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Mac Pro + Thunderbolt possibilities

P

portishead

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 4, 2007
1,114
2
los angeles
I was just thinking the inclusion of thunderbolt could really cut the Mac Pro size down.

Put 4 thunderbolt ports on that bad boy, and you can do away with most internal peripherals/slots. Pro users would no longer need internal drive bays. Maybe a slot for an SSD, and a slim optical drive.

It would still have to be large enough to accommodate a dual slot video card, but that's it. AJA/Blackmagic already have Thunderbolt capture devices. Hard drive enclosures are in the works.

I could see a mini tower in the future - about a quarter of the size of the current Mac Pro. Just thinking out loud and looking at how giant the Mac Pro currently is, and how much space is wasted.
 
That's a horrifying thought.

I personally like everything inside. Nice and tidy with no desktop clutter of differently-shaped enclosures, data cables, power adapters, hubs, power adapters for the hubs, having the wrong kind of cable all the time (USB, FW400, FW800), etc etc.

Not to mention there are several people on this forum maxing out their slots and a few who want even more.
 
I see what you're saying, and don't disagree, but there could potentially be cost savings involved but not having to include a bunch of SATA connections, and PCI Express lanes.

Maybe a new product below a Mac Pro like a Mac Pro mini. Pro Performance, but smaller package.
 
portishead said:
I see what you're saying, and don't disagree, but there could potentially be cost savings involved but not having to include a bunch of SATA connections, and PCI Express lanes.

Maybe a new product below a Mac Pro like a Mac Pro mini. Pro Performance, but smaller package.
Click to expand...
I understand your point, but it's not as likely as you might think.

  1. Each TB port requires 4x PCIe lanes. Figuring this, you get 16x lanes for TB ports + 16x lanes for the GPU, so there's still a need for 32 lanes in order to do this (above those used for QPI).
  2. The PCIe lane count is established by the chipset, not the CPU.
  3. The ICH has traditionally contained the SATA, USB, and Ethernet controllers, but with the Sandy Bridge Xeons, the new chipset (X79) will contain the ICH as well (= those controllers will be there).
 
ActionableMango said:
That's a horrifying thought.

I personally like everything inside. Nice and tidy with no desktop clutter of differently-shaped enclosures, data cables, power adapters, hubs, power adapters for the hubs, having the wrong kind of cable all the time (USB, FW400, FW800), etc etc.

Not to mention there are several people on this forum maxing out their slots and a few who want even more.
Click to expand...

Indeed. My ideal MacPro would have two additional slots and two more hard drive bays.
 
portishead said:
Just thinking out loud and looking at how giant the Mac Pro currently is, and how much space is wasted.
Click to expand...

The Mac Pro case may seem giant, but excluding the handles (so the internal space) it is smaller than most enthusiast and workstation cases. It can't get much smaller if you want to be able to cool, silently - on air, two processors, 8 DIMMs and a high end graphics card. The Mac Pro is "crippled" due to space constraints compared to other workstations in its class.
 
portishead said:
You're saying TB has only equal throughput as a 4x PCIe slot?
Click to expand...
It needs 4x PCIe lanes to operate, but it doesn't utilize all the bandwidth they can provide (Gen 2.0 = 500MB/s per lane, so 4x produces 2GB/s).

As Umbongo mentioned, TB is rated at 10Gb/s, which translates to a theoretical max of 1.25GB/s. In reality, the overhead reduces that down to 800MB/s (real world throughput limit according to Intel).

So you get (800/2000) * 100 = 40% of the PCIe bandwidth available for use. Not that efficient, but for a laptop, device, or AIO system equipped with TB, it's a faster bus than what's been available previous to TB (eSATA being the fastest, at ~270 - 275MB/s for 3.0Gb/s ports real world).
 
The whole point of a Mac Pro is bigger is better, smaller is anathema, to suggest smaller is liable to get you burnt as a heretic
intel-x79-2011-03-31-600.jpg

being able to swap the 3.5" trays with 2.5" trays so we can use the 10 gorgeous SATA III connections would be delicious. (While this isn't technically the chipset the Xeon tends to one-up the Enthusiast.)
 
People that don't need Mac Pros have been wanting this forever. A headless iMac. That's what you are asking for. i7-2600K with 2 HDD bays and 1 extra PCI expansion or something like that. Cheaper price point yada yada. Smaller form factor. I want silent. Like no fans. Passive cooled. Voodoo put out a case like that years ago. All heat pipes and fins. No noise.
 
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