MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[sirio76]

Windows 10 won't support the amount of RAM we've been talking about for BTO configs, you'll need to run Windows Server Standard (or Data Center). Those are licensed by core count (in increments of 16) so you'd need between 2 and 8 licenses for the core counts you were talking about. At about $1000 per license that's between $2000 and $8000 in Windows tax on the EPYC based system. It's fine if you want to overpay for a system to have EPYC though, that's your prerogative.

But Epyc have PCIe4, he needs that to troll faster! The fact that he is calling the 2019MP eol while using a ten years old machine tells a lot about this guy. He will not buy an Epyc system because he don't need it, it's just to get some arguments against the MP(which is a very different machine designed for other tasks and user base).

 

[Pressure]

You can run MacOS through Linux at full speed with Hypervisor.

 

[Nugget]

You can run MacOS through Linux at full speed with Hypervisor.

Not legally, not supported, and not without resorting to sketchy, brittle hackintosh modifications to the system. It's not a solution that any company I've ever worked for would deploy. So you're not license compliant and you live in fear of every macOS update that comes down the pike, unable to patch for security concerns in a timely manner.

 

[Pressure]

Not legally, not supported, and not without resorting to sketchy, brittle hackintosh modifications to the system. It's not a solution that any company I've ever worked for would deploy. So you're not license compliant and you live in fear of every macOS update that comes down the pike, unable to patch for security concerns in a timely manner.

No, you can actually run MacOS with Hypervisor. Even Apple supports this. It's MacOS running completely virtualised on Linux running at full speed of the resources given to it.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

No, you can actually run MacOS with Hypervisor. Even Apple supports this. It's MacOS running completely virtualised on Linux running at full speed of the resources given to it.

You are misconstruing a technical document talking about support for hypervisors to be an endorsement of running MacOS virtualized on non-Apple hardware. For example, it is entirely legal to run a MacOS VM on a MacOS host running on Apple hardware, products such as Parallels do this. It is not legal to run MacOS virtualized on a non-Apple system running Linux as a host OS (or any combination thereof).

to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

emphasis added but you can see that virtualization is limited specifically to Mac computers running MacOS

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf

 

[H. Flower]

Not even in production yet?

Lord, it looks like they're really ARE gonna December 31st us.....

 

[PickUrPoison]

Not even in production yet?

Lord, it looks like they're really ARE gonna December 31st us.....

Why would it take 3 months to assemble a Mac Pro?

 

[ekwipt]

Why would it take 3 months to assemble a Mac Pro?

Probably not one....

 

[danwells]

The "desktop class ARM processors" mentioned above aren't desktop class - they're lightweight laptop class... Yes, a big iPad is as fast as some Macs, but the very fastest iPads are about as fast as a 13" MacBook Pro. Still impressive, but about half the speed of the fastest 15" MacBook Pro, a little over 1/4 the speed of an 18-core iMac Pro, and probably somewhat over 1/8 the speed of the biggest Mac Pro.

That's an 8-core A12x Bionic in a 12.9" iPad, so as fast as we've ever seen iOS run! Yes, there will be an A13x someday soon, and it'll be 10-15% faster. Even assuming software was no problem (and it is), it would take a 64-core (or else 8 processors) to match the speed of a Mac Pro. Because cores don't scale linearly, a 128-core or 16 processors is probably more realistic. That is enough cores that it becomes a real programming challenge! Programmers would rather see one or a few really fast cores, while hardware designers, unable to deliver that (no matter who they work for), keep piling slow cores on instead. Sure, a hypothetical 128-core A-series chip probably uses less power than a big ol' Xeon, but it's also a programmer's nightmare. For a lot of server applications, it's not too bad, because many of them tend to spawn lots of threads anyway. For desktop and workstation applications, that scalability is really variable.

Of course, Apple could design a true desktop A-series core about twice as fast as the Lightning core in the A13. That should be fast enough to compete on a core-for-core basis with Intel's best (and AMD's, but Apple won't use AMD because of laptops). There's probably nothing technically saying such a core can't be built, but we don't know if it would have any more power or performance headroom than Intel or AMD have now - when you are driving just as fast, are you running into the same wall? Unfortunately for Apple, designing such a core is a multi-billion dollar commitment, and it's a third A-series core to keep updated. Until it exists, we probably don't know if it's a better performer than a Skylake or Ice Lake core, nor how fast it can get faster...

My best guess (and this is only a guess) is that Apple does release ARM Macs, but using existing cores, at the low end, and linked to the Mac App Store - no software from outside the store... They might use the term "Pro" to differentiate Intel Macs (which run software from both the Mac App Store and alternative sources)?

Here's a possible lineup (or something like it) as of full rollout in about 2022:

ARM
12"MacBook - uses same processor as iPad Pro, a couple of speed choices with the fastest model being ~10% faster than the same-year iPad Pro
14" (15"?) MacBook - uses the same cores as the iPad Pro, but in a 6 Lightning (faster)/ 2 Thunder (low-power) configuration. Fastest model is 50% faster than iPad Pro.

Mac Mini - three processor variants - low-end model uses MacBook/iPad Pro chip, midrange uses 14" MacBook chip with 6 Lightning/2 Thunder, high end uses chip with 8 Lightning/0 Thunder

iMac (21" and maybe a very large (40"+), relatively low power 4K Mac/TV meant for media consumption) - 6/2 and 8/0 core configurations.

Intel
13" MacBook Pro - quad/6 core 15w or 28w Intel (i5/i7), no discrete GPUs
15" Macbook Pro - 6/8/10(?) core 45 W Intel (i7/i9) with Navi

Mac Mini Pro - 4/6/8 core Intel (i5/i7), no discrete GPUs

27" iMac Pro - 6/8/10 core Intel (i7/i9) with Navi
32" iMac Pro - 12-28 core Intel Xeon medium socket, XDR display, Navi

Mac Pro - 16-56 core Intel Xeon big socket, Navi with replaceable GPU and other expansion.

This gets a lot of Macs on ARM and pushes consumers into the App Store, while continuing to offer high-performance Intel options, and a couple of reasonably priced Intel Macs for people who aren't ready to make the transition. It leverages existing ARM cores that get updated every year because of iOS, while offering a range of performance options.

 

[jeanlain]

It is going to be assembled in Texas not all made in Texas.

Apple says "manufactured".

Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas.[...]
The new Mac Pro will include components designed, developed and manufactured by more than a dozen American companies for distribution to US customers. Manufacturers and suppliers across Arizona, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vermont, including Intersil and ON Semiconductor, are providing advanced technology.

Apple’s new Mac Pro to be made in Texas

As part of its commitment to US economic growth, Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas.

www.apple.com

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple says "manufactured".

Apple’s new Mac Pro to be made in Texas

As part of its commitment to US economic growth, Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas.

www.apple.com

chuckle. Then why do they need 15+ exceptions to "manufacture" it? If import major parts, then it is an assembly.

"... Apple had so far asked for exclusions on Mac Pro parts and accessories, as well as its Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. Requests for tariff relief for the overall exterior enclosure, the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad and some key internal components for the Mac Pro have been approved, while requests for wheels and other components are still under a substantive review by the USTR. ..."

Apple’s Mac Pro Tariff Relief Requests Approved Despite Trump Opposition

Apple Inc. gained U.S. approval to avoid tariffs on Chinese imports for the upcoming Mac Pro computer, even though President Donald Trump indicated the company’s waiver requests would be rejected.

www.bloomberg.com

"... The decision follows the Trump administration’s move last week to grant tariff exemptions on 10 items Apple imports from China. The exclusions for components, including a power supply and a logic board, cover a period from September of last year to August 2020, and the U.S. will refund tariffs already paid. ...

The tech giant had earlier tapped Taiwanese contractor Quanta Computer Inc. to assemble the nearly $6,000 desktop computer outside Shanghai. The high-end computer, which was introduced in 2013, had been assembled in Austin, Texas,
...
...
The parts for which Apple obtained exemptions are critical to the computer’s function. For example, Apple received a tariff waiver on the Mac Pro’s graphics-processing module, which itself incorporates more than 1,600 components and allows images to be rendered on a computer screen ..."

Apple to Keep Building Mac Pro in U.S. After Securing Tariff Relief

Apple is keeping production of its new Mac Pro in Texas, reversing plans to shift assembly to China.

www.wsj.com

The whole case is being made in China and shipped over. If "key internal components" is the logic boards for Mac Pro and GPUs then again in the assembly zone.

The Feds announced around the same time a day or so ago that they were extending the deadline on logic boards, GPUs , and some other stuff to August 2020.

This is yet another clustf*ck by Apple. If they hadn't move the site, they would have been done long time ago. If they had shipped the motherboards and stuff in August-Setember, today they would already be running. That 'penalty' just got waived until next August ... they would have been in motion. Instead Apple goes through some Rube Goldberg gyrations just to avoid paying taxes and goose some Scrooge McDuck nickel and dime out of the Mac Pro and they going to creep even close to being 3 years late from their April 2017 starting point.

Apple has some hype about the USA parts are 2.5 the value point of the previous Mac Pro. Kind of wonder it that largely isn't the higher markup on the Intel dies.

 

[Schismz]

chuckle. Then why do they need 15+ exceptions to "manufacture" it? If import major parts, then it is an assembly.

"... Apple had so far asked for exclusions on Mac Pro parts and accessories, as well as its Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. Requests for tariff relief for the overall exterior enclosure, the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad and some key internal components for the Mac Pro have been approved, while requests for wheels and other components are still under a substantive review by the USTR. ..."

Apple’s Mac Pro Tariff Relief Requests Approved Despite Trump Opposition

Apple Inc. gained U.S. approval to avoid tariffs on Chinese imports for the upcoming Mac Pro computer, even though President Donald Trump indicated the company’s waiver requests would be rejected.

www.bloomberg.com

"... The decision follows the Trump administration’s move last week to grant tariff exemptions on 10 items Apple imports from China. The exclusions for components, including a power supply and a logic board, cover a period from September of last year to August 2020, and the U.S. will refund tariffs already paid. ...

The tech giant had earlier tapped Taiwanese contractor Quanta Computer Inc. to assemble the nearly $6,000 desktop computer outside Shanghai. The high-end computer, which was introduced in 2013, had been assembled in Austin, Texas,
...
...
The parts for which Apple obtained exemptions are critical to the computer’s function. For example, Apple received a tariff waiver on the Mac Pro’s graphics-processing module, which itself incorporates more than 1,600 components and allows images to be rendered on a computer screen ..."

Apple to Keep Building Mac Pro in U.S. After Securing Tariff Relief

Apple is keeping production of its new Mac Pro in Texas, reversing plans to shift assembly to China.

www.wsj.com

The whole case is being made in China and shipped over. If "key internal components" is the logic boards for Mac Pro and GPUs then again in the assembly zone.

The Feds announced around the same time a day or so ago that they were extending the deadline on logic boards, GPUs , and some other stuff to August 2020.

This is yet another clustf*ck by Apple. If they hadn't move the site, they would have been done long time ago. If they had shipped the motherboards and stuff in August-Setember, today they would already be running. That 'penalty' just got waived until next August ... they would have been in motion. Instead Apple goes through some Rube Goldberg gyrations just to avoid paying taxes and goose some Scrooge McDuck nickel and dime out of the Mac Pro and they going to creep even close to being 3 years late from their April 2017 starting point.

Apple has some hype about the USA parts are 2.5 the value point of the previous Mac Pro. Kind of wonder it that largely isn't the higher markup on the Intel dies.

It's probably what somebody else mentioned a ways back. Apple's 2019 Mac Pro will ship on the last day of December, 15 reviewers and 25 actual customers will get it, and then it'll be available for real BTO orders in Feb or something. At least with the Mac Pro the last 2 releases the EPP store has been available immediately, because having too many Mac Pros being purchased by customers willing to pay full price, hasn't been high enough in over a decade+. For really hot items, EPP is always sit and wait, but eh, 25% off a Mac Pro actually makes a big difference; another iPhone, not so much.

Eh, hope to be wrong and that they'll hurry, but not holding my breathe.

 

[PickUrPoison]

<snip>
Instead Apple goes through some Rube Goldberg gyrations just to avoid paying taxes and goose some Scrooge McDuck nickel and dime out of the Mac Pro and they going to creep even close to being 3 years late from their April 2017 starting point.

Apple has some hype about the USA parts are 2.5 the value point of the previous Mac Pro. Kind of wonder it that largely isn't the higher markup on the Intel dies.

It’s not three years late, and we’ve know for years it was going to be a multi-year development effort. In any case, I don’t expect Apple to miss the Fall 2019 commitment regardless of where they assemble the Mac Pro. If the parts were already in China, they’ll simply ship them here. There are many, many flights daily between China and the US.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever assembled (manufactured) a computer before but it’s hardly rocket science. It’s not like they’re going to be fabbing 20-layer PCBs in Texas; they’ll arrive completely assembled and tested, 1,000 to a pallet. Same with GPU modules, power supplies and every other necessary component. Parts sourced in the US will arrive by truck, as will pallets from the airport and containers from the port.

I’d expect the chassis will be fabricated and assembled here as they are no doubt quite heavy, but if it’s faster or cheaper they might do that in China, who knows. There might be 5,000 per cargo container on a ship arriving in a couple weeks, on November 1st or tomorrow for all we know.

Location of the final assembly isn’t really that big a deal when you’re talking about manual assembly of a relatively low volume product. 100 workers could easy crank out 1,000 a day.

 

[Krevnik]

Apple won't use AMD because of laptops

I wonder how much of that is also AMD's track record as well. Their CPUs have generally been cheaper, but until recently, not super competitive in terms power draw and performance. And as you say, laptops are still Intel's game to lose.

And with the Ryzen 3000 series, there's been bugs galore with the boost behavior that they've been fixing since launch (along with a bad RDRAND implementation). I'm still waiting on 1.0.0.3 ABBA (that's not even a joke) to help fix the idle power consumption issues. My Mac Mini draws ~3W when idle, while my 3600 gaming PC draws 8.5W for the CPU package alone while idle. That's not a great look for AMD when their idle draw is nearly 3 times higher on the same TDP chip because the CPU keeps thinking it needs to boost the cores to max boost clocks when idle. Not when Apple cares about the power draw, noise, etc.

Intel hasn't been doing great at moving the state of the art forward these last few years and AMD is rightfully capitalizing on that, but from an engineer's perspective, AMD's launch here should be considered embarrassing.

 

[goMac]

No, you can actually run MacOS with Hypervisor. Even Apple supports this. It's MacOS running completely virtualised on Linux running at full speed of the resources given to it.

Just to clarify, what you've linked to is using macOS as a Hypervisor host, using Apple's Hypervisor framework. It's not about running on top of a different Hypervisor.

 

[Stephen.R]

Hard drives are also noisy and unreliable - both good arguments for keeping them away from the fast, reliable and mostly quiet things that live inside the computer.

Spinning rust drives in any serious workplace will be in a case that makes them hot swappable. That’s hardly the case if they’re internal (pun acknowledged but not intended).

As a non-iOS/macOS specific developer (I write stuff that generally runs on a server, typically Linux-based, but is mostly platform agnostic amongst *nixes) I’m currently served by a 2018 mini + 2018 MBP15, but I can definitely see myself swapping to a Mac Pro with this new direction they’ve taken.

Right now my little mini is running 7 VMs to simulate the full prod setup for a clients site. It works, but it’s pushing the limits a little in terms of core allocations. As someone above mentioned - being able to leave a relatively basic GPU, upgrade to a good bang/$ Xeon and then upgrade memory over time is a huge win. Being able to stick fixed PCIe SSDs, and/or U/M2s on an adapter board inside is also a big win IMO - and that’s before you even consider external expansion via TB3/etc.

 

[beaker7]

Windows 10 won't support the amount of RAM we've been talking about for BTO configs, you'll need to run Windows Server Standard (or Data Center). Those are licensed by core count (in increments of 16) so you'd need between 2 and 8 licenses for the core counts you were talking about. At about $1000 per license that's between $2000 and $8000 in Windows tax on the EPYC based system. It's fine if you want to overpay for a system to have EPYC though, that's your prerogative.

Win 10 Pro supports up to 2 TB RAM. Win 10 Pro for Workstation supports up to 6 TB.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Not legally, not supported, and not without resorting to sketchy, brittle hackintosh modifications to the system. It's not a solution that any company I've ever worked for would deploy. So you're not license compliant and you live in fear of every macOS update that comes down the pike, unable to patch for security concerns in a timely manner.

What you have said is all true, just consider there are other scenarios. I make a living supporting individuals and organizations who have needed to exceed any Mac's supported maximum configuration.

Find a stable configuration, freeze it, and let the Hackintoshes make money. As long as Apple don't artificially kneecap the OS at 28 cores, and I don't think they will because they haven't yet and there's a rackmount variant coming... These same folks will absolutely rackmount SuperMicro chassis with far superior computational density than MP 7,1 - and Hackintosh them or run them in some type of Hypervisor situation. The performance to dollar ratio makes sense for enough people.

If you want some evidence, just look at all the insane Mac Pro identifier Geekbench scores. There are plenty of people running profitable, MASSIVE Hackintoshes, and clusters of them.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

What you have said is all true, just consider there are other scenarios. I make a living supporting individuals and organizations who have needed to exceed any Mac's supported maximum configuration.

Find a stable configuration, freeze it, and let the Hackintoshes make money. As long as Apple don't artificially kneecap the OS at 28 cores, and I don't think they will because they haven't yet and there's a rackmount variant coming... These same folks will absolutely rackmount SuperMicro chassis with far superior computational density than MP 7,1 - and Hackintosh them or run them in some type of Hypervisor situation. The performance to dollar ratio makes sense for enough people.

If you want some evidence, just look at all the insane Mac Pro identifier Geekbench scores. There are plenty of people running profitable, MASSIVE Hackintoshes, and clusters of them.

...illegally.

(ftfy)

 

[beaker7]

What you have said is all true, just consider there are other scenarios. I make a living supporting individuals and organizations who have needed to exceed any Mac's supported maximum configuration.

No reputable business is running hackintoshes.

Are they using cracked software too?

 

[sirio76]

Totally agree. I've worked for a lot of clients(from small to very large) and nobody in the civilized world would ever use hackintosh for business. To be fair they never use assembled PC too, they only use Windows/Linux systems from reputable brand(HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) or Mac, because support do matter a lot.
Hackintosh are just for people who can't afford a real Mac, entusiast, small freelance or very(very!) small team.

 

[thevault]

Not even in production yet?

Lord, it looks like they're really ARE gonna December 31st us.....

As I conveyed months ago it's going to be a 2020 computer and not a 2019 with a release in December........

I'll wait until October and that's about it because its been to long of a release.........Maybe I'll buy a used one next or following year.

 

[AidenShaw]

Win 10 Pro supports up to 2 TB RAM. Win 10 Pro for Workstation supports up to 6 TB. Also note that Microsoft has pretty consistently increased the supported number of cores for workstations as core counts have increased. There is a lot of engineering and QA to support hundreds of cores, so it's reasonable to expect a "core tax" if you have a hundred or more logical cores. The first real pain point is exceeding 64 logical cores, since the basic Windows scheduler uses 64-bit bitmasks for cores. Over 64 cores, and you get a federation of schedulers, each scheduler handling no more than 64 logical cores. And, BTW, Pro Workstation supports 256 logical cores .

 

[fuchsdh]

No reputable business is running hackintoshes.

Are they using cracked software too?

I've encountered more than my fair share of big New York creative offices using cracked Adobe Creative Cloud software...

But yeah, there will always be companies looking at bottom line and those looking at support considerations, etc.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

No reputable business is running hackintoshes.

Are they using cracked software too?

Are you serious? If so, you'd be surprised who's doing it.