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

[JimGoshorn]

And you have to wonder how many average users who aren't likely to use external solutions are actually buying high power computers? If people buy computers that fit their needs, how much energy is actually saved?

 

[koyoot]

And you have to wonder how many average users who aren't likely to use external solutions are actually buying high power computers? If people buy computers that fit their needs, how much energy is actually saved?

Then you have the question of SoC's. AMD APUs, or Intel CPUs with integrated GPUs.

You seriously think that it will not be sufficient? I have written this before many, many times. Markets are shifting, because of this reason: energy efficiency. 95% of future market will be BGA-type. NUC, All-in-One, laptops, tablets. All are BGA. All have irreplaceable hardware, and are sufficient enough for people's typical needs, at the same time. Think what will happen when AMD will come with good enough CPU architecture that can be used in those APUs. They have Vega architecture that will go to Raven Ridge APUs, Zen CPU architecture and HBM2 on top of that. Will it be not sufficient in terms of efficiency, and raw power for everyday use?

Why do you think anything here is excluding anything?

Edit: think about this this way:
NUC power limit - 85W.
Desktop computer power limit - 150-200W
All-in-one power limit - 300W.
Workstation power limit - 450W.

Makes sense?

The answer to both is: Yes. Something largely ignored by the nMP advocates.

No. Like I have said, future GPU designs for external cases will differ, by a huge margin.

 

[tuxon86]

I see that it is the matter of Californian regulators. And as far as I know, California is in USA. So it is not only matter of Europe .

Energy efficiency is problematic around the world, but its not the matter we should discuss here. What should be discussed here is the effect we will see around the world, of governed power consumption of computers, and the need for design of computers with efficiency in mind in first place.

Mac Pro 6.1 design was not so pointless after all, as much as it was spun out by people here. Because this is probably the first computer that was designed with this in mind. Others will have to follow, the suit.

And even if all of this governing of PSU's and the design of computers will fail at first, in the end, we will see upper limit for power consumption. Which is truly great thing to see.


One last thing: Was I writing for very long time, that Energy efficiency will be important, or not?

California is dry... I specifically mention hydro electricity, but as always you didn't read and tried to score some point... It isn't a problem everywhere.
[doublepost=1473897485][/doublepost]

External expansion.

How can you have flexibility if your environment is constrained by power design in the first place? Whole point of this is reducing the power footprint for each desktop computer.

External expansion here is the only way we can get more power from your computers in upcoming future. Whether we like it or not.

External expansion implies highly inneficient external psu... I thought you were trying to save the planet or something.

 

[JimGoshorn]

Why do you think anything here is excluding anything?

All I was saying is that if people buy computers according to need, in the end, how much energy will be saved? Someone who wants to surf and email would only need a tablet or laptop which wouldn't require that much energy. Someone doing video etc. would look towards a workstation. If you limit a workstation, for example, to 450 watts by limiting what it contains, once you add the needed external devices, aren't you going to give back a fair amount of the energy savings (at least at the current technology level)? Once technology catches up, such as large SSD's at reasonable prices, I can see this idea becoming feasible.

 

[AidenShaw]

In europe maybe, but where the source of electricity is hydro based and you have to use it or lose it (it can't be stocked) and is dirt cheap not really. And before you reply, keep in mind that I work for one of the top hydro electricity producer in the world.

All electricity can be stocked, even solar and hydro and wind.

It's not always cost-effective, but it can be stored.
[doublepost=1473901365][/doublepost]

The answer to both is: Yes. Something largely ignored by the nMP advocates.

They also ignore the fact that having one platinum plus power supply inside an expandable box can use much less power than a bunch of cheap power supplies (and their fans) outside the box.

Real power savings will come from holistic system power management - high efficiency (especially under light load) power supplies, aggressive power management if the CPU is idle, low power states for idle disks (both spinners and solid state), and similar measures.

Crippling the system unit and adding lots of unintelligent external devices with unintelligent power management is not the way to go.

 

[zephonic]

I’m going to suggest that if you had El Cap running on the iPhone7, and the A10 it wouldn’t be as smooth an experience as is often suggested.
Also that is you had an A10 powering a MacBook it wouldn’t be that nice either.

I don't necessarily disagree. Just to refresh, my original point was

With this info, I wonder if one could extrapolate theoretical numbers of a potential true quad-core Apple CPU running at 3GHz, unimpeded by low-power restrictions?

No more, no less.

That said, Gruber has an interesting observation:

The iPhone 7 scores better on both single- and multi-core than any MacBook Air ever made, and performs comparably to a 2013 MacBook Pro.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/14/geekbench-android-a10


I understand it is not a level playing field, but it is not entirely meaningless either. If Apple's own processor designs continue to gain performance at this pace, it is conceivable they will at some point be powerful enough for Macs.

[edit:]
In that case, I could understand Apple jumping off the annual-Intel-upgrade-bandwagon. If they expect to reach performance parity soon, why would they want to stick with x86? For Bootcamp?
[/e]

Not at all, not as macOS or android, it's has a simplified kernel w/o logical file block among other things disabled by design which requires a lot of cpu time and which are the reason which A10 cpu wins over Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 it spend less clock cycles on background OS checks.

Thanks for chiming in.

 

[H2SO4]

I don't necessarily disagree. Just to refresh, my original point was



No more, no less.

That said, Gruber has an interesting observation:

The iPhone 7 scores better on both single- and multi-core than any MacBook Air ever made, and performs comparably to a 2013 MacBook Pro.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/14/geekbench-android-a10


I understand it is not a level playing field, but it is not entirely meaningless either. If Apple's own processor designs continue to gain performance at this pace, it is not inconceivable they will at some point be powerful enough for Macs.



Thanks for chiming in.

Yes, I see the point.

 

[Hank Carter]

Maybe Guber should take a look at those charts again, because the iPhone 7 doesn't look faster than a MBA to me.

It helps if you sort them in the proper order...


DEVICE SINGLE-CORE MULTI-CORE
iPhone 7/7 Plus 3,450 5,630
Samsung Galaxy S7 1,806 5,213
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 1,786 5,228
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge 1,744 5,203
Huawei P9 1,729 4,735
OnePlus 3 1,698 4,015

Keep in mind that the A10 is a four core unit and in this case the i7 is 2 cores.
I'm not an engineer so I'm not sure if in this case that makes a difference.

https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=macbook+air&sort=multicore_score

Uploaded Model Platform User Single-Core Score Multi-Core Score
Sep 13, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3013 7006
Sep 13, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3556 7002
Sep 03, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 2690 6926
Sep 09, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 2882 6908
Sep 04, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 2852 6890
Sep 08, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3323 6843
Sep 10, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3388 6795
Sep 04, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3307 6750
Aug 31, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3337 6741
Sep 01, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3189 6730
Sep 10, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3278 6729
Sep 06, 2016 MacBook Air (11-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3340 6722
Aug 31, 2016 MacBook Air (11-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3249 6718
Sep 02, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3368 6718
Sep 14, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3392 6710
Sep 07, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3400 6709
Sep 14, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3271 6708
Sep 01, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3332 6702
Sep 05, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3352 6701
Sep 05, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3257 6689
Sep 09, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3156 6687
Sep 02, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3267 6662
Sep 08, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3340 6662
Sep 09, 2016 MacBook Air (13-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3306 6661
Sep 06, 2016 MacBook Air (11-inch Early 2015)Intel Core i7-5650U 2200 MHz (2 cores) OS X 64-bit 3283 6659

etc.

 

[zephonic]

Good catch.

About the A10 Fusion:

More interestingly, it’s a four-core CPU with two high-performance CPU cores and two “high efficiency” cores that run at one fifth the power to save battery life. There’s a configuration switch that will route tasks to the powerful cores or the power-efficiency cores.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/a...er-consumption-to-give-you-more-battery-life/

To me it sounds like it's either high performance or high-efficiency, and not a case of all cores running concurrently. That would suggest the high-efficiency cores are inactive when benchmarking, but I'm just guessing here.

 

[koyoot]

External expansion implies highly inneficient external psu... I thought you were trying to save the planet or something.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you believe that buying an external expansion case with certain external expansion will make the PSU inefficient? For example. External case with dual SSD in NAS, with 20W PSU. Is that inefficient? External case with 4 GPU dies on interposer, with 150W PSU. Is that inefficient?

Or maybe you believe that you will be able to freely upgrade the hardware in external cases? To some degree, maybe. But because of the need to control the costs of energy, stability of the energy lines, 95% of the future market will be BGA. You will buy devices, which Intel already have touted that they will focus on. Similar thing AMD touts with Scalability in their upcoming GPUs. Not to mention their APU lineups.

People still look at where is technology, not where it goes. That is the problem here.

 

[fuchsdh]

Good catch.

About the A10 Fusion:



https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/a...er-consumption-to-give-you-more-battery-life/

To me it sounds like it's either high performance or high-efficiency, and not a case of all cores running concurrently. That would suggest the high-efficiency cores are inactive when benchmarking, but I'm just guessing here.

That's my read as well. It's still essentially a dual-core device, only which two cores are active depends on the task. For benchmarking and intensive workloads, it's the fast cores.

 

[wallysb01]

Let me ask you a question. Why do you believe that buying an external expansion case with certain external expansion will make the PSU inefficient? For example. External case with dual SSD in NAS, with 20W PSU. Is that inefficient? External case with 4 GPU dies on interposer, with 150W PSU. Is that inefficient?

The thing is no one really knows how efficient they are. Just knowing the wattage doesn't tell you that and very few external enclosures specify the efficiency of their PSU (at least from what I can tell). When you buy a workstation, or high end gaming PC, or run a cluster, on the other hand, people very often are prioritizing the efficiency rating of the PSU.

And from a different perspective, its going to be very difficult for 2 or more devices to be as efficient as one. Its more cords and PSU for energy loss, more redundant hardware (like you need some sort of CPU/software to manage that 2 disk array, while the computer you have sitting next to it could already do it), just purely more stuff to manufacture (and like with cars the manufacturing energy cost has got to be a very significant part of the life time energy usage of a computer or expansion device), more different types of factories and man-hours spent in design. All these things take energy and it adds up. So, yeah, just buy what you need. If you don't need a hulking tower with room for 3 GPUs, 8 disks, 2 CPUs, 8 or more DIMMs, don't get it. But if that's what you do need, its nearly impossible to imagine piece-mealing such a thing from a nMP-type form factor configuration would be as energy efficient as just one big computer.

People still look at where is technology, not where it goes. That is the problem here.

But we live in the now. We need efficient solutions for work done today. Dreaming for what will be 5 years from now is great and all, but trying to force it down our throats too soon helps no one. If energy costs money, and it does, I don't see why we can't just let market forces get us there. Especially if we're really worried about "peak energy", since in that case, energy will get expensive. Why is that we think a bunch of politicians in CA somehow know what's best for us and the market doesn't?

 

[ITguy2016]

But we live in the now. We need efficient solutions for work done today. Dreaming for what will be 5 years from now is great and all, but trying to force it down our throats too soon helps no one. If energy costs money, and it does, I don't see why we can't just let market forces get us there. Especially if we're really worried about "peak energy", since in that case, energy will get expensive. Why is that we think a bunch of politicians in CA somehow know what's best for us and the market doesn't?

You're under the delusion politicians in CA care what is best for you? They don't care. They have their green earth agenda and they're going to try and ram it down everyone's throats whether it's in your best interests or not.

 

[tuxon86]

All electricity can be stocked, even solar and hydro and wind.

It's not always cost-effective, but it can be stored.
[doublepost=1473901365][/doublepost]
They also ignore the fact that having one platinum plus power supply inside an expandable box can use much less power than a bunch of cheap power supplies (and their fans) outside the box.

Real power savings will come from holistic system power management - high efficiency (especially under light load) power supplies, aggressive power management if the CPU is idle, low power states for idle disks (both spinners and solid state), and similar measures.

Crippling the system unit and adding lots of unintelligent external devices with unintelligent power management is not the way to go.

+

All electricity can be stocked, even solar and hydro and wind.

It's not always cost-effective, but it can be stored.
[doublepost=1473901365][/doublepost]
They also ignore the fact that having one platinum plus power supply inside an expandable box can use much less power than a bunch of cheap power supplies (and their fans) outside the box.

Real power savings will come from holistic system power management - high efficiency (especially under light load) power supplies, aggressive power management if the CPU is idle, low power states for idle disks (both spinners and solid state), and similar measures.hing you can realisticly do is to

Crippling the system unit and adding lots of unintelligent external devices with unintelligent power management is not the way to go.

Not when dealling with terrawatt/hours worth of it. And especially not with hydro power. The only that you can realistically do is to control the flow of water to the turbine or shut the turbine down. Both of those action have negatives tied to them, especially shutting down turbines. There is a whole lot of step and protocols to follow before turning them back on. It isn't like in the movie where a guy just flick a switch and off it goes.
[doublepost=1473953862][/doublepost]

Let me ask you a question. Why do you believe that buying an external expansion case with certain external expansion will make the PSU inefficient? For example. External case with dual SSD in NAS, with 20W PSU. Is that inefficient? External case with 4 GPU dies on interposer, with 150W PSU. Is that inefficient?

Or maybe you believe that you will be able to freely upgrade the hardware in external cases? To some degree, maybe. But because of the need to control the costs of energy, stability of the energy lines, 95% of the future market will be BGA. You will buy devices, which Intel already have touted that they will focus on. Similar thing AMD touts with Scalability in their upcoming GPUs. Not to mention their APU lineups.

People still look at where is technology, not where it goes. That is the problem here.

Cheap chinese junk vs platinum grade professional psu... Stop trying to score point and think about what you're trying to talk about.

 

[koyoot]

Well obviously, lets use up all of the rest of the oil we have on this planet today, and not think what will happen tomorrow.

Lets not care about the fact that oil is running out on this planet, and in just 100 years in mid 80's last century we used 60% of remaining available supplies of oil that this planet was able to supply to us. What we will power our jet engines with? How will we travel?

How will look energy lanes when 95% of world power will come from electricity? How we will power all of the devices that will be connected? Has anyone of you, who try to downplay efficiency thought a little bit about the consequences?

Those are the things that people who design the chips, and technology HAVE to predict and adjust accordingly. Maybe most people on this forum never considered the problems that technology companies are facing in the world that will happen not only today, but also tomorrow.

Believe me, I am not a fan of everything in terms of efficiency. But I do understand the economic reasons behind some decisions.

Cheap chinese junk vs platinum grade professional psu... Stop trying to score point and think about what you're trying to talk about.

Did you even tried for a second to understand what I am writing about? Did you for a second tried to imagine what Technology I am talking about?

If you would, you would not write that in the quote.

Funniest part is that I was warning all of you on this very forum, on number of occasions that Efficiency will come to play. Yet, you still try to downplay what the idea is trying to achieve, in the first place.

But go on.

One last bit: Effciency is not how low amount of power particular hardware is consuming. But how much power you get from certain thermal envelope. It is all about squeezing last bits of performance from the hardware, in the lowest possible thermal envelope.

Just like MP 6.1 was, at some time ago.

 

[AidenShaw]

You're under the delusion politicians in CA care what is best for you? They don't care. They have their green earth agenda and they're going to try and ram it down everyone's throats whether it's in your best interests or not.

Look at the actual CA proposal, and note that in the beginning it says:

The core opportunity for energy savings in computers is found in reducing the amount of energy consumed in idle modes; that is, when the computer is on but not being used.

 

[monokakata]

Not when dealling with terrawatt/hours worth of it. And especially not with hydro power. The only that you can realistically do is to control the flow of water to the turbine or shut the turbine down. Both of those action have negatives tied to them, especially shutting down turbines. There is a whole lot of step and protocols to follow before turning them back on. It isn't like in the movie where a guy just flick a switch and off it goes.

I hesitate to argue with a hydro pro, but the hydro folks at Niagara Falls have used pumped storage effectively for many years. Not sure how many, but at least 30 or so. I lived in the area beginning in the mid-70s and it was going on then.

With pumped storage, excess electricity is used to pump water into a reservoir that's higher than the turbines. Then, when needed, the stored water is released into the turbines. (I know you know this, tuxon86, but other readers might not.)

This isn't experimental or some sort of kluge.

 

[ITguy2016]

Look at the actual CA proposal, and note that in the beginning it says:

OK...and?

 

[tuxon86]

I hesitate to argue with a hydro pro, but the hydro folks at Niagara Falls have used pumped storage effectively for many years. Not sure how many, but at least 30 or so. I lived in the area beginning in the mid-70s and it was going on then.

With pumped storage, excess electricity is used to pump water into a reservoir that's higher than the turbines. Then, when needed, the stored water is released into the turbines. (I know you know this, tuxon86, but other readers might not.)

This isn't experimental or some sort of kluge.

Yes I know, but this isn't the same as storing actual electricity that is already being produced. And excess electricity being produced here is better used by selling it to our southern neighbour in Vermont, Maine and New York since we, living in more northern region aren't affected by any lack of water in our reservoir...
[doublepost=1473956134][/doublepost]

OK...and?

It means the Koyoot has once again over reached and not understood what he read. This is already in place and as been since the 90's... And it hasn't meant the death of high power PC..

 

[ManuelGomes]

X99 here to stay, at least till Q2'17.
If there are no changes in Extreme, no WS changes either for sure.
I guess SKL-W won't come before Q3'17
http://wccftech.com/intel-roadmap-kaby-lake-coffee-lake-cannonlake-leak/

 

[deconstruct60]

...
.....
Keep in mind that the A10 is a four core unit and in this case the i7 is 2 cores.
I'm not an engineer so I'm not sure if in this case that makes a difference.

Pragmatically the A10 is a two core unit. Only one of the two pairs can be active at a time. In terms of CPU "drag racing" benchmark testing.... it will be the faster two, but only two.

The A10 is going to be better at mundane stuff than the MBA's because it can switch to more lightweight processor pair. That isn't what Geekbench is testing.

Gruber in hyper fan boy mode often drives out into the swamp and gets lost. Gruber's link from his page takes you to a page where the scores are ordered by uploaded date, not by the dimension he is yelping about.

 

[pat500000]

We just turned this thread into environmental issues.

 

[deconstruct60]

I understand it is not a level playing field, but it is not entirely meaningless either. If Apple's own processor designs continue to gain performance at this pace, it is conceivable they will at some point be powerful enough for Macs.

Errr. No.

the reason why the A10 does so well is that it is deeply optimized for phones. The two "max clock" cores are going to be turned off most of the time for a wide spectrum of users and workloads.

That is a mismatch for the mid iMac to Mac Pro space. It is a better match for a Macbook but until Macbooks by themselves make up 60-70% of all Macs sold this isn't a viable solution for Macs. Not even in the slightest.

A major factor in why this looks competitive is that Gruber is largely comparing fresh off the fab line processor to 2-4 year of stuff from Intel and on primarily CPU only dimensions. The iPhone 7 is way faster than the iPad mini 2 they are currently selling too. Primarily because the latter is "old".

 

[zephonic]

the reason why the A10 does so well is that it is deeply optimized for phones. The two "max clock" cores are going to be turned off most of the time for a wide spectrum of users and workloads.

I understand that. For the third time, here is my original point:

With this info, I wonder if one could extrapolate theoretical numbers of a potential true quad-core Apple CPU running at 3GHz, unimpeded by low-power restrictions?

I have not suggested that the current A-series are a good fit for MacOS devices.

That is a mismatch for the mid iMac to Mac Pro space. It is a better match for a Macbook but until Macbooks by themselves make up 60-70% of all Macs sold this isn't a viable solution for Macs. Not even in the slightest.

I read an article one or two years ago, which stated laptops make up about two-thirds of Apple's computer sales. So we are already there.

It seems repetition is the best way to get my point across, so again, I'm not saying the A-series are suitable for Macs. I'm merely speculating about Apple's ability to design processors that are.

A major factor in why this looks competitive is that Gruber is largely comparing fresh off the fab line processor to 2-4 year of stuff from Intel and on primarily CPU only dimensions. The iPhone 7 is way faster than the iPad mini 2 they are currently selling too. Primarily because the latter is "old".

Yes. I'll agree Gruber dropped the ball here (to the point where it looks like he purposely cherry-picked his data to make the A10 look good). But even so, I do think the Geekbench illustrates just how far Apple's processors have come in a relatively short time.

The pace at which ARM improves is reminiscent of the leaps x86 made in the late 1990's.

 

[Mago]

X99 here to stay, at least till Q2'17.
If there are no changes in Extreme, no WS changes either for sure.
I guess SKL-W won't come before Q3'17
http://wccftech.com/intel-roadmap-kaby-lake-coffee-lake-cannonlake-leak/

In 2013 when the tcMP was available intel's C61x pch begun appear ahead Xeon e5v3, following this pattern a new tcMP should be imminent.

Latest information from macOS Sierra GM drivers suggest it could be configured as 1 x16 dual GPU "polaris xt" + 3 x4 AlpineRidge TB3 + 2 x4 NVMe