I wonder if that chip would require the thermal capabilities of the cheese grater.
If not the full tower, a mid sized tower with good ventilation.
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MP All Models Mac Pro X,Y…WHAT IF…
- Thread starter ZombiePhysicist
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I wonder if that chip would require the thermal capabilities of the cheese grater.
If not the full tower, a mid sized tower with good ventilation.
It won't need a full tower. It was only needed for the graphic cards. Just look at the present Mac Pro. It has a huge empty space for PCIe cards. With not a single MPX module capabilty.
Can't even fit the RAID MPX storage
Even in the 2019 Intel Mac Pro only one fan was blowing on the CPU heat sink, the ASi Mac Pro has the same fan configuration, with one fan blowing on the SoC heat sink; the remaining two fans are blowing on the add-in card slots...
Seems like it still has the physical room, the only thing missing would be the MPX slot & software support...?
The MPX slots supported extra power and Thunderbolt. Which isn't supported anymore with the new M-series in Mac Pro. But I have not tried to analyse the board layout, because I have not been curious enough.
Remember that Thunderbolt connections also used PCIe bandwidth (4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 for Thunderbolt 3).
But not in the new Mac Pro, as that is inside the SoC.
Must be more than just the slots that has been removed, as it does not have the T2 chip, and the extra PCIe lanes that was added to the Intel Xeon CPUs (64 lanes), for a total of 92 lanes.
The new M-serie does not support as many PCIe lanes (66 lanes), and are shared across the PCIe bus and other components.
Source: PCIe slots
Threadripper Pro has 128 PCIe 5 and 4 lanes and up to 96 cores.
Apple is falling so far behind in the HEDT space that nothing short
of the fabled M Extreme chip will keep them even remotely competitive.
The Nvidia RTX5000 series arriving this fall might be the final nail in the coffin
of Apple’s middle performance, non-upgradable desktops.
I haven’t given up hope for one more insanely great thing,
but the reality of the situation doesn’t look good, imo.
Hopefully WWDC brings some good news in a couple of months.
Apple is falling so far behind in the HEDT space that nothing short
of the fabled M Extreme chip will keep them even remotely competitive.
The Nvidia RTX5000 series arriving this fall might be the final nail in the coffin
of Apple’s middle performance, non-upgradable desktops.
I haven’t given up hope for one more insanely great thing,
but the reality of the situation doesn’t look good, imo.
Hopefully WWDC brings some good news in a couple of months.
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Wow so were motorolla cpus just not efficient at running typical compression algorithms at the time? or was just compression so important for next that they decided on a dedicated chip for it? from your post, they even had dedicated on board memory. sounds similar to ML accelerators these days.
Also agree about the dumbing down lol, theyve been doing that even when steve was there though.
i personally think apple is embracing a post-workstation era and (clearly) focusing everything on custom SoCs. for the datacenter they seem to be non-existent
Just that cpus were slow back then for things like mpeg compression with the 68020 (which was the state of the art chip around 86). That didn’t even have a math coprocessors or a memory management unit. That wasn’t added until the 68030 which was around 1987, and the cube released in 1988. The 68030 added those things but was still pokey, so it just didn’t have the MIPs needed so the 56001 was helpful.
But then 68040 came out and was so much faster, there really wasn’t a need for the dsp. Still, mpeg was so much more cpu intensive that the original 25mhz chip could barely keep up with decoding n real time. The 33mhz was finally fast enough for playback. Compression for mpeg, for just one song, was hours upon hours back in that day.
None of that (PCIe slot specifications) has anything to do with the fact that, MPX slot/software aside, the ASi Mac Pro still has the requisite room for the Promise Pegasus R4i RAID to physically fit within...
I'm sorry, but... what?
What kind of argument is this?... What exactly are you getting at?
I can fit an RTX 3080 in my 7,1 right now, as in it PHYSICALLY fits inside my 7,1, but there is absolutely no software/firmware support for it in macOS, so what is the point here?... That unless I boot Windows or Linux, the 3080 is absolutely useless in macOS, just like the PCIe slots in the AS Mac Pro are useless because of the lack of support for anything you would traditionally use PCIe for (save for a few audio production cards), which makes the machine extremely niche, and ridiculous...
But, can you please elaborate on what you meant?
Ok. Let us have a closer look at the Logic board, shall we? And see if there is obvious changes in the layout, beside the physical MPX slots.
I have added photos of the two Logic boards as well.
Attachments
Apple’s M4 chip reportedly ‘nearing production’ — and it could cause major headaches for Qualcomm and Intel
Apple's finally stepping up its AI gamewww.laptopmag.com
Apparently an M4 in early 2025 for the Mac Pro... Things are getting interesting.
Which alternative universe was that announced/leaked in? From the article linked.
" .... " the company will "follow up with more M4 Macs throughout 2025", including "updates to the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air by the spring, the Mac Studio around the middle of the year, and the Mac Pro later in 2025." ..."
If the Studio is coming in the 'Middle of the year " ( i.e. around June-July ), then the Mac Pro 'later" would be at best Q3, if not Q4. The Mac Pro is bringing up the 'rear' there.
Gurman reiterated even more explicitly here.
M4 Macs Are Expected to Launch in This Order Starting Later This Year
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently reported that the first Macs with M4 series chips will be released later this year, with more models to follow...
www.macrumors.com
They could leave the Studio 'split' . The "Max"-like version goes in 'mid year' and the rest gets updated later. ( Apple left the Mini split on Intel/M1 l for a long while also. )
Decent chance the Mac Pro will ride in "Rip van Winkle" mode on M2 that whole time. Mid 2023 - Late 2025 would be about a 2.5 year update cycle for the MP. Still way faster than 6 or 4 years.
The bigger and more expensive SoC package is to make the more likely that Apple is going to ride that package for multiple years.
Dude said the R4i would not even fit in the ASi Mac Pro, I said the space was still there; I never said it would WORK in the ASi Mac Pro...
A few more screws that are in an area the MPX modules never went mean nothing...
Or did I need to point out every single change between the 2019 Intel Mac Pro mobo and the ASi Mac Pro mobo...?
The T2 is just as much "inside the SoC" as the Thunderbolt controllers are. More so the case that the T2 subsumed :
i. the thunderbolt controllers
ii. the x86 cores
iii. the external x86 PCI-e controllers
iv. the GPU.
In short, "MPX" is a solution in search of a problem that disappeared. There are no Intel TB controller to provision on a separate card. The power sink GPU packages. Also gone.
The MPX 4i is a 'dinosaur'. MPX was never created primarily for a collection of just 4 HDDs. 4 SATA HDDs are swamped by x4 PCI-e v3 link which can come from the main bus. The 'extra' PCI-e bandwidth of MPX socket is beyond grossly overkill; it is completely unnecessary. If staggered started the HDDs probably would need much more than the 75W the standard bus give them. The power provisioned by MPX is gross overkill also.
Even if slapped 4 SATA SSDs in there.
Promise Pegasus J4 — SSD Speed (Compressible)
macperformanceguide.com
Not really stressing x2 PCI-e v3 worth of bandwidth ( ~7GB/s ); let alone x4 or x8 v3.
For those who just need 'slow moving', near term storage they can throw two 20TB drives in a J2i and basically cover the same capacity that the original 4i had. (e.g., 24TB in a single drive now.
WD Gold 24TB HDD Review
The WD Gold 24TB Enterprise HDD offers a 2TB increase over its preceding 22TB model, a nice bump for dense storage servers.
www.storagereview.com
RAID 1 and have failover coverage the RAID-5 4x8TB had at the same capacity. Not the speed. )
There is only a relatively shrinking narrow niche there of folks who want HDDs completely inside the box and can tolerate the relatively slow speeds being limited to just 4 HDDs in parity mode brings.
A modern SSD storage covers the capacities the nominal 4i covered ( 23-32GB ) in half the space and order of magnitude better performance.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc-accelsior-8m2
( need to use SoftRaid but there are plenty of E-cores to cover that "overhead". That hardware SATA RAID controller in the 4i is a bottleneck at least as much as it is a 'offload'. )
the 4i was largely an expensive afterthought to placate/mollify a few folks grumbling about where the 4 HDDs in their MP 2010-2012 go in a 2019. It was dubious at 2019 SSD $/TB pricing and is even more dubious in 2023 when the next MP arrived. 4i may represent a large sunk costs for some folks, but there is extremely low motivation to put a MPX slot on a modern MacPro. The 4i was a large sunk cost in 2019 when it first came out; it always was one. Perf/$ was challenged from the start.
the MP 2019 has a PCI switch in it too. There is nothing 'new' in the 2023 MP with "shared PCI-e bandwidth". The MP 2013 had a PCI-e switch. The MP 2009-2012 had a PCI-e switch.
Moaning and groaning about "shared PCI-e bandwidth" in the context of a 4i is a joke. 4i could get covered by 1x PCI-e v4 link ( 16Gb/s , 8GB/s ) . Anyone who wants to stuff 6-8 HDDs into MP 2023 on carrier cards is not going run into any bandwidth problem. There is more room for multiple storage cards because there are no dGPU cards.
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I agree with everything you said, even if I only quote a few lines. To save space
The last few posts I have here was made in response, starting with: It won't need a full tower. It was only needed for the graphic cards. Just look at the present Mac Pro....
Most likely I misunderstood the initial question, or I have done a poor job of "analysing" the Mac Pros.
Either way, I should read more, and talk less about what I am guessing. That is why I didn't jump to conclusions in my last post. But waited to hear what others, like yourself has to say about the subject 👍
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What we don't know is if they might some time later in the future develop some kind of additional GPU capability in addition to what is on the CPU itself.
Seeing what's on the horizon on the PC side it might become necessary.
I'm hoping for expansion cards (with their own memory) specifically for ML training. It does seem like it could be a direction they are going. I think the only question is if they will default to HBM onboard memory or will it just be a paired down SoC with many more ANE cores + unified memory.
I would not mind seeing an add-in card (or cards) that is designed to be used as a render client; active work on the SoC GPU and render jobs on the add-in card(s)...
M4 Macs Are Expected to Launch in This Order Starting Later This Year
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently reported that the first Macs with M4 series chips will be released later this year, with more models to follow...
www.macrumors.com
What an s-show. tldr there will be no m3 Mac Pro. Wait for m4.
The m4 better come with pcie 5 and thunderbolt 5, or it may be another machine to skip despite the long (as usual) wait. Just so pathetic on so many levels.
This is a very interesting chart. Guess not as gimped as I thought. Although I agree that the PCIe slots in the 2023 Mac Pro are mostly useless since no GPU support. Shame they did not at least include the extra power part of the MPX slots, so anything other than GPU cards using it could work still.