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What does HP Z8 series tell us about MP 7,1?

Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 1, 2013
1,334
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Houston, TX USA
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...workstation-looks-like-with-a-56-core-3tb-z8/

highlights (can spec up to):

- dual socket up to 56 cores (total)
- 3TB RAM in 24 slots
- 4TB PCIe mounted SSD
- 48TB HDD
- 1 optical bay
- 3 full sized GPUs
- up to 1.7kW PSU
- starts at $2439

Tells us a lot actually. It can come in pretty wimpy, but pretty cheap. I'd expect 7,1 to start under $3000 for a modestly clocked single socket with minimum RAM, SSD, and GPU.

By doing away with all the legacy storage, I think they could squeeze 4GPUs in there.

There's sure to be a glut of Z800s on CL when this hits the market!
 
William Payne said:
Fine by me, 240volts is standard single phase mains voltage here in New Zealand. All normal standard home wall socket will be just fine with that here.

Seriously I can't see why it would need that much wattage even with multi gpu's.

I doubt you guys use that much do you Aiden?
Click to expand...

All of the time.

AidenShaw said:
One production system was built to retrain one model daily (new data is always arriving, and could be subtly changed from older data). (This server has 72C/144T, 2 TiB RAM, and quad GTX 1080Ti.)
Click to expand...

The ProLiants have real-time power monitoring that shows power usage over the last day and last 20 minutes, as well as all-time peaks.

This quad socket server has sustained steady loads of 2.5 Kw to 2.8 Kw, and has hit peaks of 3.3 Kw. (It has 6 Kw power supplies.) Our dual-socket dual-GPU systems often hold 1.5 Kw steady loads, with 2 Kw peaks. (3 Kw power supplies.)

My standard power strips are dual 30 Amp three phase - about 20 Kw per power strip. Four of them, the single phase IEC connectors to the servers are 208volt. Also have a number of 240 volt 30 amp single phase strips - mostly for single phase big UPS systems.

My HVAC guy cringes whenever I call him.

ps: I lived in Switzerland for a time, and did some DIY wiring to put a freezer in the laundry room. Very surprised to find five supply wires in the outlet box that I tapped. Quickly realized that the whole house was wired 380volt 3phase, with 220volt at the single phase taps.
 
Last edited:
AidenShaw said:
...that it will need a 240 volt outlet?
Click to expand...
To expand, the max load that that US electrical code allows on a 15 amp 120v circuit is 1350 watts. For a dedicated 20 amp 120 volt circuit, it is 1800 watts.

The Z840 has an option for a 1450 watt power supply - but only if the mains voltage is over 200 (to catch the 208v and 240v common in the US, as well as 220v and 240v internationally). If the voltage is under 200v, it downrates itself to 1150 watts.

Similar things with HP servers. 1200 watt supplies are fine at 120v, but when you hit 1400 to 1500 watts many will downrate to lower watts at lower voltages.

Above 1500 watts, many will be 200 volts or more - and won't work on 120v.

May you all have the joy of paying for contractors to install a 1200 amp three phase bus bar.
 
Under 3000 could be optimistic I guess.
Looking at Macbook Pro/Specs Price
Imac Pro Specs/price.
A maxed out mini with 16 gig ram glued.
Price of a workstation normal Imac that is very limited.
Or even the current Mac Pro, add some ram and SSD to that to make It a workable workstation.

I know you get the screen and all that with imac, together with thermal problems ...

If they go for
User exandable ram
4 PCIe slots for SSD
4 PCI slots for grapics
A add on box where you can add sata HDD's. Not a box where you preconfigure the 16TB one, etc ...
Where you can lego build some kind of tower that keeps It minimal and small ...
instead of buying TB3 boxes all over your desk.
Some sleek design of towering Mac Mini boxes to your own design.
All the boxes could be glued or soldered or hell to upgrade a harddrive.

It will be more flexible than the nMP I guess ... in some way that isn't thunderbolt.
Or something more like a headless Imac Pro ...

For power looking at Z stations could give an indication ...
But a classic tower ... or some mac mini types of lego bricks.

Wouldn't be surpised If the Imac Pro would be the cheap one.
And that modalar Mac Pro.
Is the one, 5000 base headless Imac Pro, but more ports, more options,
like dual xeon, for a lot more money.
Pro's wanted more options, like using there own screen, we give them that,
a lot of expensive boxes, the main set up, is even thinner than the nMP.
But the for boxes, you can choose, dual xeons up to 1 TB of soldered ram,
a box, twice as thin as the last mini, with up to 8TB of soldered pcie blades.
Need to expand, you can add up to 16 SSD ufo boxes.

My guess is, It could be monster in a way, but I'm afraid twice the Z prices, for something revolutiary,
pro's nor really want ... but at least can't complain, if you have the money you can option or build something,
that could outperform the Z. For an Apple price ... and some annoying compromise ...

Maybe a monster workstatation. Upgrade not cheesgrater easy. Price ... not in the Z league.
 
Yeah I think so too.

Possibly slower than the Imac Pro ...

But the Modular screen option!
You can hook up your favourite monitor!
 
Realistically I think there is a group of people who want a "workstation" but don't want the price tag that goes with that grade of hardware. Also those who want a "workstation" but don't even need that kind of hardware.

The topic of monitors is a touchy one, A lot of apple users are pretty vocal about wanting the "perfect" screen. There are people who return laptops multiple times over in the MacBook pro section chasing this "Perfect" screen. Reality is though that in the external display market there are screens that meet the requirements regarding colour accuracy, light bleed, gamut, lut, and all the wonderful things but those things cost more than they paid for just the computer.

Eizo has a 31" 4k display fully colour accurate self calibrating monitor but its over $5000 USD. Flanders Scientific have a SDI reference monitor for doing cinema video which is 4k 31" and they list its price at $45,000 (no that is not a typo).

I see things that make me feel that there is a group of people who want "ultimate super duper military grade, wipes my butt for me, never do dishes again" hardware........ but at BestBuy pricing.

The iMac Pro to me is what made this group really stand out. Because when it was released people suddenly weren't saying that it wasn't enough, they were saying it was too much. Its not the perfect computer for everyone, not everyone wants an all in one. But what it did is it was like apple was saying "Hey you want ball to the walls, absolutely bananas hardware well here you go..... but this is what you will pay for it".

There may be some real sticker shock with the new mac pro.
 
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William Payne said:
Realistically I think there is a group of people who want a "workstation" but don't want the price tag that goes with that grade of hardware. Also those who want a "workstation" but don't even need that kind of hardware.

The topic of monitors is a touchy one, A lot of apple users are pretty vocal about wanting the "perfect" screen. There are people who return laptops multiple times over in the MacBook pro section chasing this "Perfect" screen. Reality is though that in the external display market there are screens that meet the requirements regarding colour accuracy, light bleed, gamut, lut, and all the wonderful things but those things cost more than they paid for just the computer.

Eizo has a 31" 4k display fully colour accurate self calibrating monitor but its over $5000 USD. Flanders Scientific have a SDI reference monitor for doing cinema video which is 4k 31" and they list its price at $45,000 (no that is not a typo).

I see things that make me feel that there is a group of people who want "ultimate super duper military grade, wipes my butt for me, never do dishes again" hardware........ but at BestBuy pricing.

The iMac Pro to me is what made this group really stand out. Because when it was released people suddenly weren't saying that it wasn't enough, they were saying it was too much. Its not the perfect computer for everyone, not everyone wants an all in one. But what it did is it was like apple was saying "Hey you want ball to the walls, absolutely bananas hardware well here you go..... but this is what you will pay for it".

There may be some real sticker shock with the new mac pro.
Click to expand...
Please...if you're gonna insult someone indirectly, have the dignity and name call people by quoting them.
[doublepost=1505840361][/doublepost]Realistically, I think there is a group of people who assume that people don't have money for the price tag. Also, there are mumble jumbo commenters on this forum who acts like they know other people's profession.
 
pat500000 said:
Please...if you're gonna insult someone indirectly, have the dignity and name call people by quoting them.
[doublepost=1505840361][/doublepost]Realistically, I think there is a group of people who assume that people don't have money for the price tag. Also, there are mumble jumbo commenters on this forum who acts like they know other people's profession.
Click to expand...

I wasn't trying to insult anyone. Or anyone profession or what they can afford. I also wasn't aiming that comment at anyone in particular.

I really should have worded it better. What I was meaning was that there is a market in between the high end professional and the average user. Call them an enthusiast or whatever. These people want an upgradable tower but maybe not an extreme system but still above a basic system.

There is nothing wrong with that. The lack of something in between the iMac and the Mac Pro has often been mentioned on here.

As for knowing people's professions, I don't know what half the people on here do. I also wouldn't even try and tell them what they want.

Also what people can afford has nothing to do with what they are willing to pay for. I have met millionaires who save used nails.
 
William Payne said:
I wasn't trying to insult anyone. Or anyone profession or what they can afford. I also wasn't aiming that comment at anyone in particular.

I really should have worded it better. What I was meaning was that there is a market in between the high end professional and the average user. Call them an enthusiast or whatever. These people want an upgradable tower but maybe not an extreme system but still above a basic system.

There is nothing wrong with that. The lack of something in between the iMac and the Mac Pro has often been mentioned on here.
Click to expand...

My apology. I agree in general sense that mac pro isn't for regular consumers and that's why there's imac.
 
For pro audio work, it's almost entirely about throughput and DSP capabilities. The kind of math that GPUs are optimized for means they don't accelerate audio DSP as well, so those teraflops are essentially inaccessible.

Audio DSP either requires more and faster cores, with more SSE / AVX registers per core, or the work has to be handed over to dedicated DSP processors, like the SHARC DSP chips on Universal Audio cards and interfaces, or the ones on Pro Tools HD cards.

Also, in case you were wondering, dedicated parallel-processing cards like Xeon Phi, which are essentially giant SSE / AVX add-ons, wouldn't work for this due to latency and the need to convert from 512-bit to 64-bit and back.

The ideal situation would be big, fat onboard DSP attached to that mesh fabric and/or with direct memory access, but I doubt Apple would go that far away from a standard Xeon architecture.

So...I don't see any huge changes unless there are under-the-hood tweaks to how Core Audio and Audio Units work to make them much more multi-processor / hyperthread-aware and efficient. What a new Mac Pro would definitely need for audio users is at least a couple of PCIe slots for DSP cards; it'd be nice if they could all run at least 8x speeds. We don't need super-hyper-duper 3D graphics, but being able to run 4x 4k monitors is nice for productivity.
 
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