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deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
Nvidia did it by allowing GPUs to access system RAM & networked storage directly - providing more external resources to the GPU is more or less the opposite path to that pursued by Apple.

Apple's Uniform/Unified Memory access does not supply the GPU with system RAM access? Opposite path? Not hardly. It is actually further now that particular path than Nvidia. Apple isn't using open standards to do that though (CXL 2.0 , etc. )

InfiniBand and much greater than 20GbE Network storage? No. Not even InfiniBand or > 20GbE options for macOS. But local storage was just added in this round of updates. It was covered at WWDC 2022.



If had a network storage device that presented as a local "NVMe SSD" device to the operating system, then there is a decent chance this basic mechanism should work. ( I'm pretty sure Apple didn't hard code this just to their specific Apple SSD. So as long as a NVMe SSD (or perhaps generic SSD) it should likely work. )

[ I suspect that Apple has a security hang up with RDMA drivers for very high speed networking. If so then 10GbE is about as far as they are going to show an interest in for a decent amount of time. Apple is still selling last century 1GbE connectors on systems. It is one of the few areas where they doggedly cling to the past in a shameful state at the prices they charge for systems. ]
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
apple may want to buy there very marked up storage devices and not your own.


Apple wants you to buy their drive for the primary system boot drive. (where the core macOS lives and baseline user directory. )

They know they can leverage a certain subclass of customers who pile all of their files in some folder inside their user home directory. All the files forced into one "pile'.

Folks who use scratch/workings space drives, high capacity content , sneaker net high capacity content , etc. (i.e., not manically focused on putting everything into a single pile ) Apple isn't chasing with some "apple only" solution. Apple isn't chasing system back ups drives either. ( subset mainstream iCloud docs/pictures perhaps, but not really holistic back ups. )

If think Apple has gotten past the fiction that only they can make a SSD that properly implements TRIM. And Apple explicitly admitted that "one and only one internal drive" doesn't scale well in a substantial part of the Mac Pro space.

Apple really doesn't offer up any meaningful drive wear tolerance data/specs at all. I have no clue why a high write, critical production workload would even consider an Apple drive. Or why would want to host high value data on a single point of failure drive ( AFPS is only interested in protecting metadata... not actual user data. )

Apple presume that a large set of what their "Pro" user set have pretty close to normal disk usage patterns that happen to work for that "one big pile" set up.


The rest of the Mac product line up is saddled with the "one and only one" drive constraint. There is really no good reason to saddle the Mac Pro update to the same thing if trying to cover a different subset of the market. They already have a small footprint desktop solution in the Studio ( and Mini).
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,617
Los Angeles, CA
Hello my wonderful Mac Pro 2019 owners and community!!!

Do you think Apple would make the Mac Pro 2019 (7.1) capable to upgrade from Intel CPU to the new Apple Silicon CPU??

Since a lot of Mac Pro 2019 owners spend a lot of money on this machine, do you think Apple would design something to allow all of current Mac Pro 2019 owners swap out the Intel CPU for the new Apple Silicon CPU? If this happens, used Mac Pro 2019 would gone up in prices and in hot demand. What do you think?? Let’s discuss.
That's not how the hardware works, sadly. That being said, as a Xeon-based x86-64 Workstation, it's not like the 2019 Mac Pro will stop being useful the second the Apple Silicon successor is released.
 
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ddhhddhh2

macrumors regular
Jun 2, 2021
242
374
Taipei
None of this is too remarkable, compared to other Mac Pro models, until you find out how much I paid for it: $2,000 in U.S. currency. How did I manage this? Ebay search error. The computer company that sold it on Ebay didn't bother to check to make sure it came up when searching for "2019 Mac Pro", hence I was the only bidder. The same company has been trying to sell similar models for $7,000, so to say I got a good deal is an understatement. These go for almost $10,000 on Apple's website brand new.

Wow! Even though Apple has entered the silicon era, this deal is still a great value! ;)
 
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