Perhaps Steve selected the current GPU's himself. The tech is certainly old enough.
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The new Mac Pro - What are your biggest fears?
- Thread starter iBrooker
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Perhaps Steve selected the current GPU's himself. The tech is certainly old enough.
[doublepost=1492522070][/doublepost]
GigaBytes ?
World record!
I fear the current obsession with thin and light will give us a Mac Pro that is not easily upgradeable.
I still use my 2006 1.1 and have upgraded the CPU, video card and RAM. I have 4 spinning drives and two SSDs. I want to be able to have the same easy and internal upgrade possibilities in any new Mac Pro.
I still use my 2006 1.1 and have upgraded the CPU, video card and RAM. I have 4 spinning drives and two SSDs. I want to be able to have the same easy and internal upgrade possibilities in any new Mac Pro.
That it won't be able to grate cheese 
In all seriousness, my greatest fear is that the "modules" will be proprietary. I can so see Apple doing that.
In all seriousness, my greatest fear is that the "modules" will be proprietary. I can so see Apple doing that.
The Irony being that PCI-E 4.0 starts to roll out this year with speeds at 31 GB/s @ x16 lanes, and my assumption is we will be using ThunderBolt 3 in the new MacPro, which is essentially 1/6 the speed with 5 GB/s @ x4 lanes.
No matter how Apple designs us into the future, without PCI-E it's gonna be another machine that will be hard pressed to be called PRO. Thats just my opinion. Obviously the pro options aren't worth much anymore.
no amd or intel cpu has pci-e 4.0 amd maybe 2020 or sooner with an server cpu.
TB3 is only pci-e 3.0 X4 MAX to slow for an video card even more so if display data is also on the same TB bus.
What will they have **** on board video and 10 TB 3 buses with maybe to 2 storage ports and maybe 10 gig-e?
I can see that too.
Overall, one of the technology challenges that Apple has is system bandwidth, as it becomes multifaceted by the multiple different directions that demand can get pulled from different customer use case needs - - some Pros want to allocate it for 4+K screens, while others to data storage, etc - - so the product design question is just how to use the lanes available without it becoming too strongly tailored (narrowed use cases)?
With the Trash Can, Apple's approach to this competition for bandwidth was effectively to "punt" and not have any conventional PCIe slots to fight over. Instead, it transformed those PCI slots into a "universal" TB port which allows whatever is needed to be plugged in.
The problem was that this additional layer of TB added to system costs, and since TB was also new interface, it naturally had commensurately high prices for TB-equipped products. In some ways, it is shades of Firewire all over again.
EDIT: overall, I think a lot of the reason why our discussions have been centering on this risk of "YA Proprietary Apple 'Solution'" factor is because why Apple did say "Modular", what was conspicuously absent were adjectives on that which were specific to being compliant with Open and/or Industry standards.
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Apple introduced many standard 1-2, even 3 years before they became widespread among competitors. PCI-e 4.0 could be a choice to ensure the mMP to last and get upgraded with new GPUs without constraints. 2020 is not that far if we think that we may see a presentation for Q3 2018 and a shipping date between Q4 2018 - Q1 2019.
By that time Vega and the Titan Xp could be already a thing of the past.
By that time Vega and the Titan Xp could be already a thing of the past.
PCI-e 4.0 maybe with an bridge chip taking pci-e 3.0 in and going pci-e 4.0 out. With an other 4.0 to 3.0 bridge chip on the other site.
cut's down on module to module links and drivers costs way up.
cut's down on module to module links and drivers costs way up.
I'd be really surprised if that happened, primarily because it would mean:That it won't be able to grate cheese
In all seriousness, my greatest fear is that the "modules" will be proprietary. I can so see Apple doing that.
1. All that talking to pros they've been doing will have gone in one ear and out the other.
2. A big portion of the problem with the existing Mac Pro is that they couldn't/didn't want to engineer new upgrades to the video card on a regular basis. If they go ahead and make a proprietary upgrade module scheme yet AGAIN for the modular Mac Pro, they'll just be doubling down on one of the main reasons the 2013 design didn't work.
Modules can still contain PCI-E slots that can be user upgradeable.
I'm not advocating the use of proprietary modules, but if you can actually open up the module and place any PCI-E card, that wouldn't be the end of the world.
isn't Lightning the only one they're currently using?
(or maybe i'm misunderstanding.. what connectors are you talking about?)
Quite a few notable tech sites mentioned a competitive price. Sure we could squabble over no single GPU/Dual CPU options, but it fit many price points as configured.
Price point on maximum options available can be even much higher in other competitors Workstations. Its how its configured right around the base model that makes it more competitive with everything else.
I'm not sure how to respond to this (perhaps imagined) slight.
At first I thought of saying:
...and only youngsters would capitalize the first letters of a phrase and expect their readers to understand what was meant -- old dogs would spell out the words to communicate effectively...
but then I realized that there was a second order disconnect. The poster said that the PC/AT was first generation!
Wow, these children don't know that the AT was the second generation, and they don't care enough to look up the facts before posting.
i was alive when IBM 286 was released (or, at least the date wiki says.. 1983)
Me. too! But, in the late 90's and into the new millennia as my college computer!
LOL
Before last week it was all about what the Mac Pro was not, now it's gonna be about what the Mac Pro won't be and how big it will fail anyway. Right now the MR crystal ball is running full steam! Apple can't win with this bunch
Apple cant win with a bunch of mac pro users, when they dont update the mac pro for 4 years.
I'll bet if you took your wife out to dinner once every four years and she complained, you would be amazed how unappreciative she was of that one trip to Pamas' Steakhouse.
My biggest fear is that a bunch of old dudes are gonna hijack the thread to talk about gear nobody's used in decades.
Firewire instead of USB. Tbolt instead of USB-C, Lightning instead of USB. (granted, that one was an improvement, yet still proprietary) and probably a few other dongle type thing I have forgotten. Point is, they often try and re-invent a connector.