The new Mac Pro's expandability advantages

[slughead]

just take your favorite PCIe SAS RAID controller and toss it in a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe enclosure. (None are presently shipping, but Sonnet is offering free Thunderbolt 2 upgrades on their current models and those could very well land before the new Mac Pro.) That gives you the same options for cheap enclosures you have with SAS, except you can easily move your SAS controller between systems and use it with laptops. This is the solution we've decided on. (Although I'm investigating just biting the bullet on iSCSI/10GbE or FC SAN.)

That'll work fine, as long as your card only has 1 port or doesn't mind throttling down to 4x PCIe2.0. TB2 is only 20Gbps, whereas MiniSAS with 3.0 can handle 24Gbps per port.

The nMP literally doesn't have enough TB2 bandwidth to run 4 ports of MiniSAS all at once.

What a joke that the old Mac Pro, PCIe 2.0 and all, is capable of more storage throughput than the new one.

----------

That's true, and I myself run a huge external array (using inexpensive eSATA and an inexpensive PC case with high-quality PSU). I was just pointing out that nMP owners will be forced to externalize more of their storage. For many, this adds significant expense and/or risk. Also, even for external options I prefer the old Mac Pro. PCIe (eSATA or MiniSAS) is just so much cheaper than thunderbolt controllers and even USB3 at present for external arrays.

Internal storage becomes irrelevant past a certain point because even on the most (internally) expandable systems it is, ultimately, pretty limited. When individual projects can run to multiple terabytes, and you might need access to old projects at any time (i.e. you can't just archive them off and never look at them again), external storage, typically either external RAID or some sort of SAN solution, becomes the only sensible option. All of our machines have had no job-specifc data (except perhaps tiny project files) stored on internal storage for years — including on old Mac Pro and on Wintel systems where there's plenty of room for such storage. The new Mac Pro just reflects what we've been doing anyway.

 

[ZnU]

That'll work fine, as long as your card only has 1 port or doesn't mind throttling down to 4x PCIe2.0. TB2 is only 20Gbps, whereas MiniSAS with PCIe3.0 can handle 24Gbps per port.

Again, two ports worth of that is 4800 MB/s. With some reasonable level of parity (and you'd be insane not to use it with this many drives), that's easily a 48-bay SAS enclosure, and if you're talking about using this bandwidth from a single client, for a single task, you'd probably need it set up with every drive pulled into a single RAID volume.

I'm not doing this. Are you doing this? What are you using it for? This is more bandwidth than is required for 4K. Lots more. The world's largest post production facilities, that spend their days finishing Hollywood movies, use FC SAN networks that typically don't provide more than 1600 MB/s to any particular workstation. Maybe a SAN FC target (server) at a major post facility might have need for such bandwidth, if it's serving multiple workstations across half a dozen or more 8 Gbps FC ports, but nobody is offering up the Mac Pro as your best choice for a FC target on a high-end SAN. Regularly raising the point that Thunderbolt 2 can't handle 4800 MB/s is about as useful, and about as relevant to plausible use cases for this machine, as arguing over how many angels can dance of the head of a pin.

 

[wonderspark]

Again, the cable illustrated above is not an 8088-8088 SAS cable. It's a cable for the external PCIe expansion chassis you'd have to resort to after running out of PCIe slots on an old Mac Pro before getting around to actually installing a RAID controller.

Ah, I haven't needed to expand from four PCIe slots, thankfully.

What are you actually doing that requires 4000 MB/s of bandwidth? Uncompressed 8K video? Four or more simultaneous streams of 4K uncompressed? What storage system are you using to supply this? 8+ RAIDed SSDs? 36+ RAIDed HDDs?

I've not needed all the bandwidth yet, and the Areca 1880ix-12 has a limit of about 3.6GB/second in max throughput tests, but the subject is nMP expandability *advantages*. It does have some advantages, but it also has some disadvantages to the oMP, as illustrated by this discussion.

I'm not into 4K yet, but Adobe's tools like fast I/O, and the oMP can be put together to do that brilliantly, as can the nMP as well. If I put four SSDs in my TR4X, and leave my TR8X alone with eight HDDs, that is 2800MB/second externally, plus the SSDs I have connected to the Areca in the optical bay internally. That puts me right up against the 3.6GB/second max throughput of my card. It's nice to have that speed without bottlenecks... source video, scratch volumes, output render volumes and OS / apps all running unimpeded makes Adobe run very smooth.

Maybe you'll be the first exception I've run across (no sarcasm intended here, honestly), but I've seen a lot of this kind of hand wringing over the new Mac Pro over the last few months from people who didn't actually own equipment capable of utilizing, and often didn't have use cases that could actually benefit from, the bandwidth they were morning the loss of with the shift away from PCIe.

Also, it's worth noting, between the GPUs and the Thunderbolt ports, Apple is using every PCIe lane the CPU supplies — there is no bandwidth locked up in this machine that you can't get to because it doesn't have slots.

I agree that few need or use the oMP to full potential, and would say the same of the nMP. I had expected the nMP to be dual CPU, thus providing a lot more lanes, but they went single CPU, and maximized those lanes instead. That decision probably benefits the most people overall, but not everyone.

Areca makes an empty 8-bay Thunderbolt RAID system. I imagine it will be updated with Thunderbolt 2 support before too long. Alternatively, just take your favorite PCIe SAS RAID controller and toss it in a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe enclosure. (None are presently shipping, but Sonnet is offering free Thunderbolt 2 upgrades on their current models and those could very well land before the new Mac Pro.) That gives you the same options for cheap enclosures you have with SAS, except you can easily move your SAS controller between systems and use it with laptops. This is the solution we've decided on. (Although I'm investigating just biting the bullet on iSCSI/10GbE or FC SAN.)

I do keep my eye on new offerings by Areca, Sonnet, Magma, et cetera. None yet have made better financial sense than staying on my oMP with PCIe/mini-SAS solutions I've been using for a while now. I know that I'll eventually need to move on, and the longer it takes to get there, the more value I'll have realized.

I still have future expansion options with the oMP, and that is a wonderful thing. The nMP has a lot of appeal, but there are cases where it takes a step backward after taking those two steps forward, and that is my point. I'd love to see someone make an affordable device that aggregates Thunderbolt ports, so that we could put x12 lanes together that way. That alone would remove my reason for waiting for something better.

 

[ZnU]

I've not needed all the bandwidth yet, and the Areca 1880ix-12 has a limit of about 3.6GB/second in max throughput tests, but the subject is nMP expandability *advantages*. It does have some advantages, but it also has some disadvantages to the oMP, as illustrated by this discussion.

Sure. It obviously has some disadvantages. That's the nature of tradeoffs. But I strongly suspect that, given the integrated high-end GPUs (which take what is by far the single most common bandwidth-intensive use of PCIe slots off the table), there are more people for whom the traditional four slot limitation would be a problem than for whom 20 Gbps is insufficient bandwidth to a single peripheral. The case mentioned I at the start of this thread applied to pretty much every demanding user of DaVinci Resolve, for instance, which is a pretty popular app as pro video apps go. Other high-end pro video apps ran into similar problems.

I'm not into 4K yet, but Adobe's tools like fast I/O, and the oMP can be put together to do that brilliantly, as can the nMP as well. If I put four SSDs in my TR4X, and leave my TR8X alone with eight HDDs, that is 2800MB/second externally, plus the SSDs I have connected to the Areca in the optical bay internally. That puts me right up against the 3.6GB/second max throughput of my card. It's nice to have that speed without bottlenecks... source video, scratch volumes, output render volumes and OS / apps all running unimpeded makes Adobe run very smooth.

Well, remember that Thunderbolt is full duplex, so you can't sum bandwidth requirements in both directions like that, and it's pretty hard to think of a workflow that would read from (or write to) two SSD RAIDs and an 8-drive HDD RAID simultaneously at full speed. A more plausible case might be reading from the HDD RAID and writing to the SSD RAID, say, but Thunderbolt 2 easily has the bandwidth for that.

Even at 4K you have to be working with uncompressed RGB formats to actually need ~1000 MB/s per stream, which in modern workflows usually means film scans, which are becoming rarer and rarer, particularly outside of big-budget Hollywood movies. Cameras like the Epic and F55 capture compressed raw at under 150 MB/s — this stuff will play back trivially from a single SSD or a dual HDD RAID even over SATA II or USB 3 (with an enclosure with UASP support). 4K ProRes 4444 requires even less bandwidth. No 8+ drive RAID required for many common workflows.

I do keep my eye on new offerings by Areca, Sonnet, Magma, et cetera. None yet have made better financial sense than staying on my oMP with PCIe/mini-SAS solutions I've been using for a while now. I know that I'll eventually need to move on, and the longer it takes to get there, the more value I'll have realized.

As I noted above, you can port your existing solution to Thunderbolt for the price of a PCIe Thunderbolt enclosure. If you don't need more than ~800 MB/s currently there are options starting from $199, if you do need more there are the enclosures Sonnet is selling with the promise of free Thunderbolt 2 upgrades starting at $499 (with two slots). Yes, that is an added expense, but it gives you the advantage of being able to move the controller between systems trivially, which makes it quite a bit more valuable to some people.

I still have future expansion options with the oMP, and that is a wonderful thing. The nMP has a lot of appeal, but there are cases where it takes a step backward after taking those two steps forward, and that is my point. I'd love to see someone make an affordable device that aggregates Thunderbolt ports, so that we could put x12 lanes together that way. That alone would remove my reason for waiting for something better.

You could always do something like run RAID 50 with software RAID 0 (which has very little overhead by the standards of modern CPUs) on top of hardware RAID 5. Run that across devices on three Thunderbolt ports and you'd probably top 4500 MB/s (assuming sufficiently fast RAIDs).

 

[wildmac]

The PSU of an average PC or workstation is going to be much more reliable than that of the average external drive enclosure. I don't think anyone would deny this.

It's also wasteful, noisy, and unnecessary to have a separate PSU just so your main PC can look a little smaller. Enjoy your 80mm fans on your cheapo USB enclosure, or enjoy your high-priced multi-drive array trying to get back the internal storage of the previous model Mac Pro :X

Well, if I was still buying LaCie cases that cook drives, you might have a point. However, been using G-Tech lately, and have had very good results with them. Perhaps I'll use my old 1,1 as a storage system under my desk.

The point is, my current rig is that old 1,1, so a nMP is in my future. Yes I'll need to swap to external storage, but I'm not having heartache over that. If I bought an iMac instead, I'd still wind up with external storage, so.. what's the big deal? It's the way going forward.

 

[slughead]

Well, if I was still buying LaCie cases that cook drives, you might have a point. However, been using G-Tech lately, and have had very good results with them. Perhaps I'll use my old 1,1 as a storage system under my desk.

I don't trust power bricks.

I actually do have an external array, but I use a PC case and a PC PSU. That's the most reliable solution I think. It's also extremely cheap for anything > 3 drives (well, if you have eSATA or MiniSAS via PCIe... Tbolt and USB add a huge premium :X )

 

[SHNXX]

Interesting discussion.

Is the nMP merely an exercise in brand reputation the way Toyota builds the Lexus LFA?

It seems that they made it a lot more cool and desirable to the general public.

 

[ZnU]

Apple has always had a sort of affinity with creative pros. I think it's related to how the the company views itself. Jobs placed Apple at "the intersection of technology and the liberal arts." People actually making art using technology live there too. At the most basic level, that's why Apple built this product.

The Mac Pro isn't quite analogous to a supercar that no customer in the world actually has a practical use for, but yeah, it does seem to have acquired the same sort of brand-building function as a secondary role. They obviously saw some brand-building benefits and decided to actively cultivate them.

 

[lesferdinand]

Interesting discussion.

Is the nMP merely an exercise in brand reputation the way Toyota builds the Lexus LFA?

It seems that they made it a lot more cool and desirable to the general public.

It's more than just brand reputation in my opinion. I expect Apple to use the Mac Pro going forward like car manufacturers use their top of the line models: it's where new technologies/solutions will get introduced first. I would be surprised if the future iMacs won't shift to a GCGPU model as well for example.

 

[slughead]

But I'm not even sure we can say in the general case that the new Mac Pro is appealing to a smaller slice of the market than the old Mac Pro. It certainly makes different tradeoffs, and consequently may not appeal to some specific customers that the previous model appealed to. But it likely appeals to new customers that the old model didn't appeal to.

Seems like a lot of the new customers are in the "It looks cool and I have money, I'll take it!" camp.

Nothing wrong with that, I just wish they had an option for the rest of us.

 

[lesferdinand]

Now that there's a machine on the market whose users may actually be interested in adding a bunch of TB peripherals, hopefully options increase and prices come down.

Apple has never been a company to settle for the status quo so a move like this isn't really surprising. Let's not forget that the tower form factor was primarily the result of I/O limitations. Those are now, for most use cases, mitigated by TB2. It really sucks for those whose needs are not covered by TB2 but transitions like these are rarely completely painless.

 

[michaeljk]

That's absolutely the case. Apple is an opinionated company that makes opinionated products.

But I'm not even sure we can say in the general case that the new Mac Pro is appealing to a smaller slice of the market than the old Mac Pro. It certainly makes different tradeoffs, and consequently may not appeal to some specific customers that the previous model appealed to. But it likely appeals to new customers that the old model didn't appeal to.

This may not help the argument made in the OP (for the target audience of the oMP), but your point here is well-taken. I would never have purchased the oMP, yet have ordered a lower-end nMP (6-Core, with 512 Drive). I don't need, and would not want, a huge box of heat and fans sitting under my desk. I wouldn't have wanted to bother with adding cards, internal drives, replacing GPUs. So, while some members of the oMP customer base are chewed about the compromises in the nMP, as a company that actually cares about the size of its possible market more than the wishes of its current and dwindling market, Apple likely made the right compromises (satisfying as many of its traditional Pro users as it could while also catering to a new layer of potential purchasers (me and my ilk) and creating a viable market for a new product that only partially overlaps a market many thought it had decided to completely abandon). In other words, the nMP might be aptly considered a partial abandonment of the old Pro market while it ferrets out the possibility of an existing, untapped, new market.

 

[ZnU]

This may not help the argument made in the OP (for the target audience of the oMP), but your point here is well-taken. I would never have purchased the oMP, yet have ordered a lower-end nMP (6-Core, with 512 Drive). I don't need, and would not want, a huge box of heat and fans sitting under my desk.

While these considerations don't matter so much for machines I buy for the office (well, except that quieter machines are nicer for edit/color suites, even if they're not quite as critical as they are in, say, mixing rooms), I have to say I had much the same reaction when thinking about the system I use at home. I ditched a G5 tower there for a MacBook Pro in 2007, and now have a 2012 rMBP. The new Mac Pro is the first machine to make me seriously consider having a desktop at home again. Not enough to sell the rMBP and buy a Mac Pro right now, but come upgrade time I think I'm going to have a hard time deciding.

Of course a lot of the appeal of having a Mac Pro at home would be taking work home with me... and this machine is so tiny that if I know the suite it's going to live in isn't booked for a few days and feel like working from home, I can just stick the office Mac Pro in a camera bag and take it with me.

 

[Varmann]

Sure. It obviously has some disadvantages. That's the nature of tradeoffs. But I strongly suspect that, given the integrated high-end GPUs (which take what is by far the single most common bandwidth-intensive use of PCIe slots off the table), there are more people for whom the traditional four slot limitation would be a problem than for whom 20 Gbps is insufficient bandwidth to a single peripheral.

I suspect the main reason for this whole discussion is that we users are not used to make "any tradeoffs" when upgrading to a new computer, especially not when buying one four year newer, in the same "line". Each of the ten computers I have owned the last 25 years have been a significant upgrade, in every area, compared to the previous one. My 3.1 was a quantum leap over my old pc.

I am just a "home user", though a pretty demanding one. My trusty 3.1 has run more than 1 1/2 year total at above 95% 8-core load and my tinkering with highres photos (150 Megapixels) can use every single bit of storage and memory bandwidth. I very often also have a cpu-heavy process going in the background while working with the images. With 8 cores, 32 GB ram, Areca 1882 with a 4 SSD Raid0 (work) and 8x4TB raid6 (main storage), I expected to do a significant upgrade with my next purchase.

As it is now I feel I would truly benefit in some areas, but break even or slightly down grade in others, while also paying for features I do not see I would benefit from in near future (second gpu).

Guess I am in the same situation as Wonderspark. I like the nMP, but I want something that feels like a significant upgrade for my use. Hopefully in the next version.

 

[flat five]

theoretical advantages over my current setup:

-- the same cables which plug into my displays can now easily be plugged into the laptop.. usually when my desktop is rendering during the day, i'll work on the laptop and wouldn't mind going to a larger screen.. it's too much of a hassle to do this currently and i won't do it unless it's going to be like that for a few days.. this should be much simpler to do now.

-- likewise, the same cables which plug into my displays can now plug in to drives or the drives-> laptop or the laptop->nmp.. etc.. just way faster/easier to convert the workspace into a multitude of scenarios.. especially good for those whose work often takes place outside of one single workspace.

-- the ac wifi is going to probably be the biggest/most convenient help in all of this.. taking physical linking out of the equation entirely in many scenarios.

 

[dyn]

With the new Mac Pro following a completely different concept, that might not work anymore in the future. Thus the pressure on Apple to release a feasible solution for those customers will grow - if the desktop market is still economically interesting enough, that is.

That's the major problem: the desktop market will still exist but it is declining and moving towards becoming a niche market. The main market seems to be tablets and notebooks. If we look at computing power we see that modern day notebooks can manage many computing power tasks. For most there is no need to buy a desktop, a notebook can do the tasks but has the added bonus of being mobile. This creates flexibility (people can work elsewhere like at home). There will be certain tasks that a notebook won't be able to do and for that we need desktops, clusters even.

I don't think we should talk about advantages or disadvantages. The new Mac Pro is simply a machine that is more aimed at how IT is today (centralised storage, using GPU and CPU for calculations, etc.). Not everybody's IT is on the same level though but it is not something that is new, the old Mac Pro had the same problem. A machine either fits the bill or it doesn't.

Hey, we went from server based computing to client based computing to server based computing again (although they now call it "cloud computing")

 

[wildmac]

Interesting discussion.

Is the nMP merely an exercise in brand reputation the way Toyota builds the Lexus LFA?

It seems that they made it a lot more cool and desirable to the general public.

On the flip side, I wonder what percentage of the nMP sales are going to be people who would never have bought the cMP massive case that many of us love, but now might buy this "cool looking" desktop computer because it isn't the massive beast of old?

If there's enough of those people, however harshly they might be mocked here, it might breath new life into the MacPro as a product line.

----------

That's the major problem: the desktop market will still exist but it is declining and moving towards becoming a niche market. The main market seems to be tablets and notebooks. If we look at computing power we see that modern day notebooks can manage many computing power tasks. For most there is no need to buy a desktop, a notebook can do the tasks but has the added bonus of being mobile. This creates flexibility (people can work elsewhere like at home). There will be certain tasks that a notebook won't be able to do and for that we need desktops, clusters even.

I don't think we should talk about advantages or disadvantages. The new Mac Pro is simply a machine that is more aimed at how IT is today (centralised storage, using GPU and CPU for calculations, etc.). Not everybody's IT is on the same level though but it is not something that is new, the old Mac Pro had the same problem. A machine either fits the bill or it doesn't.

Hey, we went from server based computing to client based computing to server based computing again (although they now call it "cloud computing")

To some degree, the nMP IS a laptop.. for someone who already has a pile of monitors. Your storage is distributed, and you have something that's essentially portable in it's base form. (I come from the days of SE-30 LAN parties, so....)

Will this plan work? or will Apple abandon workstations alltogether? We'll know in 5 years or so...

 

[dyn]

That applies to the old MP as well since many have moved to centralised storage (SAN, NAS). In companies this has been quite common for several years but the NAS has now become common for many ordinary consumers.

 

[ZnU]

That applies to the old MP as well since many have moved to centralised storage (SAN, NAS). In companies this has been quite common for several years but the NAS has now become common for many ordinary consumers.

The arrival of cheap 10GbE (it's happening, slowly) is probably going to create a larger second wave of creative pros moving to centralized storage as well — all those for whom gigabit ethernet is too slow but Fibre Channel is too expensive.

 

[dyn]

Or something called Infiniband if you are a bit more technical Quite a few people already use it in their homelabs. Interesting piece of technology but so is that new Thunderbolt Bridge thing (in OS X it is software, in Thunderbolt version after TB2 it will be in the hardware).

 

[calaverasgrande]

For external expansion on the new Mac Pro, other companies or video design studios take into consideration the expenses for expansion. My friend who works in a TV production firm, they have about 15 classic Mac Pros, and doing some accounting on finances, if they would shift their system to the new MPro, that would sum up to expenses multiplied 15 times unlike a single user. Entails careful evaluation long term from a business standpoint.

they also get to write off those expenses. In many businesses a situation arises where they MUST make a capital purchase of this sort to avoid paying heavy taxes on earnings.
So you end up in the joyless situation where you just bought a pile of gear (one time capital expense) but cannot afford to hire anyone (ongoing expense).

 

[Derpage]

Of course, about 75% of the folks here raging about the lack of expandability have probably changed one PCI card or less in the past years, but it makes them feel better about themselves since they can't afford the nMP anyway.

Another 10% are the "pros" with big investments in older hardware who will have to buy all new if they are going to move up.

Another 10% are pros who aren't looking forward to paying for whatever Blackmagic releases at NAB in April.

The last 5% are the guys who are trying to figure out how their SyQuest 44 drives are going to hooked up to the nMP.

I do see a lot of folks buying USB3 enclosures since TB enclosures are still too expensive for storage that isn't accessed frequently.

If you keep projecting your basic needs upon everybody else, you will continue to be bewildered by other people's needs and look quite ignorant.

 

[wildmac]

If you keep projecting your basic needs upon everybody else, you will continue to be bewildered by other people's needs and look quite ignorant.

And that's worse that the howls of terror over the fact that you can't shove 16TB of internal storage in the nMP, or 3 PCIe cards, because everyone needs those?

It may not have dawned on you, but the largest market for the nMP is going to be creative professionals or prosumers with "basic" needs.

There are enough straw men here about "the nMP is terrible because it's not an exact fit for my needs" to choke a horse.

 

[Derpage]

And that's worse that the howls of terror over the fact that you can't shove 16TB of internal storage in the nMP, or 3 PCIe cards, because everyone needs those?

It may not have dawned on you, but the largest market for the nMP is going to be creative professionals or prosumers with "basic" needs.

There are enough straw men here about "the nMP is terrible because it's not an exact fit for my needs" to choke a horse.

Hey, if you want to be spoon fed what you need, that's fine. I'm not even arguing that. It's just silly to try and argue that the new design is anywhere near as modular as the old design. Especially when the market for external thunderbolt devices is so thin and a portion of the argument lay with the concept that "if you build it they will come." A lot of people just aren't okay with that. It's just different strokes for different folks.

 

[slughead]

And that's worse that the howls of terror over the fact that you can't shove 16TB of internal storage in the nMP, or 3 PCIe cards, because everyone needs those?

It may not have dawned on you, but the largest market for the nMP is going to be creative professionals or prosumers with "basic" needs.

There are enough straw men here about "the nMP is terrible because it's not an exact fit for my needs" to choke a horse.

First off, I don't think you know what a "straw man" is.

Second, you basically said people are really only sad because they can't afford one which is a juvenile and sad statement if I've ever heard one. Now you're saying that they're not a "creative professional" if their needs lie outside of or are made slow/less versatile/expensive/unreliable/ridiculous by the new Mac Pro's capabilities.

Yes, there are plenty of creative professionals that would have to make serious compromises to put the nMP into their use-case. I'm not sure anyone's interested in hearing that anyone who isn't you and has your needs should "choke on a horse."

Edit: You got one thing right though: this is a great prosumer/enthusiast machine, as evidenced by many of the posts in the "Why are you buying one" thread--many hobbyists, amateur photographers, etc. Heck, I'm now in that group (though my hobbies/part time work require a different machine). It's a wonderful machine for this group, how far out it ventures from that use-case is what we're discussing.