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nMP wishlist

koyoot, I hear you. But Caribbean Islands is still far off, validation and all. Specially for FirePro.
HBM is the new standard and should allow for massive bandwidth improvements.
This is all great but that would mean that the nMP would only come out in a year or so.
Maybe they'll wait for Broadwell and TB3 but that would a long time for an upgrade still. I believe Apple will not wait that long, early 2015 it's my guess.
Or they could announce the nMP on Dec 19th, one year after the release of the 6,1 - that would be nice!! Even if availability is not immediate.

I guess OS X will have to support dual GPUs in the long run, specially now with CF X on PCIe it should be quite peacefull.

I'm very curious regarding the new Retina TB2 display, which "standard" it will adhere to. Will it be 4K, Cinema 4K or 5K? That's a tough decision for Apple.
 
ManuelGomes said:
koyoot, I hear you. But Caribbean Islands is still far off, validation and all. Specially for FirePro.
HBM is the new standard and should allow for massive bandwidth improvements.
This is all great but that would mean that the nMP would only come out in a year or so.
Maybe they'll wait for Broadwell and TB3 but that would a long time for an upgrade still. I believe Apple will not wait that long, early 2015 it's my guess.
Or they could announce the nMP on Dec 19th, one year after the release of the 6,1 - that would be nice!! Even if availability is not immediate.

I guess OS X will have to support dual GPUs in the long run, specially now with CF X on PCIe it should be quite peacefull.

I'm very curious regarding the new Retina TB2 display, which "standard" it will adhere to. Will it be 4K, Cinema 4K or 5K? That's a tough decision for Apple.
Click to expand...
No. First next gen high end cards are scheduled for early 2015 release. February to be specific. Top High- End, Possibly R9 390X is scheduled for 2H of 2015.

New MP will be realeased early 2015. Already there is everything there is needed: Xeon Haswell CPUs, DDR4 RAM. Only thing that are not yet released are the GPUs.
 
February would be the (expected) release date for the consumers cards.
Pro cards will be available only later, probably much later.
With Apple's validation protocol to be considered, I'd say don't expect to see Dx20 ( :) ) before 2016.
Early 2015 is my guess too, hope we're correct.
I'm itching to get me one...
 
ManuelGomes said:
I'm very curious regarding the new Retina TB2 display, which "standard" it will adhere to. Will it be 4K, Cinema 4K or 5K? That's a tough decision for Apple.
Click to expand...

I don't think we'll see a Retina TB2 display. If we do, it'll be 4k.
 
That's why I think they'll release a TB2 4K display for now - if they update the nMP that is.
If they don't and wait for Broadwell, then we should only probably see a TB3 5K panel in a year or so.
I'm not sure they'll ever have a 24" panel, there wasn't one so far, I think they'll stick with the 27".
27"@4K would be on the fly for the refreshed nMP.
Keep in mind that if Apple refreshes the nMP now with Haswell-E it will be upgradeable to Broadwell-E, and probably also the newer AMD (or not) GPUs in the future (1-2 years time).
You can keep existing RAM and SSD, just change processors (CPU and GPUs). That would be nice, and nothing to loose for Apple, on the contrary, the same for us users.
And of course, buy a new display if you really need the extra real estate, Apple will thank you for your contribution to their wealth!!
Of course, that would leave the nMP behind the iMac when it comes to display resolution - tough decision for Apple!
 
OWC has up for pre-order their Aura 1TB and 2TB SSDs as upgrade kits.
You even get a USB3.0 kit to make it an external drive.
Around 700MB/s, not the best performance but very good still.
Sandforce Flash controllers and MArvell RAID controller.
Maybe Apple will follow suit with a 2TB drive in the nMP.
PCIe 2.0 x2 it seems. Must be the same as Apple's internal drives, I assume - Samsung 840 if I'm not mistaken, anyone confirms?
 
ManuelGomes said:
That's why I think they'll release a TB2 4K display for now - if they update the nMP that is.
If they don't and wait for Broadwell, then we should only probably see a TB3 5K panel in a year or so.
I'm not sure they'll ever have a 24" panel, there wasn't one so far, I think they'll stick with the 27".
27"@4K would be on the fly for the refreshed nMP.
Keep in mind that if Apple refreshes the nMP now with Haswell-E it will be upgradeable to Broadwell-E, and probably also the newer AMD (or not) GPUs in the future (1-2 years time).
You can keep existing RAM and SSD, just change processors (CPU and GPUs). That would be nice, and nothing to loose for Apple, on the contrary, the same for us users.
And of course, buy a new display if you really need the extra real estate, Apple will thank you for your contribution to their wealth!!
Of course, that would leave the nMP behind the iMac when it comes to display resolution - tough decision for Apple!
Click to expand...

I don't think the display will be touched at all, unfortunately, until some point during Skylake, up until the Mac Pro getting Skylake.
 
Don't be a pessimist :)
Thing is, it's all very quiet, no info out regarding both nMP and TB2 display.
With Caribbean Islands so far away still, I'm starting to have some doubts.
 
It's becoming a habit for Intel, but it seems C610 (and X99 for that matter) also has problems with the integrated storage controller. Same as X79 if you recall.
It's a TRIM on RAID issue apparently. Let's see if it's fixable.
Good thing Apple doesn't use the storage controller anyways.
 
ManuelGomes said:
It's becoming a habit for Intel, but it seems C610 (and X99 for that matter) also has problems with the integrated storage controller. Same as X79 if you recall.
It's a TRIM on RAID issue apparently. Let's see if it's fixable.
Good thing Apple doesn't use the storage controller anyways.
Click to expand...

Links? A quick web search didn't show any problems for me.

Edit: found http://news.softpedia.com/news/X99-...r-Orders-Partners-to-Do-the-Same-467255.shtml

Seems like TRIM for RAID-0 only works on the first six SATA 6Gbps ports, not on all ten.

I can live with that ;) .
 
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http://www.chiphell.com/thread-1196441-1-1.html

Like Ive said: Fiji Xt is R9 380X, Bermuda is much bigger and much more powerful, and much more power hungry chip. Bermuda was postponed to 2H of 2015, Fiji will arrive in February. Soon afterwards, there should be an update to MP, cause everything, apart the GPU there is on the market.

Most importantly, like Ive said, Fiji will be made on 20 nm GLOFO FD-SOI process.


One small little thing...
Just as I thought - AMD postponed Bermuda cause of HBM stacks. It will bring 8GB of HBM stack and bizzare 1TB/s of Bandwith.
 
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ManuelGomes said:
OWC has up for pre-order their Aura 1TB and 2TB SSDs as upgrade kits.
...
Sandforce Flash controllers and MArvell RAID controller.
....
Click to expand...

These drives have the indicators of being a kludge rather than of any direction Apple will go with next iteration. The next-gen PCI-e native Sandforce controllers are waaaaay behind schedule. Shoveling the older/current SATA controllers behind a PCI-e SATA RAID controller is a stop-gap way of getting around the lack of a PCI-e interface (and easy native OS X boot) problem.


Maybe Apple will follow suit with a 2TB drive in the nMP.
Click to expand...

All Aura has is capacity. It is blown away on bandwidth/speed. Apple does't particularly need to stretch because not even playing on the same dimension.
Unless the flash component prices drop to deliver 2TB drive at current 1TB prices there isn't a huge upside in trying to match capacities.

Unless extremely pressed about having an additional capacity inside the nMP to the point willing to toss bandwidth aside, there isn't going to be a huge market for these OWC drives. Most cases it would result in overall better system performance to just add an external high speed storage capacity if capacity is an issue.


PCIe 2.0 x2 it seems. Must be the same as Apple's internal drives, I assume -
Click to expand...

The Apple drives are PCI-e 2.0 x4. OWC being x2 isn't particular surprising since they have to do with three controllers ( RAID + 2 Flash controllers) what Apple is doing with just one.
 
koyoot, you are obviously well informed, hope you're right. February is too far away still though!!
Can't really read Chinese :)
You mean Fiji isn't going to be HBM after all? Only Bermuda?
20nm is great news, power wise. nMP already has a good power dissipation system, this will allow AMD/Apple to speed up GPU and some room for the extra VRAM (it seems the newer GPUs will be loaded with a lot more of it, I hope).

deconstruct60, I wouldn't want one of these drives myself really.
For those that really want a lot of room inside the nMP, although I'd prefer having storage on TB2 than using this. It's big and specs are terrible compared to Apple's offering.
Of course, Apple's drives are x4, that was silly of me, thanks.
Once C610 is used in the nMP, a few more lanes are freed from the Fresco USB 3 controller and I hope also from the Broadcom GbE controllers, they should start using the Intel integrated controllers. Hope!!
 
ManuelGomes said:
koyoot, you are obviously well informed, hope you're right. February is too far away still though!!
Can't really read Chinese :)
You mean Fiji isn't going to be HBM after all? Only Bermuda?
20nm is great news, power wise. nMP already has a good power dissipation system, this will allow AMD/Apple to speed up GPU and some room for the extra VRAM (it seems the newer GPUs will be loaded with a lot more of it, I hope).

deconstruct60, I wouldn't want one of these drives myself really.
For those that really want a lot of room inside the nMP, although I'd prefer having storage on TB2 than using this. It's big and specs are terrible compared to Apple's offering.
Of course, Apple's drives are x4, that was silly of me, thanks.
Once C610 is used in the nMP, a few more lanes are freed from the Fresco USB 3 controller and I hope also from the Broadcom GbE controllers, they should start using the Intel integrated controllers. Hope!!
Click to expand...

No. Every single card made on 20 nm will be with HBM memory. That means that even those with 640, 1280, 2560 GCN cores will have it. Its one of the ways of cutting wattage from cards.
1280 GCN card with 1-2 GB of HBM, with core clocked at 750-800 MHz would fit in Macbook Pro! Die size of that card at 20 nm should be around 128 mm2 and 40W of TDP.
 
What's needed.

I'm a Pro Tools and Logic user: A BTO-pro-audio version would be a great option. -Dual Quad or Hew core processors (dual Skylake?) would be snappy! A physically ejectable/swappable second and third SSD would be great. -But a secondary SSD is really important for streaming samples and crossfades. I still wish there was a FW800 port because for A/V it's still better than USB 3. The existing Thunderbolt enclosures are not so impressive nor cheap to warrant me throwing away my perfectly great Glyph GPT50's.

While I appreciate the dual ethernet, that doesn't help me with Lightroom, Logic, or Pro-Tools because you can't use an NAS for a recording/media drive.

The design is okay, but I need it to fit into a 1-4 space rack. Beef up those heat sinks and it could work out great. I don't need a shiny log near my workstation, I need it in my fridge-sized rack.
And yes, I understand the concept of Planned Obsolescence: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/planned-obsolescence-460210
 
JamesPDX said:
I'm a Pro Tools and Logic user: A BTO-pro-audio version would be a great option. -Dual Quad or Hew core processors (dual Skylake?) would be snappy! A physically ejectable/swappable second and third SSD would be great. -But a secondary SSD is really important for streaming samples and crossfades. I still wish there was a FW800 port because for A/V it's still better than USB 3. The existing Thunderbolt enclosures are not so impressive nor cheap to warrant me throwing away my perfectly great Glyph GPT50's.

While I appreciate the dual ethernet, that doesn't help me with Lightroom, Logic, or Pro-Tools because you can't use an NAS for a recording/media drive.

The design is okay, but I need it to fit into a 1-4 space rack. Beef up those heat sinks and it could work out great. I don't need a shiny log near my workstation, I need it in my fridge-sized rack.
And yes, I understand the concept of Planned Obsolescence: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/planned-obsolescence-460210
Click to expand...

Dual CPUs are not coming back, but you'll probably be able to get 14 or 16 cores in a single CPU package.

Are you having issues with the Thunderbolt -> FW800 adapter? I've had pretty good luck with them, but I didn't know if maybe pro audio users were having trouble.

A rack? I wish they would bring back the Xserve. Don't get me started...

I'm surprised the bandwidth on the SSD isn't large enough to push through everything you need, but I'd love to see two SSDs for capacity.
 
Thing with the newer GPUs, even if they are released in February, the Pro versions will probably take a lot longer to be available.
Unless Apple has early access to the engineering samples and has been busy with the early validation for nMP use.
I believe the power supply should already be near it's limit so 20nm lower power GPUs are welcome. Newer cards can be beefed up maintain the current power envelope.

A second SSD would theoretically be possible, out of the PCIe 2.0 lanes that could be left unused if Apple decides to use the integrated controllers in the C610 for USB 3.0 and GbE. Although there's the 802.11ac controller left that takes up a lane. Maybe they could do some trick with the unused silicon for this...
 
ManuelGomes said:
Thing with the newer GPUs, even if they are released in February, the Pro versions will probably take a lot longer to be available.
Unless Apple has early access to the engineering samples and has been busy with the early validation for nMP use.
I believe the power supply should already be near it's limit so 20nm lower power GPUs are welcome. Newer cards can be beefed up maintain the current power envelope.

A second SSD would theoretically be possible, out of the PCIe 2.0 lanes that could be left unused if Apple decides to use the integrated controllers in the C610 for USB 3.0 and GbE. Although there's the 802.11ac controller left that takes up a lane. Maybe they could do some trick with the unused silicon for this...
Click to expand...
In new GPUs there will be quite nice feature, that will allow to "navigate" dynamically between TDPs of the cards. It will kill sustained top power of the GPU, but will give great efficiency at lower-mid power.

What that means we can see at the graph. 4096 GCN core GPU uses about the same/lower power than 2048 GCN core GPU.

For future of Mac Pro what i believe is happening:
AMD FirePro D310 - 2560 GCN Cores, 2 GB of HBM 320GB/s
AMD FirePro D510 - 3072 GCN Cores, 3 GB of HBM 480GB/s
AMD FirePro D710 - 4096 GCN Cores, 4 GB of HBM 640GB/s.

Simple doubling of performance.
 
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