New Mac Pro, single processor only?

[alphaod]

I just noticed... the new Mac Pro is single processor only?

If it's indeed single processor, what chip has the 30MB L3 cache?

Or did I miss something.

EDIT: Never mind, I found the processor (E5-2697 v2)... and it supports up to 768GB of RAM?!

Seeing the box price for it, I'm guessing that'll be the premium over the higher end model for the option... So at least $6000 before other upgrades; current SSD prices would say $800 for the 1TB SSD, and probably another $2000 for the dual D700 GPUs... this doesn't look too pretty for my wallet.

 

[Benk3350]

yeah I'm assuming the 8 and 12 core models will be available as 2 CPUs. Although I think I did read somewhere that Apple may have a single 12 core processor, which would be pretty crazy.

I have to ask, in what application is 12 cores necessary? I understand 6 cores, and even 8 cores possibly. But unless you are spielberg or cameron rendering avatar 2 what are the 12 cores for?

 

[drmyfore]

I just noticed... the new Mac Pro is single processor only?

If it's indeed single processor, what chip has the 30MB L3 cache?

Or did I miss something.

EDIT: Never mind, I found the processor (E5-2697 v2)... and it supports up to 768GB of RAM?!

Seeing the box price for it, I'm guessing that'll be the premium over the higher end model for the option... So at least $6000 before other upgrades; current SSD prices would say $800 for the 1TB SSD, and probably another $2000 for the dual D700 GPUs... this doesn't look too pretty for my wallet.

If you want to get 768GB of RAM, you must install 12 dimms which each dimm is 64GB, OMG, that is too expensive and hard to buy!

according to the ark.intel.com, the price of 2697v2 is 2618 USD, compared with default Xeon E5-1650v2(nMP 3999$, six cores) is just 583 USD. Yeah, 2618-583~2000USD...

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yeah I'm assuming the 8 and 12 core models will be available as 2 CPUs. Although I think I did read somewhere that Apple may have a single 12 core processor, which would be pretty crazy.

I have to ask, in what application is 12 cores necessary? I understand 6 cores, and even 8 cores possibly. But unless you are spielberg or cameron rendering avatar 2 what are the 12 cores for?

Well, This volume and cooling system cannot support 2 CPUs, and the power is controlled within 450W.

It has two graphic cards.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Well, This volume and cooling system cannot support 2 CPUs, and the power is controlled within 450W.

It has two graphic cards.

Also, if you followed the whole keynote, you notice that they are now shuffling off CPU functions to GPU processing via Mavericks. The new OSX now arranges computational power in a different way…

Or so they say.

I haven't tried it yet. No one has done a thorough testing of that MacPro to see how the new architecture and OSX work together, but we'll find out by 2014. Going by Apple's sales spin at the conference yesterday--the dual GPUs will make this thing far faster than anything else around.

All the Pros are now technically "dual CPUs", when they use those dual GPUs as CPUs.

 

[drmyfore]

Also, if you followed the whole keynote, you notice that they are now shuffling off CPU functions to GPU processing via Mavericks. The new OSX now arranges computational power in a different way…

Or so they say.

I haven't tried it yet. No one has done a thorough testing of that MacPro to see how the new architecture and OSX work together, but we'll find out by 2014. Going by Apple's sales spin at the conference yesterday--the dual GPUs will make this thing far faster than anything else around.

All the Pros are now technically "dual CPUs", when they use those dual GPUs as CPUs.

Emm, I think, based on its positioning(processing of audio and video stream), parallel processing may be better suited to it, CPU performance generally isn't the bottleneck(have already had 12 cores), so they use dual GPUs as CPUs.

 

[DJenkins]

This Mac Pro will only have one CPU - up to 12 cores on one chip as the highest spec'd Xeon E5 v2 has been pointed out.

There are only 4 DIMM slots - so your memory is limited to the capacity of 4 total DIMMs. At this stage Apple is offering 4 x 16 = 64GB.

32GB modules are available as an option on PC workstations so hopefully they'll make it across to the Mac Pro later on too.

The top 12 core CPU Apple is using is capable of working in dual configuration, however not on this Mac Pro which is a shame - you can literally have twice the CPU power in a PC workstation from other manufacturers.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

*yawn*

Once again, the nMP is not and will never be a dual CPU machine. The PSU won't support it, there's not enough room on the CPU daughter card, and the thermal core can't dissipate that much heat without excessive fan noise.

You might as well be asking for a dual CPU Mac Mini. It's not going to happen in this form factor. Ever.

-SC

 

[haravikk]

I'm not sure if the last Mac Pro generation had two hardware threads per core, but this generation definitely will. That means the low end Quad Core still has more CPU power for most tasks than my current 8-core early 2008 pro. It also means the 12-core processor will be able to run 24 hardware threads, though there are some caveats to that compared to having a true 24 cores, but depending on your workload that's a lot of parallelism right there.

But it does seem that Apple is very much investing in the use of GPUs for any high performance computation, which isn't bad thing at all, though OpenCL adoption is still pretty slow, if you're using applications that do implement it then the new Mac Pro is a three processor beast of a machine.

I'm currently trying to work out whether I can afford to overspend and get the new Mac Pro, but run Bitcoin generation off the GPUs when I'm not using them for something else in order to make some of that extra money back

Otherwise I'll have to settle for waiting for the next Mac Mini update, as a Haswell quad-core Mac Mini will be pretty much equivalent to my current Mac Pro, actually better depending upon the workload.

 

[fiatlux]

At some point I wondered whether the nMP wouldn't be modular enough to be configured in 2 x CPU + 1 GPU or 1 x CPU + 2 x GPU.

It is obviously not the case but from a thermal point of view, appeared feasible.

 

[AidenShaw]

At some point I wondered whether the nMP wouldn't be modular enough to be configured in 2 x CPU + 1 GPU or 1 x CPU + 2 x GPU.

It is obviously not the case but from a thermal point of view, appeared feasible.

Note that the processor board is wider than the graphics boards, and it has twice as many heat sink fins.

It also doesn't look like it would be possible to put memory DIMMs on a CPU card sitting in one of the graphics slots.

(click to enlarge)​