Opinions: Does the New Mac Pro qualify as a Workstation?

[derbothaus]

"Workstation" is a marketing term. A way of ballooning prices of sub components of same class for generally slower (but marketed as more stable) results. Sell them to the enterprise at twice to 3 times actual fab value and a larger support warranty.
I'm with Tess that the only thing we can distinguish these days is whether i7 or Xeon or FX or Opteron, etc. ECC is nice but slower. Chipsets are generally the same. Power is not always the end goal. I don't need a workstation. I don't do CAD or 3D. Those are the disciplines I think of when Workstation get's thrown around. Video not so much, Audio even less. Never had an i7 be more or less stable than a Xeon. A core 2 vs. Itanium. But it is nice to 'feel' like I have something better, more punishment taking/ longer lasting. But in the end you can do whatever with whatever crunches those 0's and 1's relatively fast. The rest is ego ("I'm a pro!"), desire, consumerism.

 

[flat five]

Again it is all meaningless labels - like is the iPad a PC?

yeah.. meaningless.. or certainly not as meaningful as it's being made out here

 

[tuxon86]

I don't agree. According to this article, LGA 2011 can do 40 lanes regardless of being xeon or not.

If you want to say there's no definitive line between workstation and non-workstation, but that there are boxes that are very clearly workstations and very clearly not, I'll agree. However, making arbitrary distinctions is ridiculous. There are many machines on the borderline, I might argue the nMP is one of them.

Edit: BTW, Not even Xeon can do 4x16 lane PCIe 3.0, it can only do 16,16, and 8 (total of 40 lanes).

Ivy Bridge EP Xeon have 80 lane, the EX have 144 lane...

 

[liquid stereo]

Indeed

I have a nice Xserve that was abandoned several years ago...

Pretty much the only markets it seems the new Mac Pro is abandoning is HPC and servers. If you weren't already aware that Apple was abandoning those markets, you were probably living under the world's biggest rock.

 

[goMac]

Those and the Dual CPU workstation, lots of RAM workstation, multi PCIE card workstation markets. (just 3 more)

I do live on the side of the Hollywood Hills, pretty big rock I guess.

Ehhhh...

I have a hard time buying the dual CPU one. Sure, Apple isn't doing dual CPUs, but the core counts are staying the same. If you had a 12 core machine before, you can buy one now. If you want to complain that you need all the speed you can get and that Apple is shutting you out of that market... Apple was never in the quad processor market that Windows is in. The Mac Pro was never the best choice if you needed as many cores as you could get. I have a hard time believing your Hollywood friends couldn't afford 4 CPU workstations if they really needed all the power they could get.

I also have a very hard time believing your Hollywood friends don't have clusters they're offloading work to anyway, making the number of cores at their desk much less meaningful. Maybe your friends should re-examine their workflows if they don't.

We don't know if the max RAM on the new Mac Pro has gone down. I'm betting on no.

The new Mac Pro has multi GPUs, so ignoring that, it can still interface with any non-video card PCIe card. And before someone brings up CUDA, CUDA was never Apple's market. That was NVidia's market. Apple never supported CUDA.

 

[flat five]

"Workstation" is a marketing term. A way of ballooning prices of sub components of same class for generally slower (but marketed as more stable) results. Sell them to the enterprise at twice to 3 times actual fab value and a larger support warranty.
I'm with Tess that the only thing we can distinguish these days is whether i7 or Xeon or FX or Opteron, etc. ECC is nice but slower. Chipsets are generally the same. Power is not always the end goal. I don't need a workstation. I don't do CAD or 3D. Those are the disciplines I think of when Workstation get's thrown around. Video not so much, Audio even less. Never had an i7 be more or less stable than a Xeon. A core 2 vs. Itanium. But it is nice to 'feel' like I have something better, more punishment taking/ longer lasting. But in the end you can do whatever with whatever crunches those 0's and 1's relatively fast. The rest is ego ("I'm a pro!"), desire, consumerism.

just to throw a slight wrench in that idea, i do cad and 3d.. aside from some spreadsheet stuff and email, that's pretty much all i use my computers for in a work sense..

here's some snips of a project last year.. the space was designed to suit prints provided by the architects as well as a site visit.. upon arriving in town with the crew to begin construction, i was informed the building needed to be updated in order to meet newer code (fire exit stuff).. long story short, 1/3 of the space needed to be redesigned within a matter of days..

this was all done on a 15"mbp.. on site, at the hotel, in the van, at the lunch spot.. where_ever i happened to be with some available time..

the main differences/compromises as far as the actual computer goes is the much smaller screen space and mostly no mouse (though rhino together with apple's trackpad are very close to being a mousekiller anyway)..
storage,cpu,gpu,etc? none of that crap mattered

everything in there regarding numbers/design/etc has the computer at the hub.. it's a central component in the process..

is it a workstation computer? i mean, who really cares?? i don't. it works for me.

 

[kudukudu]

I'd definitely still call it a workstation. I've seen much, much less powerful workstations.

we need to be careful here. The fact that my ipad is more powerful than workstations from back in the day does not make my ipad a workstation.

 

[GermanyChris]

just to throw a slight wrench in that idea, i do cad and 3d.. aside from some spreadsheet stuff and email, that's pretty much all i use my computers for in a work sense..

here's some snips of a project last year.. the space was designed to suit prints provided by the architects as well as a site visit.. upon arriving in town with the crew to begin construction, i was informed the building needed to be updated in order to meet newer code (fire exit stuff).. long story short, 1/3 of the space needed to be redesigned within a matter of days..

this was all done on a 15"mbp.. on site, at the hotel, in the van, at the lunch spot.. where_ever i happened to be with some available time..

the main differences/compromises as far as the actual computer goes is the much smaller screen space and mostly no mouse (though rhino together with apple's trackpad are very close to being a mousekiller anyway)..
storage,cpu,gpu,etc? none of that crap mattered


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everything in there regarding numbers/design/etc has the computer at the hub.. it's a central component in the process..

is it a workstation computer? i mean, who really cares?? i don't. it works for me.

I'd skate that, heck I'd even drop in on my mountain bike

 

[goMac]

we need to be careful here. The fact that my ipad is more powerful than workstations from back in the day does not make my ipad a workstation.

Didn't say it did. Doesn't change the fact that there are workstations with little expandability that are slower than the Mac Pro. There are workstations with integrated graphics.

 

[flat five]

I'd skate that, heck I'd even drop in on my mountain bike

kinda tight (no flat) for a mountain bike but yeah, it's doable. probably super fun too if you're into biking

 

[GermanyChris]

kinda tight (no flat) for a mountain bike but yeah, it's doable. probably super fun too if you're into biking

It's real tight but it looks like a DS, DJ could have some fun and catch some air.

 

[MacMilligan]

In my mind a workstation is defined by stability above all else. Nothing matters more to a business or research group more than accuracy and reliability. Uptime must be defined in years, not days. Memory errors should be self correcting or throw an exception. Redundancy is often used in the storage systems. Upgradability and expandability are important as well, but not nearly as much as being completely confident in your computer.

 

[MacVidCards]

Ehhhh...
have a hard time buying the dual CPU one. Sure, Apple isn't doing dual CPUs, but the core counts are staying the same. If you had a 12 core machine before, you can buy one now. If you want to complain that you need all the speed you can get and that Apple is shutting you out of that market... Apple was never in the quad processor market .

I can't decide if you are being deliberately obtuse as you seem plenty intelligent.

So while rest of market having dual CPUs will have higher core counts as a result of this advancing tech, Apples core count will remain stagnant since they have abandoned dual CPUs since that's how many total cores they had before? Rest of world moves forward, Apple rests on old laurels.

Sounds like making excuses for Apple. They are abandoning multi socket boards. Just say it, it won't hurt. Denying obvious truths doesn't help anyone.

By halving their CPU count they have also cut in half the number of RAM slots. Another obvious and simple fact that looks rather silly when some attempts to deny it.

 

[goMac]

I can't decide if you are being deliberately obtuse as you seem plenty intelligent.

So while rest of market having dual CPUs will have higher core counts as a result of this advancing tech, Apples core count will remain stagnant since they have abandoned dual CPUs since that's how many total cores they had before? Rest of world moves forward, Apple rests on old laurels.

I directly addressed that actually. Even with the dual processor Mac Pro, the rest of the market already had higher core counts.

Sounds like making excuses for Apple. They are abandoning multi socket boards. Just say it, it won't hurt. Denying obvious truths doesn't help anyone.

I'm just stating a fact. If you needed high core counts for "Hollywood" even the old Mac Pro wasn't a great choice either. I'm questioning your entire line of reasoning because it's based on something that doesn't even make sense. I've worked on Xeons years ago that had more than 12 cores. More than the current dual processor Mac Pro has.

By halving their CPU count they have also cut in half the number of RAM slots. Another obvious and simple fact that looks rather silly when some attempts to deny it.

Yes. And? That's what I'm not getting. Yes, they halved the CPU count, but they kept the same core count. So at the end of the day, it means squat.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

In the world of Windows, a 'workstation' tends to have a Xeon processor with multiple cores, and sometimes multiple processors, higher end non-planer graphics, built-in RAID, faster connection types, and more expandability in memory and drives. It's a 'heavy lifting computer' that is built for speed.

Does the new Tube standout as a 'workstation'? If it does, it redefines the concept of workstation.

This tube has been sliced and diced in other threads so I won't go into that again here. I have a hard time thinking that it is a 'workstation'. It lacks the traditional hallmarks for a workstation. It doesn't mean it will be a bad machine, I just wonder if the compromises Apple has made in that product will sell as well as they hope.

It certainly pushed those that buy one into a new price point to accomplish the same things that users of the older Mac Pro can do in the computers chassis.

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Yes. And? That's what I'm not getting. Yes, they halved the CPU count, but they kept the same core count. So at the end of the day, it means squat.

Depending on the core count, one could be better off with more multi-core physical processors than more cores.

Has anyone bench marked the same system with 2 six core processors versus 1 twelve core processor? It would make sense to me that the former would be better than the later from a processing capability angle...

 

[MacVidCards]

I
Yes. And? That's what I'm not getting. Yes, they halved the CPU count, but they kept the same core count. So at the end of the day, it means squat.

Yay!!! They ran in place while the rest of market moved ahead. Yippity !!! How you keep claiming that this isn't significant boggles the mind. Very Apple-esque reasoning.

To me that qualifies as watering down and moving to compete with a less impressive range of machines.

How do you avoid noticing that you have a smaller fish? Move it to a smaller pond.

 

[flat five]

out of curiosity, what type work happens in a workstation? is it accounting? image editing? software development? or what?

I guess it makes sense to describe the actual task that's trying to be accomplished in a so-called workstation then figure out if said computer can handle the workload..

or maybe not :/

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Yay!!! They ran in place while the rest of market moved ahead. Yippity !!! How you keep claiming that this isn't significant boggles the mind.

(not sure if i'm still on your ignore list but...)

with people that actually need a ton of processing power, where do they turn? how are pro animators getting their frames rendered in a somewhat acceptable amount of time? (redundant question.. you're hollywood.. you already know where)

they're definitely not trying to cram more cpus inside the box because it's an exercise in futility.. there isn't enough space for them.. and eventually (not far off even), there won't be enough space inside a box for the 'rest of the market that has moved ahead'.. what are they going to do then? increase the size of the box? or are you saying that once the box is crammed full of processor then, the race can stop and the winner is whoever gets 64cores first?

because that sux.. i (no, not me) need way more than 64 cores for my rendering what will i do now?

 

[SeattleMoose]

Workstation? What a quaint notion. I guess at some time during the Jurassic primitive computers were all demarcated from each other via various types of labeling.

Now days, it is just varying degrees of "computer".

WELCOME...to the 2nd decade of the 21st century!!!



Oh yea, and I WILL DEFINITELY be buying one of the new MP "workstations" (or whatever the label crowd calls them) when they come out.

 

[goMac]

Yay!!! They ran in place while the rest of market moved ahead. Yippity !!! How you keep claiming that this isn't significant boggles the mind. Very Apple-esque reasoning.

Because the rest of the market has always been ahead. I was doing development on a 16 core Xeon system. Four years ago. These days that same machine would have 32 cores.

I didn't hear you making noise 4 years ago when Apple didn't have a 16 core workstation. If you were worried about Apple being competitive on core counts, that ship sailed a long, long, long time ago.

Yes, the new Mac Pro is not dual CPU. But if you really, really are core count bound, you're on the wrong machine anyways and you always have been.

You've also totally ignored what I mentioned about how if you're a "Hollywood" pro, you should have a cluster backend anyway. Probably a cluster backend that has 32 core Xeon boxes.

If you have an actual use case where you need 24 cores at your desk, please, share with the class.

 

[MacVidCards]

Because the rest of the market has always been ahead. I was doing development on a 16 core Xeon system. Four years ago. These days that same machine would have 32 cores.

I didn't hear you making noise 4 years ago when Apple didn't have a 16 core workstation. If you were worried about Apple being competitive on core counts, that ship sailed a long, long, long time ago.

Yes, the new Mac Pro is not dual CPU. But if you really, really are core count bound, you're on the wrong machine anyways and you always have been.

You've also totally ignored what I mentioned about how if you're a "Hollywood" pro, you should have a cluster backend anyway. Probably a cluster backend that has 32 core Xeon boxes.

If you have an actual use case where you need 24 cores at your desk, please, share with the class.

OK, so another vote for "It's good enough for me, therefore it's good enough for everyone, quit yerbichen". All the while doing verbal gymnastics to avoid admitting that it has moved down market.

Thanks for your valuable input.

 

[Photovore]

...If you have an actual use case where you need 24 cores at your desk, please, share with the class.

[agreeing with you!]

My MP is a "workstation" because of how it is used.

I take it on the road to do live shows. All that precious "output" goes straight to the projector under OpenGL/OpenCL interop. I don't capture those frames; they're too fast at 60fps as high-res as they are.

I don't need much storage; actually use less than 35GB....

I don't need much CPU; I have a 2009 four-core and barely touch 5%...

What I do need is a fast GPU. That I now have. I can do full HD at 60fps. More than enough to make my clients happy!

...

I am a pro. I am my own kind of pro; and I suspect that there are very few in my corner, but, just to give an idea of the spectrum....

...

just a data point....

 

[Dr. Stealth]

Maybe, but I don't think it's that common as a gaming platform, but it's besides the point really because it's not what defines a workstation.


Yes and four ram slots * 32 GB = 128 GB.

Not available....

But when it is. Four ram slots * 32 GB = 128 GB = $4,000.00

Or, I'm sure Apple will fill those 4 slots for you for $8,000.00

 

[subsonix]

I can't decide if you are being deliberately obtuse as you seem plenty intelligent.

So while rest of market having dual CPUs will have higher core counts as a result of this advancing tech, Apples core count will remain stagnant since they have abandoned dual CPUs since that's how many total cores they had before? Rest of world moves forward, Apple rests on old laurels.

Yes, the new model comes with 1 socket, but why do you arbitrarily cap your needs at 2 CPUs, why not 20?

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Not available....

But when it is. Four ram slots * 32 GB = 128 GB = $4,000.00

Or, I'm sure Apple will fill those 4 slots for you for $8,000.00

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT32G3ELSLQ41339

 

[MacVidCards]

Yes, the new model comes with 1 socket, but why do you arbitrarily cap your needs at 2 CPUs, why not 20?

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http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT32G3ELSLQ41339

Do you have a point to either one of those responses?

The current MP has 2 sockets, new one is reduced to a single.

Is that being argued still?

Also, you link to RAM that is exactly as he says, $1000 per stick.

And aside form that, it is RAM specced for 2012 MP, not the 2013.

So if that actually works in 2012, then 2012 will hold TWICE (2 X) the RAM of it's shiny replacement.

As with many previous posts, you have proven nothing. (Thanks again for the easy one where you espoused virtues of TB HD vs USB vs SATA, made you look rather silly)

Incorrect links and bad comparisons don't work.

Take a debate class, please.

 

[Tesselator]

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT32G3ELSLQ41339

Ouch! At 32GB modules are a little over two times the price per GB. I wonder how long we have to wait for that to normalize?



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Commenting on the other sup-topic going on here I think it's obvious that goMac is the one using logic and common sense in his arguments.