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nMP 2015: where is it?

M

ManuelGomes

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 4, 2014
1,617
354
Aveiro, Portugal
Well, today would be Steve Jobs' 60th birthday and was supposed to be an announcement day - it wasn't!!
Anyway, maybe some good news for WWDC on June.

Regarding the nMP, it seems more and more unlikely we'll see it this year, it seems.
For one, it would make sense to at least update the hardware to more current specs, since older parts should be discontinued and harder to get.
CPU and GPUs come to mind, but that means complete redesign of course.
On the other hand, possibly no major performance boost would be expected, so why bother?
I guess Apple will delay the switch as much as it can, or Intel and/or AMD will allow. In the end, Xeon v2 availability will determine the need to move on, since it requires greater changes (PCH, RAM). These are not so different from actual solutions but require validation. If GPUs are in short supply they need to come up with new ones based on current technology.
Still, if Apple does wait till SkyLake and TB3, then only by late 2016 or early 2017 we'll see the nMP, which seems too long, even for Apple.
There is also the possibility that they will wait till next year for BroadWell but that will require the same effort as if they do it now with Haswell. If they do it now, next year they can use the same platform and update processor support only.
Thing is, GPUs are not available yet with the latest tech, sort of. AMD will give us Fiji soon, but Grenada is a Hawaii rebrand and Trinidad may also be a Tonga rebrand, old tech with CGN 1.1 and 1.2, as opposed to the really new Fiji based off CGN 1.3 and HBM.
Don't take me wrong, Hawaii is still good enough I guess, but not as a new model. This rebranding thing...
It will take some power consumption magic to fit the envelope!!
It would be great though to see USB3 out of the C610 to free some lanes, but those would still be PCIe 2, PCIe 3 off the PCH and a lot more lanes will only come with SkyLake, as well as PCIe 4 off the CPU. Add TB3 to the mix and that will be the perfect platform. But still far off unfortunately.
So, I'd settle with Haswell for now.
With Apple so tied up with the development of an electric car, I guess all other projects will be on hold for now.
 
ManuelGomes said:
Well, today would be Steve Jobs' 60th birthday and was supposed to be an announcement day - it wasn't!!
Anyway, maybe some good news for WWDC on June.

Regarding the nMP, it seems more and more unlikely we'll see it this year, it seems.
For one, it would make sense to at least update the hardware to more current specs, since older parts should be discontinued and harder to get.
CPU and GPUs come to mind, but that means complete redesign of course.
On the other hand, possibly no major performance boost would be expected, so why bother?
I guess Apple will delay the switch as much as it can, or Intel and/or AMD will allow. In the end, Xeon v2 availability will determine the need to move on, since it requires greater changes (PCH, RAM). These are not so different from actual solutions but require validation. If GPUs are in short supply they need to come up with new ones based on current technology.
Still, if Apple does wait till SkyLake and TB3, then only by late 2016 or early 2017 we'll see the nMP, which seems too long, even for Apple.
There is also the possibility that they will wait till next year for BroadWell but that will require the same effort as if they do it now with Haswell. If they do it now, next year they can use the same platform and update processor support only.
Thing is, GPUs are not available yet with the latest tech, sort of. AMD will give us Fiji soon, but Grenada is a Hawaii rebrand and Trinidad may also be a Tonga rebrand, old tech with CGN 1.1 and 1.2, as opposed to the really new Fiji based off CGN 1.3 and HBM.
Don't take me wrong, Hawaii is still good enough I guess, but not as a new model. This rebranding thing...
It will take some power consumption magic to fit the envelope!!
It would be great though to see USB3 out of the C610 to free some lanes, but those would still be PCIe 2, PCIe 3 off the PCH and a lot more lanes will only come with SkyLake, as well as PCIe 4 off the CPU. Add TB3 to the mix and that will be the perfect platform. But still far off unfortunately.
So, I'd settle with Haswell for now.
With Apple so tied up with the development of an electric car, I guess all other projects will be on hold for now.
Click to expand...

If nothing else I think we can count on XP951 coming soon. I should have an Apple pre-release one here soon. Obviously a good choice for nMP.

Since a Hawaii GPU would have to have it's performance clubbed to death by down clocking to fit in the nMP power & heat envelope, they would be wise to bring out a pair of 960/970/980s as new GPUs. Better, faster, and since this would give CUDA back to Pros, I'll bet they'll hold on to their antique Dx00s for awhile, sadly.
 
ManuelGomes said:
Well, today would be Steve Jobs' 60th birthday and was supposed to be an announcement day - it wasn't!!
Anyway, maybe some good news for WWDC on June.

Regarding the nMP, it seems more and more unlikely we'll see it this year, it seems.
For one, it would make sense to at least update the hardware to more current specs, since older parts should be discontinued and harder to get.
CPU and GPUs come to mind, but that means complete redesign of course.
On the other hand, possibly no major performance boost would be expected, so why bother?
I guess Apple will delay the switch as much as it can, or Intel and/or AMD will allow. In the end, Xeon v2 availability will determine the need to move on, since it requires greater changes (PCH, RAM). These are not so different from actual solutions but require validation. If GPUs are in short supply they need to come up with new ones based on current technology.
Still, if Apple does wait till SkyLake and TB3, then only by late 2016 or early 2017 we'll see the nMP, which seems too long, even for Apple.
There is also the possibility that they will wait till next year for BroadWell but that will require the same effort as if they do it now with Haswell. If they do it now, next year they can use the same platform and update processor support only.
Thing is, GPUs are not available yet with the latest tech, sort of. AMD will give us Fiji soon, but Grenada is a Hawaii rebrand and Trinidad may also be a Tonga rebrand, old tech with CGN 1.1 and 1.2, as opposed to the really new Fiji based off CGN 1.3 and HBM.
Don't take me wrong, Hawaii is still good enough I guess, but not as a new model. This rebranding thing...
It will take some power consumption magic to fit the envelope!!
It would be great though to see USB3 out of the C610 to free some lanes, but those would still be PCIe 2, PCIe 3 off the PCH and a lot more lanes will only come with SkyLake, as well as PCIe 4 off the CPU. Add TB3 to the mix and that will be the perfect platform. But still far off unfortunately.
So, I'd settle with Haswell for now.
With Apple so tied up with the development of an electric car, I guess all other projects will be on hold for now.
Click to expand...

I'd say if we haven't seen a Haswell refresh by the end of April, it's safe to say they've skipped it. However, that's still a couple of months away.
 
I could bet there will be a nMac Pro 2015.

The new pre-release SSD's SM951 (MZ-KPV1T0R/0A2) only makes sense in a new Mac Pro with PCIe 3.0 x4 bus.
 
When Intel release something.....

ManuelGomes said:
Well, today would be Steve Jobs' 60th birthday and was supposed to be an announcement day - it wasn't!!
Anyway, maybe some good news for WWDC on June.

Regarding the nMP, it seems more and more unlikely we'll see it this year, it seems.
For one, it would make sense to at least update the hardware to more current specs, since older parts should be discontinued and harder to get.
CPU and GPUs come to mind, but that means complete redesign of course.
On the other hand, possibly no major performance boost would be expected, so why bother?
I guess Apple will delay the switch as much as it can, or Intel and/or AMD will allow. In the end, Xeon v2 availability will determine the need to move on, since it requires greater changes (PCH, RAM). These are not so different from actual solutions but require validation. If GPUs are in short supply they need to come up with new ones based on current technology.
Still, if Apple does wait till SkyLake and TB3, then only by late 2016 or early 2017 we'll see the nMP, which seems too long, even for Apple.
There is also the possibility that they will wait till next year for BroadWell but that will require the same effort as if they do it now with Haswell. If they do it now, next year they can use the same platform and update processor support only.
Thing is, GPUs are not available yet with the latest tech, sort of. AMD will give us Fiji soon, but Grenada is a Hawaii rebrand and Trinidad may also be a Tonga rebrand, old tech with CGN 1.1 and 1.2, as opposed to the really new Fiji based off CGN 1.3 and HBM.
Don't take me wrong, Hawaii is still good enough I guess, but not as a new model. This rebranding thing...
It will take some power consumption magic to fit the envelope!!
It would be great though to see USB3 out of the C610 to free some lanes, but those would still be PCIe 2, PCIe 3 off the PCH and a lot more lanes will only come with SkyLake, as well as PCIe 4 off the CPU. Add TB3 to the mix and that will be the perfect platform. But still far off unfortunately.
So, I'd settle with Haswell for now.
With Apple so tied up with the development of an electric car, I guess all other projects will be on hold for now.
Click to expand...

That'll make a difference. Also 18 months - 2years between MP refreshes is not unusual and most people had to wait til march to get them last year...
 
MVP, XP951 should be a top performer no doubt, a great move for Apple if they do decide to go with it. They will for sure, almost double performance from the older XP941, judging by the SM951 already out. Hope Samsung will enable NVMe this time, they didn't after all in the SM951.
But PCIe 3 will only come to the C620 (?) with SkyLake in a couple of years.
Great news if you can get a hold of one for testing, let us know how it goes.
NVidia cards would be great but I hope they leave the 970 out, I kinda didn't like that mem issue. Not that it affects performance that much, but it was a bad move nonetheless. They said they're sorry and it won't happen again :)
It's not a good time for AMD right now, no good recent tech in a low power envelope.
 
ManuelGomes said:
MVP, XP951 should be a top performer no doubt, a great move for Apple if they do decide to go with it. They will for sure, almost double performance from the older XP941, judging by the SM951 already out. Hope Samsung will enable NVMe this time, they didn't after all in the SM951.
But PCIe 3 will only come to the C620 (?) with SkyLake in a couple of years.
Great news if you can get a hold of one for testing, let us know how it goes.
NVidia cards would be great but I hope they leave the 970 out, I kinda didn't like that mem issue. Not that it affects performance that much, but it was a bad move nonetheless. They said they're sorry and it won't happen again :)
It's not a good time for AMD right now, no good recent tech in a low power envelope.
Click to expand...

XP951 is about 25% faster than the current 1TB SSD... Not double.

And I've always wondered whether Nvidia appearing in the nMP was more up to Nvidia or Apple. A couple of years ago Nvidia passed on opportunities to do custom GPUs/cards for consoles whereas AMD was hungry for the business. Maybe that's part of why AMD is in the nMP and not Nvidia. Makes you wonder if Nvidia has passed on an opportunity to do custom cards for the nMP or won't do it at a price that would make it reasonable.
 
Derpage said:
Ladies and Gentlemen! Grab your dead horses and prepare for the beatings!
Click to expand...

beat_deadhorse.gif
 
VirtualRain said:
XP951 is about 25% faster than the current 1TB SSD... Not double.

And I've always wondered whether Nvidia appearing in the nMP was more up to Nvidia or Apple. A couple of years ago Nvidia passed on opportunities to do custom GPUs/cards for consoles whereas AMD was hungry for the business. Maybe that's part of why AMD is in the nMP and not Nvidia. Makes you wonder if Nvidia has passed on an opportunity to do custom cards for the nMP or won't do it at a price that would make it reasonable.
Click to expand...
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/12/30/nvidia-lose-apple-macpro-line/
1. GCN is the most power efficient GPU architecture on the planet right now.
2. Nvidia is not willing to produce semi-custom GPUs, the way Apple wants them to be.
3. AMD is more "open to world" than Nvidia.
4. AMD has brighter future than Nvidia.
5. http://semiaccurate.com/2013/12/02/nvidia-exits-another-major-market-segment/ Double Precision Units.
 
koyoot said:
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/12/30/nvidia-lose-apple-macpro-line/
1. GCN is the most power efficient GPU architecture on the planet right now.
2. Nvidia is not willing to produce semi-custom GPUs, the way Apple wants them to be.
3. AMD is more "open to world" than Nvidia.
4. AMD has brighter future than Nvidia.
5. http://semiaccurate.com/2013/12/02/nvidia-exits-another-major-market-segment/ Double Precision Units.
Click to expand...

1 & 2: Debatable but ok...
3 & 4: Total crap... AMD open source support is crap and the company is hemmoraging money. They've been pummeled to a bloody pulp by Intel in the CPU market and by NVidia in the pro and gaming market. If it wasn't for the console and apple support they've would've gone the way of S3 and Cirix by now.
 
Nosferax said:
1 & 2: Debatable but ok...
3 & 4: Total crap... AMD open source support is crap and the company is hemmoraging money. They've been pummeled to a bloody pulp by Intel in the CPU market and by NVidia in the pro and gaming market. If it wasn't for the console and apple support they've would've gone the way of S3 and Cirix by now.
Click to expand...

"What was yesterday, does not mean that tommorow will be the same."
 
VR, I'm not sure which 1TB drive you're referring to.
I was comparing to the older 941 model, not all tests show a great improvement, but some will hit almost double throughput, and most will be at least 35%-50% faster.
If you can take advantage of the PCIe 3.0 interface vs the older 2.0, just that alone warrants you almost double performance, minus the encoding overhead. If the controller and flash can keep up...
Is it confirmed yet that there will be a 1TB model? Cause at least the SM951 isn't available in 1TB.
That will be a great update no doubt.
But that would require the unreleased PCH with PCIe 3 lanes, to come with SkyLake only.

GPUs is another issue that leads me to believe that maybe they won't update the nMP soon, or that if they do, no big changes here.
Sure hope they do, counting on it, but it seems less and less likely as time passes.

An update to the TB display was also due. 4K and TB2 would be enough, but with the iMac 5K Retina out I guess they can't go back to 4K anymore. But again, a 5K TB display would require TB3, newer GPUs and that is still far away.

----------

I have preferred over time nVidia cards, and drivers, but I must admit that AMD has a few things I like best.
Still, If nVidia would be willing to make cards for Apple that would be nice.
Right now I'd say they're at an advantage.
 
ManuelGomes said:
VR, I'm not sure which 1TB drive you're referring to.
I was comparing to the older 941 model, not all tests show a great improvement, but some will hit almost double throughput, and most will be at least 35%-50% faster.
Click to expand...

I'm referring to the 1TB SSD in the 2013 Mac Pro (is that using the 941?). Mine hits 1260MB/s on sequential benchmarks. I think the new ones hit 1600MB/s which is a 25% improvement. Certainly nothing to downplay but not double.

ManuelGomes said:
GPUs is another issue that leads me to believe that maybe they won't update the nMP soon, or that if they do, no big changes here.
Sure hope they do, counting on it, but it seems less and less likely as time passes.

An update to the TB display was also due. 4K and TB2 would be enough, but with the iMac 5K Retina out I guess they can't go back to 4K anymore. But again, a 5K TB display would require TB3, newer GPUs and that is still far away.
Click to expand...

Agreed on all accounts. AMDs Tonga based GPUs are about 20% faster but run hotter than the Tahiti parts.

Big gains will come when GPUs finally move to 20nm and DP 1.3 is implemented... 5K displays for all! :D
 
ManuelGomes said:
GPUs is another issue that leads me to believe that maybe they won't update the nMP soon, or that if they do, no big changes here.
Sure hope they do, counting on it, but it seems less and less likely as time passes.

An update to the TB display was also due. 4K and TB2 would be enough, but with the iMac 5K Retina out I guess they can't go back to 4K anymore. But again, a 5K TB display would require TB3, newer GPUs and that is still far away.

----------

I have preferred over time nVidia cards, and drivers, but I must admit that AMD has a few things I like best.
Still, If nVidia would be willing to make cards for Apple that would be nice.
Right now I'd say they're at an advantage.
Click to expand...
http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...y-seriously-expand-gpu-manufacturing-for-amd/


As for 4K...
I believe that there will be two Monitors from Apple.
Retina 4K 23.8'' Thunderbolt Display for 999$
Retina 5K 27'' Thunderbolt Display for 1999$
 
koyoot said:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...y-seriously-expand-gpu-manufacturing-for-amd/


As for 4K...
I believe that there will be two Monitors from Apple.
Retina 4K 23.8'' Thunderbolt Display for 999$
Retina 5K 27'' Thunderbolt Display for 1999$
Click to expand...

Would be nice... but with Dell selling nice 4K IPS displays (24" and 27") for around $500-$600 it will be tough to justify spending that kind of money.

And my experience with my Dell 4K displays is that software needs to be re-optimized to make display refresh fluid and smooth. For example, almost all RAW editing software I've tried recently has really struggled on 4K displays. It's painful.
 
VirtualRain said:
Would be nice... but with Dell selling nice 4K IPS displays (24" and 27") for around $500-$600 it will be tough to justify spending that kind of money.

And my experience with my Dell 4K displays is that software needs to be re-optimized to make display refresh fluid and smooth. For example, almost all RAW editing software I've tried recently has really struggled on 4K displays. It's painful.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with that. It will be hard to justify, however...

Thunderbolt Display is already more expensive than similar Monitors.

One more thing pops to my head when you mention Refresh rates. AMD FreeSync. In Apple way, same as for Mantle/Metal.

Nosferax said:
There won't be any tomorrow for AMD if they continue on their present path.
Click to expand...
Completely Agree. Thankfully they ditched the weakest point in their management team(Mr. "RR"). So future is right now brighter than it was.

And the guy that helped Apple in developing Macroscalar Architecture is again in AMD.
 
Last edited:
koyoot said:
I completely agree with that. It will be hard to justify, however...

Thunderbolt Display is already more expensive than similar Monitors.

One more thing pops to my head when you mention Refresh rates. AMD FreeSync. In Apple way, same for Mantle/Metal.

Completely Agree. Thankfully they ditched the weakest point in their management team(Mr. "RR"). So future is right now brighter than it was.

And the guy that helped Apple in developing Macroscalar Architecture is again in AMD.
Click to expand...

Not if they keep pumping out cheap APU that nobody wants.
 
As I'm sure many have noticed, gradually Apple's traditional timing regarding product releases is changing. Now firmly in control of mass market gadgets as a profit center along with iPhone, it's computers are viewed differently within the corporate priority structure.

Apple's rhetoric keeps customers in check as Apple's sales and marketing people send their suggestions to Mr. Cook. Apple remains the master of fattening their coffers at warp speed. :)
 
Didn't realize it was the current 1TB model.
I have seen 2150MB/s on sequential reads for the new SM951, or maybe you're talking about writes?

1999USD would be too much even for a 5K display.
Here the current TBD 27" goes for 999EUR already, so a new TB2 Retina 24" for the same price is not such a good deal, but that's Apple for you.
I want the new 27" but 1999EUR seems too much.
 
ManuelGomes said:
Didn't realize it was the current 1TB model.
I have seen 2150MB/s on sequential reads for the new SM951, or maybe you're talking about writes?

1999USD would be too much even for a 5K display.
Here the current TBD 27" goes for 999EUR already, so a new TB2 Retina 24" for the same price is not such a good deal, but that's Apple for you.
I want the new 27" but 1999EUR seems too much.
Click to expand...

How much then is Dell's 5K display here, huh? ;).
 
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