Apple Updates The Mac Pro

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/10/apple-finally-updates-the-mac-pro/

by salimmadjd • 13 years ago

61 92 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

rbritton2• 13 years ago

At 1/8 the size will it even have any of the internal storage capacity that I love my current MacPro for?

icarus_drowning• 13 years ago

Seemed like they were really focusing on external expandability via Thunderbolt 2.

biot• 13 years ago

With Thunderbolt 2 / USB 3 support, I suspect some enterprising manufacturer will come up with a stackable storage enclosure that matches the design of the Mac Pro. That would meet all your storage requirements while keeping the size down for those who only need the additional performance.

masklinn7• 13 years ago

They said it's all external via TB2 (they put in 3 TB2 controllers driving 6 ports)

rbritton2• 13 years ago

So cords everywhere then. I do a lot of photo editing an have close to 10 TB storage internal (I repurposed the optical drive bays). I can keep all of my working files internally and only have external drives for archiving and backup and aren't connected all of the time.

veemjeem• 13 years ago

I think most people who use the MacPro (video/image editing people) probably already use external storage because the 4 drive bays from the old MacPro simply are not enough. I'm guessing they analyzed their users produced something that fit users' needs.

zacharycohn2• 13 years ago

Wait, 1/8 th the size, or 1/8 th smaller?

masklinn7• 13 years ago

1/8th the size.

zacharycohn2• 13 years ago

Auuugh, I thought it said MacBook pro...

ttrreeww2• 13 years ago

Looks like a trash can.

foxhill6• 13 years ago

then don't get one

petercooper• 13 years ago

And the old one looked like a cheese grater (to many complaining at the time).

ttrreeww2• 13 years ago

I hope it's quite or fanless. Looks like it's a giant heatsink design.

Friedas_• 13 years ago

No expandable storage?!

masklinn7• 13 years ago

External only, via TB2.

apendleton2• 13 years ago

Looks slick, but I was really hoping for something more modern that could drive lots of displays. A limit of three is pretty mediocre; you can do that with other already-available mac hardware. Oh, well.

aeontech2• 13 years ago

I think they were talking about maximum of three 4K displays; if you have lower-resolution displays, you're likely able to hook up more of them.

grecy• 13 years ago

I expect it's 3 4K displays, likely more "normal" resolution displays.

apendleton2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if you turn out to be right, but wouldn't be surprised if you're wrong either.

aroch• 13 years ago

It appears to be limited to 3 4K displays at a time with the built in graphics. Graphics is expandable, and presumably onboard can drive more than 3 non-4K displays (We don't know yet, so let's not jump to conclusions)

masklinn7• 13 years ago

It's 3 4k displays, not 3 displays. It's probably able to drive more "standard" displays, I expect each 4k saturates one of the controllers (which would be why it has 3 controllers on 6 ports)

jfb8• 13 years ago

It would be sufficient bandwidth for 12 1080p displays. That's not bad.

jawilson22• 13 years ago

Well, it looks like I'm done using Mac Pros for CUDA development.

foxhill6• 13 years ago

are the GPUs not upgradeable?

also, why are you using CUDA? sure it has more features. but then new hardware comes along made by someone else..

deltron• 13 years ago

Highly doubtful it's going to be upgradeable.

reeses• 13 years ago

The Mac Pro has always been just about the worst platform for CUDA/OpenCL development. Lack of power, hardware driver support, and underperforming GPGPU (especially OpenCL) APIs have made it more of a prototyping environment than a production environment.

4096 stream processors just reinforces Apple's lack of interest in pursuing that market segment. It's good today (although they'll be clocked down compared to, say, a 7990) but I suspect that's what we'll be stuck with for "the next ten years."

I'll probably mistake mine for my wastepaper bin at some point and set it on fire. :-)

aeontech2• 13 years ago

Very impressive specs... Curious to see how soon it will be possible to build your own machine with the same capabilities.

gtaylor5• 13 years ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you could already blow this thing away at its price point by building your own. It wouldn't be as pretty looking, but you could do better (if specs are the primary concern).

jfb8• 13 years ago

This is certainly true; but I wonder for how much longer it will be -- it doesn't seem that economics really favor the build it yourself model nearly as much as they used to.

LukeHoersten2• 13 years ago

I know this is a bit off topic but part of the same hardware presentation: does the new Macbook Air have retina display? I couldn't tell from the keynote.

sandipc• 13 years ago

Don't think so.

donum3• 13 years ago

I think they would have mentioned that.. so: no. :)

LukeHoersten2• 13 years ago

Agreed. That sucks =(

mosqutip• 13 years ago

"Can't innovate anymore, my ass".

Uh... what exactly is being "innovated" here?

donum3• 13 years ago

- light at the io jacks

tsunamifury• 13 years ago

Innovation means to change and advance -- the word doesn't really set that high of a bar:

- Its a different design

- Its new hardware

- It advances over the current generation

drzaiusapelord2• 13 years ago

That's pretty much every computer out there. Is innovation such a low bar now that a new case and the newer Intel CPU is suddenly deserving of innovation praise because it has a fruit logo?

Also am I the other one bothered by the case mentioning being built in the US but designed in California, like California is now its own nation?

bvdbijl2• 13 years ago

Please show me a device that's comparable to the new Mac Pro... So much performance in this small of a form factor is pretty innovative

gtaylor5• 13 years ago

You could build something much more powerful for cheaper, and still be able to upgrade/change out individual internal components. I've bumped the RAM capacity/speed twice since I built this machine three years ago. Upgraded the video card once, and CPU once. When I decide to do a more thorough re-vamp, I can re-use the power supply, the case, the video card, and a bunch of other components.

What you're really paying for is a very expensive and moderately beefy machine that can run OS X legally. Or you need Final Cut Pro in some serious capacity. Oh, and it has an Apple logo on it.

jawilson22• 13 years ago

For the Pro market, expansion and user customization far outweigh form-factor. I have a 2000 sq ft lab space and 500 sq ft office, what do I care about the form factor of the Pro if I can't throw in my stock NVIDIA GPUs and any arbitrary hard drive?

bilbo0s• 13 years ago

Hmm...

If these things are Thunderbolt 2 devices... it really does open up some different possibilities for you.

I know that everyone doesn't need it... but connecting a few of these together via TB 2 would be kind of interesting for me. I mean being able to see one machine with even as few as 24 or 36 cores.

A Xeon here a GPU there... pretty soon you're talking about real capability. Again, it's not for everyone... but there are a lot of areas where you get some real benefits.

Thinking about buying 4 and just writing the software myself if it's not supported. But I'm pretty sure it probably is. Probably just tcp/ip though :(

Oh well... that'd be enough.

Anyway... not many other devices you can do things like that with and still keep good bandwidth between devices. It is thinking a bit outside the box. I can't think of another machine that would let me conveniently do that, and still take up 1/2 the volume of the current mac pro???

Can you???

(Not snark. Genuinely interested. I'm in the market, and would be willing to write the connecting software myself).

Osmium• 13 years ago

In fairness, check out the "Thermal Core" section on this page:

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

It's a pretty sweet design. Huge central fan in the middle of the column, and three big aluminium plates to conduct heat away and into it.

bhauer3• 13 years ago

Are the Xeons in question Haswells (that is, E3 v3)?

oofabz2• 13 years ago

No, they are Ivy Bridge-E. Haswell-E doesn't ship until 2014.

bhauer3• 13 years ago

Oh? I had been under the impression that Haswell Xeons (at least the E3 v3 series) were available "now" [1]:

"Twelve of the chips are available now, but the 13 watt E3-1220L that will be particularly interesting for microservers is not going to be available until the third quarter..."

What am I missing here? Presumably the 12-core option would be an E5, is that it?

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/04/intel_haswell_xeon_e...

foxhill6• 13 years ago

how comes there are no 16-core mac pros? :(

jfb8• 13 years ago

The case reminds me of old SGI hardware; I'm glad to see that it's not just another box full of cards.

donum3• 13 years ago

It's also "greatly expandable"! In the Apple Store. :)

throwit1979• 13 years ago

Huh? The case looks exactly the same as the old case. Are you seeing a different version of the article than I am? The photo I see is this: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/img_9182...

packetslave• 13 years ago

The black one on the right is the new Pro. The silver one is the old model

jfb8• 13 years ago

The website hasn't updated yet. See for instance Ars' brief about it.[1]

[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/at-long-last-apple-anno...

jonah• 13 years ago

The black one on the right is the new one. Contrasted to the old one on the left.

tonakai• 13 years ago

the one on the right is the new mac pro

xabi• 13 years ago

Braun KF 20

http://goo.gl/fNfU8

PhilipA• 13 years ago

I missed the event. Are there any better pictures, than this article?

masklinn7• 13 years ago

http://live.arstechnica.com/wwdc-2013-keynote-liveblog/

Scroll down to about halfway through.

shmerl2• 13 years ago

When will Mac OSX support OpenGL 4.x?

szx• 13 years ago

Next release (Maverick).

shmerl2• 13 years ago

Good. They took their sweet time to start supporting it. Linux and Windows got it way earlier.

X-Istence• 13 years ago

Mac OS X Maverick...

masklinn7• 13 years ago

Yeah, Mavericks supports opengl 4.

wtallis3• 13 years ago

I'm glad to see someone finally making the obvious form factor changes we've been needing for a long time at the high end. An ATX style case just doesn't make sense anymore. ATX gives you lots of volume for cooling the CPU and lots of room to add PCB area in the form of expansion cards. But hardly anyone needs 7 expansion cards, and everyone needs more room for the GPU heatsink. Completely throwing out internal expandability may be a bit ahead of its time (like ditching the floppy drive with the iMac), but it does allow for a compact and efficient system layout. I do wonder about being stuck with your original GPU(s).

So what happens now for the Mac Mini Server?

jfb8• 13 years ago

I don't imagine much changes for the Mini server; nobody buys those things for compute workstations, so there's really no competition.

foxhill6• 13 years ago

as far as i know, mac pros have never been in ATX form factor.

intel tried to create a new case standard, BTX, years ago. but it seems no one likes change..

wtallis3• 13 years ago

The Mac Pro wasn't ATX, but it followed the same general principles of being a large tower case with a lot more expansion slots than anyone needed, and not enough space between the slots for a GPU to have good cooling, and expansion slots that were several inches longer than any PCB that ever needed to be put in there.

dman• 13 years ago

Yeah - I think the subsidy of the high end from the low and middle end of the market is coming to an end.

defied• 13 years ago

I just hope this new design doesn't make it difficult to mount in a rack in a datacenter.

Fomite• 13 years ago

Not thrilled with "all the expansion is external". I wonder how clean it will look with external storage, external PCI cases, etc.

They didn't talk much, but hopefully the RAM is easy to upgrade. I have the sinking feeling the GPU won't be, and the onboard SSD will be...pricey.

foxhill6• 13 years ago

kind of surprised to see an update, i genuinely thought it was getting scrapped. however..

case aesthetic appears to be a regression. the previous one was almost perfect.

no 16 core ivy-bridge option. i assume haswell might be an option later.

no expandable internal storage.

no pci-e slots (?) is beyond ridiculous.

i'll reserve final judgement for when i actually see one, but right now, but things aren't looking good right now..

JimmaDaRustla• 13 years ago

Thought it was wicked, until I heard how big it was.

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

Nice!

But ... will it run linux?

Apple Updates The Mac Pro

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