphics only (if all they care about is Video and Audio pros) or they will provide their own dGPUs or Afterburner type accelerator cards (if 3D/Rendering is also something they care about).

 

[Mac3Duser]

The reason I put x86 in quotes is because the drivers for those cards are written for x86 systems. I'm sure Apple / AMD nVidia can write drivers for Apple Silicon if they want, but it'll be a herculean effort, and one which Apple couldn't do alone.

Also I'm not talking about merging iOS and macOS at the UI level, and it has nothing to do with "dumbing down". I'm talking about at the level of Metal and the drivers - there is no good reason why Metal should work differently for an M1 GPU in an iPad vs an M1 GPU in a Mac Studio / Mac Pro.

Currently if you're writing an app in Metal it's very tempting to just completely drop support for AMD / Intel GPUs because it's more complex than just writing everything for Apple Silicon.

nvidia works on arm solutions

 

[Colstan]

The mainstream tech press is starting to pick up on what we have been discussing here for months, thanks to Gurman's latest vague article. Ars Technica is decidedly negative on the Mac Pro as an ongoing concern.

It might be time for Apple to throw in the towel on the Mac Pro

Opinion: Making the case against Apple’s most expensive—and most ignored—Mac.

arstechnica.com

Don't shoot the messenger. I don't agree with the notion of giving up on the Mac Pro. However, I have a hard time arguing with many of the points being made. Even though many of us disagree on what the future of the Mac Pro looks like, I think we can all agree that Apple has been sporadic in its support for the machine, and related software, over the past decade.

 

[Wokis]

Seems at the very high-end the old way of doing things still reign supreme. Wonder if they can swallow their pride, simply just buy and adapt Sapphire Rapids (or the latest Epyc) platform into the kind of Mac Pro that the target audience wants.

That means they have to keep MacOS alive on x86 but that would have been the decent thing to do anyway.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

The mainstream tech press is starting to pick up on what we have been discussing here for months, thanks to Gurman's latest vague article. Ars Technica is decidedly negative on the Mac Pro as an ongoing concern.

It might be time for Apple to throw in the towel on the Mac Pro

Opinion: Making the case against Apple’s most expensive—and most ignored—Mac.

arstechnica.com

Don't shoot the messenger. I don't agree with the notion of giving up on the Mac Pro. However, I have a hard time arguing with many of the points being made. Even though many of us disagree on what the future of the Mac Pro looks like, I think we can all agree that Apple has been sporadic in its support for the machine, and related software, over the past decade.

F Ars. They haven’t been relevant in along time. Huffpo of tech. They think the studio is first truly new machine? Really? It’s a fat less expandable Mac mini and that is their ‘strong argument against the Mac pro’. What a joke. They are dismissed As the click wh***s they are.

 

[avkills]

Apple is going to have to keep x86 support in OS X for some time.

Apple can easily write drivers for AMD or nVidia if they choose to.

I also don’t think there is any specific programming required in the case of unified vs. dedicated GPU memory. That distinction should be handled at a lower level, otherwise automatic graphics switching on Intel based Mac Book Pros would not have worked.

 

[mattspace]

Apple is going to have to keep x86 support in OS X for some time.

Yup, first gen M1 machines will be obsolete, and aged out of OS updates, before the current "new" Intel machines are.

 

[avkills]

That’s what Apple has been doing since the inception of M1, actively encouraging developers to move to Metal and unified memory (no place for dGPUs or eGPUs anymore). There is simply no place in Apple’s current plan for support of AMD dGPUs. There’s also no drivers being written for those. They could provide drivers but then they would have to tell developers to do complete U-Turn again.

IMHO, it’s either going to be SOC graphics only (if all they care about is Video and Audio pros) or they will provide their own dGPUs or Afterburner type accelerator cards (if 3D/Rendering is also something they care about).

I think you are confused about what a Afterburner card actually does because the Apple Silicon chips already have media encoding/decoding engines for ProRes, which is basically what a Afterburner cards does when plugged into a Mac Pro. Afterburner cards do not do squat for 3D/Rendering applications.

And you are wrong about AMD drivers not being written, yes they are being written otherwise Ventura would not work on any Intel based Mac since they all have AMD GPUs in them. There is no programming secret sauce whether your app works on AMD GPUS or not. That is the reason Apple wants developers to move to Metal because then the Metal API decides where graphic calls are being sent. Unified memory is not a new concept. Whenever Intel based Mac Book Pros are not using the discrete GPU the graphics memory is unified since the on die GPU uses RAM for video memory.

 

[conmee]

There's two types of mistakes here. One was the overall concept, i.e. a non-expandable Mac Pro. The other was the detail design, i.e. making it too small. If it had been 50% bigger, it would have had a lot more breathing room / room to grow. The latter is a classic Apple mistake that they've made time and again with MBPs, iMacs etc. - too compact / slim, yet still with quiet fans, so the machine inevitably overheats and proves unreliable.

Good point regarding design. 6,1 was a bathroom trashcan. If they'd made something between bathroom and kitchen sized trashcan, increasing both height and circumference, would have been able to accommodate more options. It was always "how small can we go" often at the expense of thermal/performance. Following Glad's lead in the trash can liner space, Apple could have extended the 6,1 product line to accommodate different increasingly demanding performance/workflows/professionals.

 

[jmho]

Apple can easily write drivers for AMD or nVidia if they choose to.

nVidia can easily write drivers for Apple (assuming Apple give them their ability to sign code back). Apple cannot write drivers for nVidia because nVidia's drivers are closed source.

AMD's drivers are open source however, but I'm not sure of the legality of Apple writing their own drivers based on this.

I also don’t think there is any specific programming required in the case of unified vs. dedicated GPU memory.

There is also a large distinction between Apple Silicon GPUs and Intel / AMD GPUs in Metal because you will have to make sure your buffers are copied between CPU and GPU which adds a lot of synchronisation and prevents you from using certain storage modes and requires a lot of binding calls. Then you have the complete absence of tile memory and memoryless targets on Intel / AMD.

The reason auto-switching worked is because both GPUs had the same limitations and thus could be handled by Metal.

 

[AlphaCentauri]

I think you are confused about what a Afterburner card actually does because the Apple Silicon chips already have media encoding/decoding engines for ProRes, which is basically what a Afterburner cards does when plugged into a Mac Pro. Afterburner cards do not do squat for 3D/Rendering applications.

And you are wrong about AMD drivers not being written, yes they are being written otherwise Ventura would not work on any Intel based Mac since they all have AMD GPUs in them. There is no programming secret sauce whether your app works on AMD GPUS or not. That is the reason Apple wants developers to move to Metal because then the Metal API decides where graphic calls are being sent. Unified memory is not a new concept. Whenever Intel based Mac Book Pros are not using the discrete GPU the graphics memory is unified since the on die GPU uses RAM for video memory.

In regards of “Afterburner”, I meant it in more general terms - as a type of Apple proprietary card which is graphics accelerator only, for specific task - in case of new Mac Pro it would be 3D/Rendering engine and not media engine, of course.

As for drivers being written for Ventura - yes, because Intel Mac Pro is still being sold as current model. There are no drivers for AMD cards for Apple Silicon at all. Otherwise, eGPU solutions would work with ASi Macs and they don’t.

 

[mode11]

The mainstream tech press is starting to pick up on what we have been discussing here for months, thanks to Gurman's latest vague article. Ars Technica is decidedly negative on the Mac Pro as an ongoing concern.

It might be time for Apple to throw in the towel on the Mac Pro

Opinion: Making the case against Apple’s most expensive—and most ignored—Mac.

arstechnica.com

Don't shoot the messenger. I don't agree with the notion of giving up on the Mac Pro. However, I have a hard time arguing with many of the points being made. Even though many of us disagree on what the future of the Mac Pro looks like, I think we can all agree that Apple has been sporadic in its support for the machine, and related software, over the past decade.

It's hard to argue with anything in that article; I've made many of the same points here myself. I don't think Ars is dancing on the grave of the Mac Pro, just pointing out the obvious - Apple have little interest in making it. Any objective look at the releases over the last decade+ would make that abundantly clear.

If Apple had e.g. released an iMac in 2013, then not updated it until 2019, I think we'd all be in agreement that Apple isn't interested in making them anymore. As Mac Pro enthusiasts, though, we have trouble letting the dream die.

Apple is big enough and rich enough that if it had any interest, it could have released new Xeon workstations on a 2-year cadence all throughout the 2010s. They didn't even need to change the chassis - no-one would have cared, and it would have actually been convenient for many (mine is underslung on a desk with a MP-specific handle bracket). It's like they deliberately release machines that don't hit the mark, then use that as evidence that no-one wants a Mac Pro anymore.

The article makes one other good point - an expandable chassis is only relevant if expansion cards, particularly GPUs, actually have drivers. Nvidia GPUs are already out of the question, and the latest generation of AMD cards are unsupported too. If the only cards you can use are audio / video capture cards and the like, the Mac Pro would lose 90% of whatever appeal it has.

Personally, I'm hanging in there until the AS MP release (or confirmed cancellation), though I'd be staggered if it's something I'd actually buy. I have little doubt it will use a massive SoC, have no PCIe GPU support, and cost £8K. I'd be surprised if I'm not using a PC desktop by this time next year, though will still use my iPhone, iPad Pro and MBP alongside it. I'm currently booted into Windows, and stuff like Unreal Engine runs great, whilst on macOS it gives me warnings about my hardware not being up to spec. Having full access to my Steam collection doesn't hurt either.