I love this quote so much...
From /sys/i386/include/vmparam.h (BSD 4.4)
Prices are coming down. And hard disks are useless anyway (unless you spend hefty sums) to provide the kind of bandwidth you will need.
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The Mac Pro Criticism
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I love this quote so much...
From /sys/i386/include/vmparam.h (BSD 4.4)
Prices are coming down. And hard disks are useless anyway (unless you spend hefty sums) to provide the kind of bandwidth you will need.
I think it's perfect even for people who are currently unaware of it. I remember all the denial when de iPad was introduced. I still have good laughs at that.
Hard disks are obsolete. That little thing has an outstanding disk I/O bandwidth. You will be able to edit several layers of 4K video in the box, without resorting to expensive, fancy, complex and failure prone disk I/O subsystems.
And flash storage will be getting cheaper and cheaper. Disks are following the way of the venerable tapes. And note that I still have a DDS3 tape unit to keep copies of audio recordings.
Hard disks are hardly obsolete, and RAID's are hardly complex. The purpose of RAIDs is to remove catastrophic data loss with that comes with failures. SSD's haven't proven themselves built proof by any means either.
It's been surprising that Apple has been including plenty of graphic drivers in Mountain Lion, even allowing non blessed cards to work.
Are they going to reverse the trend? Was it just a pacifier for new Mac Pro deprived people? I doubt it.
RAIDS (with which I deal in quantities more than 10 years ago) are often complex and not completely reliable unless you buy the very top of the line.
RAIDs create their own problems due to complexity Sometimes they create performance problems because their caching policies don't exactly match the ones used by filesystems, and often you find them working against each others.
Of course ZFS is a solution (much better than a RAID) but it has its share of performance issues as well, because integrity and performance are often conflicting goals.
Hard disks aren't that reliable anyway, and quality has gone down in the recent years.
Well it was $2,499 base, $800 for the CPUs, $250 for Radeon, $200 for 500GB drive upgrade, $400 for an extra one, $300 for 2GB RAM, $1,100 for 4GB RAM.
A couple of cables is NOT PRO? Let me show you the art of my people!
It doesn't matter if it's a tower with extra slots or a cylinder with 6 TB2 ports, real Pros use plenty of extra hardware, so until they make everything communicating wirelessly, cables will be there..
The new Mac Pro is awesome!! I freaked out when I actually realized the size of it this morning!!
(and I know that there is plenty of legacy technology connected to this 5.1 mac Pro, but what should we do, we need to support these stubborn people stack in the 90's)
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you're blowing the cacheing issue a bit out of proportion to prove a point.
ZFS has been beaten, kick around, and played with for many years what 9 or 10 now? It's great in large setups but limitations in single workstation setups out weigh it's benefits.
Hard disk quality has gone up in recent years
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but the new one doesn't remove any of that cable clutter it adds to it. In your case though I don't think it's be noticeable
I've said this in other threads but I'll say it again:
Since folks from Pixar, The Foundry, and Blackmagic (who all had early access to the machine) are raving about it, then all the naysayers opinions hold no water.
Since folks from Pixar, The Foundry, and Blackmagic (who all had early access to the machine) are raving about it, then all the naysayers opinions hold no water.
There isnt anything more powerful then a 12 core out right now, why worry about dual or single cpu?
For me it is a pro grade machine, all the specs are right, if you want more power, just hook up a few of them.
Youll have plenty of space now that the big ones are history ...
The user needs to work professionally with a computer, not the other way around, you'd wonder what people can accomplish with dual core machines even.
I love the new design - just love it, they did the right thing and I hope they are never going back.
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Edit:
Also,
I think they will be using dual processors, just take a close look here: apple.com/macpro
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I have to be honest, when I saw the design (and after going to the dedicated Mac Pro bit on their website) I thought to myself: I must have one.
I've never felt that way about a Mac before.. though the 15" Retina MacBook Pro came close!
I've never felt that way about a Mac before.. though the 15" Retina MacBook Pro came close!
Maybe I come from another planet, but I thought the ability to plan longterm hardware investments was a main issue for businesses?
At my work, the hardware (linuxbased) is rotated out in a four year cycle. Planning ahead is crucial. When supporting several hundred machines, half of them 2-4 display workstations, you want as little change as possible from year to year. The actual workstations is a small fraction of the total cost here. Just upgrading to a new linux version is a nine month project with loads of testing and rewritting inhouse codes.
However, this is an area where Apple has a bad track record. Like this last year, first they stop MacPro sale in Europe, by neglecting to adjust to new regulations. Then, months later, they announce a new model that requires big changes in the whole ecosystem surrounding MacPro workstations. I feel lucky that I am not responsible for shifting out 1/4 of the computers to new MacPros inside the present year budget.
Even as a home user (Mac) my old MacPro represents a minor part of my present IT-equipment (maybe 1/10). I certainly do not look forward to shell out half of that again just to go clean TB.
At my work, the hardware (linuxbased) is rotated out in a four year cycle. Planning ahead is crucial. When supporting several hundred machines, half of them 2-4 display workstations, you want as little change as possible from year to year. The actual workstations is a small fraction of the total cost here. Just upgrading to a new linux version is a nine month project with loads of testing and rewritting inhouse codes.
However, this is an area where Apple has a bad track record. Like this last year, first they stop MacPro sale in Europe, by neglecting to adjust to new regulations. Then, months later, they announce a new model that requires big changes in the whole ecosystem surrounding MacPro workstations. I feel lucky that I am not responsible for shifting out 1/4 of the computers to new MacPros inside the present year budget.
Even as a home user (Mac) my old MacPro represents a minor part of my present IT-equipment (maybe 1/10). I certainly do not look forward to shell out half of that again just to go clean TB.
They also seem to now be pushing PCI based flash across the range, as seen on the new MBA, which gives them massive buying power.
Of course.
The old Mac Pro accepted 3 PCIe devices.
The new Mac Pro accepts thirty six PCIe devices.
That means it's not pro at all. War is Peace, freedom is slavery, you know
Half Of A Brilliant Design
The unified thermal core is brilliant. There's no question about it.
But restricting expansion to TB peripherals is not the way to go. What Apple needs to do is offer a second design with a second thermal core for expansion. The second thermal core would support PCIe, SSD and Ram expansion.
Two cylinders, side by side, producing a more rectangular form factor.
The unified thermal core is brilliant. There's no question about it.
But restricting expansion to TB peripherals is not the way to go. What Apple needs to do is offer a second design with a second thermal core for expansion. The second thermal core would support PCIe, SSD and Ram expansion.
Two cylinders, side by side, producing a more rectangular form factor.
Indeed. Bravo sir. I find it incredible that people can be audacious enough to believe that what does not suit them , will not suit everybody else. I am surprised that all of the people that seem to know so much on forums are not running their own multi-million pound businesses.
This, I can't see past the lack of easy upgradeability.
Anyone I know with a Mac Pro has upgraded the memory, the storage and the GPU - themselves. They have done this more than once and at market prices using standard, off the shelf, components.
Probably because it's not really an "upgrade" on that front. You're still maxed out with a total of 12 cores. I'm guessing many were hoping to see 16 or 24.
Sure, any machine is impressive these days compared to older tech. But why limit yourself when you could be working faster/more efficiently with a better machine?
There's nothing on their site to suggest they'll use dual processors.
I'm not really going to pass judgement until Apple releases the upgrade options.
The two things that really matter to my work are CPU cores and CUDA as I'm heavily reliant on rendering.
I was a bit disappointed that the machine did not feature a dual-cpu, but that maybe that may come with future updates (crosses fingers). 12 cores is still very good.
My real contention would be with graphics cards. CUDA really makes a difference in my work, and I'm hoping Apple will allow us an NVIDIA option. That being said, I can't wait to see the benchmarks on the AMD cards for my apps.
Those points aside, I'm excited about the new Mac Pro. It's an interesting design, reminds me of my 20th Anniversary Macintosh sub-woofer, and at least we can put those rumours to rest that Apple is killing off the line.
The two things that really matter to my work are CPU cores and CUDA as I'm heavily reliant on rendering.
I was a bit disappointed that the machine did not feature a dual-cpu, but that maybe that may come with future updates (crosses fingers). 12 cores is still very good.
My real contention would be with graphics cards. CUDA really makes a difference in my work, and I'm hoping Apple will allow us an NVIDIA option. That being said, I can't wait to see the benchmarks on the AMD cards for my apps.
Those points aside, I'm excited about the new Mac Pro. It's an interesting design, reminds me of my 20th Anniversary Macintosh sub-woofer, and at least we can put those rumours to rest that Apple is killing off the line.
I kind of agree with you on this one, but lets not forget to say that million $ companies have a budget to work with the best and top maxed out mac pro available, pixar is not going to work on the entry level mac pro are they?. I'm a prof. but paying 8000 for this new mac pro would be out of the picture.
I'm open for change but its all going to depend on the price of this new computer, thats the thing i'm really curious about...how much is it going to set us back.
Do you guys think it will start at the same price as the current macpro's or is that absolutely out of the picture?
I think it will and I assume we will see 4,6,8 and 12 core configs on the machine.
It depends on what the base processor, SSD and memory configuration will be. It is possible for it to come in at the $2500 to $3000 range, however we won't know for sure until Apple makes the announcement.
Hmm, criticism against the wave of criticism, LOL.
IDK if you're a huge fan or work for Apple.
As for the new Mac Pro, all I have to say is wow. Nice job Apple. I think Apple waited so long to refresh the Mac Pro so as to ensure a significant performance boost for upgrading but whatever the reason it appears Apple has pull out the stops and produced another stellar design. Now we'll have to wait a while for real world benchmarks. Let the drooling commence...
I am just wondering why you would make a computer that to the naked eye lacks obvious expansion and make it what appears to be so easy to acess the interior
Whilst i was annoyed on its release it makes me want to wait until i have all the facts at hand
Whilst i was annoyed on its release it makes me want to wait until i have all the facts at hand
The massive bulk of raw 4K is actually contributing to the Mac Pro dropping internal storage. Frankly the whole industry's fast chase after increasingly more bulky uncompressed RAW storage is somewhat outstripping HDD storage advances. That means the number of drives needed to store an archive of this stuff shoots way up. Even past what the current Mac pro can store internally.
6 bays (even snarfing the two 5.25" bays) times 4TB is 24TB.. not even 2 hrs (or 1 hr from two cameras ) at a 14TB per hour rate. This is pushing the demand for centralized storage since one you get that sized data into place, you tend not to want to move it again because of the "inertia" of trying to move it. So that spurs a trend of moving the data outside of the compute box so don't have to move it. ( deja vu this happened over decade ago in "big iron" enterprise computing space.)
There are largely number of folks that don't have "runaway" storage management problems and the new design is not as well connected. There is a growing differential though between archival materials ( primarily read-only stuff that tends to be bulky over time) and space needed to work on current project. How much of latter needs to be inside the box or outisde is where there is some debate. But the long term term for archival data is out of the box. Most folks can't keep collecting data forever without eventually getting to "overflow" status if never throw anything away.