Do you mean this?
If so that looks very interesting. Looking at it I absolutely love it. That concept looks absolutely amazing. Apple, make that and take my money!!!!
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New Modular Mac Pro and Display - Next Year
- Thread starter haralds
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If so that looks very interesting. Looking at it I absolutely love it. That concept looks absolutely amazing. Apple, make that and take my money!!!!
That mockup was probably a literal "mock" where it still keeps the same thermo envelop issue, which Apple just admitted they **** the bed on. There is absolutely no chance that the new design will be even close to that, at least not in a compact form factor.
I am still pondering how literal should we take from the word "modular". If Apple is committed to the ecosphere approach, with their investment into Thunderbolt 3 on the MBP (and probably down the road on iMacs etc), there is some benefits in building an externally "modular" Mac Pro where components are inside enclosures where they stack and connect via some interface externally, including TB3 when it serves. This way, for example, a display can have its dedicated GPU, and whatever TB3 equipped Mac can use it, including an MBP or even an MB. Multiple GPUs, multiple drives, or specialty interfaces like card readers can be part of a stack. This also means liberating these "components" down into the consumer Mac user market where the "single digit Mac Pro" market segment was probably too insignificant to focus this much energy on.
They said what they are working on is a year out. Maybe it has to be slightly bigger. Maybe the fans can't be perfectly silent. But I do like the concept that was shown in that link.
Further more Corsair and MSI have taken the trashcan concept and managed to squeeze gaming performance out of them. The Corsair One even manages to fit a GTX 1080 and a i7 7700K into it and they are not having thermal issues. Effectively making the case larger to accommodate a second card and more cooling should in my opinion work.
They said "not this year'. Not next year. :-(
I just watched the Linus tech tips video on that. They put that thing under full synthetic load simultaneously maxing out the 7700k and the 1080. The CPU wasn't too hot, and the gpu was surprisingly cool. Corsair really did a bang up job but they messed up by putting the m.2 slot on the non accessible bottom of the mobo!
A slightly upscaled trashcan is not out of the question of course, as long as it doesn't constraint itself again with a triangular thermo core that restricts the choice of components down to almost none. But the real question is if Apple would want to pursue this path. A tower case if big, would just be a cheesegrater which is way too large for today's standard especially Apple's. And a smaller rectangular case is just Cube 2.0 which will suffer throttling and component limitations again.
At this point it is very hard to conjecture what Apple's choices will be. We know their intention, we know it will be a change of philosophy even if just slightly, but there are too many possible approaches and we don't know how much of it will stick to Apple's style, and how much will be to accommodate other real world industries. Also Apple may be anticipating some internal change in their own ecosphere, if they really push forward AR then it means development on Mac OS or even for iOS will need significant power in GPU compute.
Fudge, I hope we see something on it soon. My anxious little heart is dreaming of a Apple Christmas.
I'll have to check that video out. That is a bummer being difficult getting to the drive.
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I personally have no idea what to expect. I just want something awesome. I'll try to be content for now but if they add a substation amount of graphics horsepower while bring the overall cost down slightly even if they introduce a model with a i7 Extreme as opposed to a Xeon I would be tickled pink.
I can however make a guess basing on the existence of the iMac.
The mMP won't come in a year or two, for now they will need to beef up the top end iMac even further to hold on the waiters or potential switchers. The current 5k iMac already fills some of that role, but not enough. This is where the iMac Pro rumor starts to make sense. An AIO, but has Kabylake 7700, DDR4 DIMM, enough room and TDP for RX480, Thunderbolt 3... it will be a decent enough "workstation" machine for at least one year or two.
The only problem is its limitation in upgradability and flexibility. If the iMac is to stay (which it will) along side the Mac Pro, then the MP will have to take a drastically more dynamic approach than a mini-ATX case which is essentially an AIO without display. I would venture to guess the options of multiple GPUs and multiple drive bays are necessary, but that doesn't mean they all have to live in a single enclosure, and sharing the same power supply, and sharing the same thermo exhaust. With this I have a strong feeling that they will do an externally modular approach.
Skip the word "new" and use the words "RETURNS TO" modular...
For all the hype Apple did, their not so tubular tube Mac was a tragedy. Behind the times now, and hopefully the designers will be inspired by looking inside something like an HP Z Workstation. It makes me laugh that HP would put out a computer that is more real Mac Pro than what Apple put out.
Old video exploring one of the workstations -
For all the hype Apple did, their not so tubular tube Mac was a tragedy. Behind the times now, and hopefully the designers will be inspired by looking inside something like an HP Z Workstation. It makes me laugh that HP would put out a computer that is more real Mac Pro than what Apple put out.
Old video exploring one of the workstations -
AidenShaw, I'm curious what you think the next iteration of Mac Pro will look like. I'll take a stab:
- mostly rectangular chassis
- configurable dual or single CPU
- 4 full length, double wide, full height PCIe 4.0 x 16 slots
- 1 dedicated external PCIe expansion slot (to serve their vision of modularity)
OR
- NVlink or similar fabric to talk to external modules
PLUS
- dual 10GbE
- 8 RAM slots
- massive power supply with at least 1 each (6) + (8) pin connector per PCIe slot (perfectly measured for full sized GPUs)
- tons of TB4 ports
- lights out management (redundant power supply is too much to hope for)
Eh, there may be more, but that's off the cuff...
It's a year away at least before we see this 'new' mac pro. So all this talk about what current high end card might go in there seems like a waste of breath.
Gosh I sure hope not. You should be able to buy an Nvidia graphics card and stick it inside your Mac Pro. You should be able to use off the shelf m.2 drives in it, and maybe even 2.5" drives. The Mac Pro should have room for at least 4-6 disks at that.
It should be one machine. One machine that can be plugged into a monitor and have everything you need ready to go. No dongles, no power adapters, no extra boxes. Just one box.
If not, then why the *(@#% do we even bother having a desktop. That was what cheesed me about the trash can Mac Pro.
You mean like this one from HP?
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z2mini.html
Yeah, I can see Apple doing something like this. That way they can lock down all the upgrades, maybe even make them proprietary.
Plot twist 4 cpu slots!
Just kidding
Interested to see what this machine will look like. Would like a few hard drive slots. How reliable is the current SSD on the cylinder mac pro? What benefits do a quadro with ECC have for 3d, compositing and video work? Not a pro yet but will be soon hopefully (apart from some small amounts of freelance work, with my meh part time job!)
I know 10 bit is something only on quadros/firepros. Doesnt apply much so on the imacs however..
Just kidding
Interested to see what this machine will look like. Would like a few hard drive slots. How reliable is the current SSD on the cylinder mac pro? What benefits do a quadro with ECC have for 3d, compositing and video work? Not a pro yet but will be soon hopefully (apart from some small amounts of freelance work, with my meh part time job!)
I know 10 bit is something only on quadros/firepros. Doesnt apply much so on the imacs however..
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The impression I got from the reportage was that the new machine might not be quite as perfectly targeted for the 2 use cases the current machine seems to hit - Quiet FCPX & Logic workflows, but that is an inevitable compromise they'll make to ensure they get something that works well for everyone else.
Hopefully they've come to the conclusion that "Pro" hardware doesn't have a single use case with a big enough market to justify dedicating overly customised hardware to it - that the entire segment is nothing but edge cases which Apple can't address with standardised SKUs.
Stackable modules is a concept that has been explored by some (think Mac Mini 3rd parties) and could be feasible because it makes upgrades easy. You can have the CPU and RAM in the base module and then stack GPU and storage modules above it or even sideways. You could even upgrade ports like this.
While many of us including you and I would love a machine like that, what I was saying in Apple's perspective it may not be the best interest to do so. Some other poster in this thread already pointed out that if a new Mac Pro is just a tower with an ATX board with conventional PC layout, it would then be back to the Cheese Grater G5 days where it would just be a luxury choice of the same thing you can buy out there. Further more, if all they are to release is Cheese Grater 2.0 then it shouldn't take more than a year to (re)design, and it is already the 4th year after the trashcan debacle.
Stackable modules make a lot of sense in an ecosystem point of view. Remember when the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule and Apple TV got their same redesigned slimmer footprint, everyone thought the Mac Mini was going to get the same? To have the same approach on a PC and its components have been done before, but none of those who tried had as much its operating system and software as tightly integrated with each other, and they didn't have a hardware ecosystem as vast as Apple's. If carefully designed, these individual components can potentially work on its own, for instance a WiFi module can act as a Airport + Time Capsule, a Display can have its internal GPU and built in Apple TV, so they can seamlessly work with the rest of your Apple products as well. The difficult part is how these modules inter-connect with each other, how much is wired how much is wireless, and with which standard or propriety when needed.
Mostly it wasn't possible before because the only interface that wouldn't have enabled modules was Thunderbolt but it never had wide support...until...now!
That's what I wonder about. If they really go modular, maybe the can will only contain CPU(s), memory and a PSU for them. Everything else would be external so the user could mix and match at will. The big downside would be all the cases and wires but that arrangement would make it easy to even upgrade the CPU(s) by just buying a new CPU unit.
This is a legitimately terrible idea because it's trying to solve a problem that nobody has, which is the exact problem that has caused a 180 turn on the trashcan design. Nobody ever asked for Apple to make their flagship pro desktop 1/8th the size of the previous model. Nobody wants to play legos with their $3,500 workstation.
I'd be astonished if Apple try and overcomplicate the next Mac Pro and don't go for a more straightforward *ATX based design.
Not a clue, but if it's going to take as long to create as they say, I fear that it will be very innovative but not very useful - like the Tube.
I don't like the stackable concept - too many connectors, and T-Bolt is just too slow to be a main bus. You also have power issues - either the main unit has a large power supply ($$$ and cooling) to power the modules, or each module needs its own cord. (Or a mix - maybe storage modules are powered through the mating connector, but GPU modules need a cord.)
It would be interesting if we're misreading what the amigos meant by "modular". Perhaps instead of the user stacking modules together, the modules are connected during manufacturing. Different configurations can share some modules - for example the CPU and RAM module might be the same for a small system with one mid-range GPU and for a larger system with power and cooling for two big GPUs.
When Intel comes out with an updated CPU, Apple can modify the CPU/RAM module without having to re-engineer the whole system.
"Modular" and "upgradeable" could be for manufacturing, not for the end-user.