
The New Mac Pro - ingve
http://kickingbear.com/blog/archives/349
======
KaiserPro
_bangs head_

I'm sorry, but there are only two things that are new with this mac:

1) its a funny shape 2) it comes with two GPU boards by default.

I'm glad that you are enthused by a new platform, but there is really nothing
new. Really. If you want to start writing GPGPU programmes, I congratulate
you, its going to keep you busy for a good few months. But you can do that
now, without a $10k mac "pro"

Over the next few months, we'll be hearing about how the CPU is dead and that
all you need is GPU. However much like the initial flash/iphone argument it
over looks the main point. The Mac pro only has one CPU because that's all
they could fit in. It wasn't a bold visionary move, it was a compromise
because of the form factor. (much like the original iphone, to get the battery
life up, they had to use a tiny(by the standard o the time) CPU, which meant
no flash)

There is one large elephant in the room when it comes to GPGPU and that is
bandwidth. Getting stuff from main memory to GPU memory take a lot of time.
Yes PCI3 is wonderfully fast, but compared to RAM<=>CPU its like reading a
floppy disk.

That asside, there is really nothing new or special about the macpro. In fact
for VFX land, its rather a disappointment. Yes Mari runs really really fast on
it. But then its got two large GPUs and a stonking SSD. Everything other
programme is going to be CPU constrained(unless they've been pushing stuff to
the GPU).

Please excuse my rant, I've been inundated with people wanting new macpros,
despite them already having a far more powerful z620 with fusion IO cards and
quadro k5000s. cult of the shiny and new I suppose.

~~~
_pmf_
See, you don't get it. IT'S ROUND, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! That means that Apple is
amazing and once more advances the state of personal computing.

Somehow.

In some way.

~~~
brador
Well it's more innovation than the 30 years of beige box we had.

The shape and style is nice, and I think innovative in how it allows for
better cooling of the system. But what do I know, I still run xp :P

~~~
nolok
"Beige box" ? No innovation for the past 30 years ?

It saddens me to see people compare a super expensive mac book pro case with
the low end $30 cases. I'm not sure if its ignorance or blindness, but you
should inform yourself on the high end market for desktop cases (and not just
the external look of the case, the internals are what matters). It will cost
between $150 and $300 for a really good model, but then again you're comparing
it to a mac pro.

Companies like Antec, Lian-Li, Noctua, CoolerMaster, Thermaltake, ... Have
spent the last decade or so making fans and cases that can cool down a maxed
2/3 GPU SLI running the latest game while still being silent for the high end
gaming and power users market.

~~~
bnastic
High end PC cases are mostly rubbish. I've had many of them, I've built many
workstations over the years. None of them compare favourably to the (original)
Mac Pro case. There has been very little "innovation" in that market segment.
None of those companies have anough money or the market big enough to warrant
R&D expenses.

~~~
FireBeyond
I disagree - Lian Li has a V1020 case that I used and loved:

[http://www.techeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Lian-Li-
PC...](http://www.techeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Lian-Li-PC-V1020-mid-
tower-PC-computer-case.jpg)

[http://www.overclockers.com/lian-li-pc-v1020-case-
review](http://www.overclockers.com/lian-li-pc-v1020-case-review)

------
abritishguy
> One of those GPUs isn’t even hooked up to do graphics.

Not true, the GPUs are connected with a bridge and so share the workload
efficiently.

> "New"

New to mac maybe but my desktop has 3 GTX 670s which provides some pretty
serious computational power.

------
beloch
OSX has been moving progressively further from desktop beasts and towards
tablet/phone fusion. The hardware for the mac pro does have a striking design,
but I suspect it will wind up being the same red-haired step-child Mac Pro's
have been for years unless Apple does a huge about-face on the development of
OSX. This certainly wouldn't be the first time Apple produced a cool-looking
desktop machine that turned out to be a sales-dud (see G4 cube).

~~~
arrrg
Eh, not really. That's just a popular delusion. Mavericks just further cements
that Apple has no plans whatsoever of unifying OS X and iOS on a UI level. To
me it even looks like OS X and iOS are moving further apart.

~~~
anko
+1

I think sometimes people confuse interoperability with some sort of codebase
merge. It makes sense for each release of osx and ios to be more
interoperable, and even take lessons learned from one back to the other. It
doesn't make sense to merge them, because they are different platforms with
different needs.

------
m_mueller
When it comes to GPGPU there is one big problem with the Mac Pro: Lack of CUDA
support. CUDA is the de facto standard for GPGPU programming in HPC. Software
support for it is years ahead of OpenCL. I doubt the new Mac is going to
change that, if anything it might give some impulse into new workstation
design for the likes of Dell and HP, sporting NVIDIA cards. Of course there is
still hope that Apple recognizes this and that it offers an NVIDIA
configuration. A dual Titan Mac Pro could be a very compelling HPC workstation
for those who prefer this to working on a cluster. Even more so since
Unix/Linux is the standard OS for HPC and most software tools therefore have
OSX/darwin support.

~~~
levesque
Apart from the initialization code which I'd agree is significantly less
painful for CUDA, I haven't seen that much difference in terms of exploiting a
GPU's compute units. I never wrote complex applications though, so am I
missing something?

The bulky initialization is no longer a problem with a library like PyOpenCl -
everything becomes much more elegant...

~~~
qb45
First of all, nobody is going to port few KLOC of CUDA to OpenCL or vice versa
because of one developer's whim. Hence no choice of GPU is bad for developers.

And there are some differences which may be relevant for large projects: CUDA
supports ahead-of-time compilation of GPU code down to the lowest level
assembly (compilation of several KLOC project takes minutes), direct data
transfers between GPUs or even GPUs and network adapters, some subset of C++
(classes without virtual methods, function/class templates, operator
overloading) and probably few more useful features I haven't listed.

------
gioele
I am not interested in a Mac Pro, but I hope it marks the beginning of widely
available computers with Cell-like architectures where a moderately powerful,
general purpose CPU acts as a frontend scheduler for other parallel or
specialized chips with negligible context switching costs.

------
praseodym
> One of those GPUs isn’t even hooked up to do graphics.

Who says that? For all I know the cards are using AMD CrossFire.

------
seanmcdirmid
It is definitely the workstation to dream about, we've been waiting for a tech
leader in the high-end professional space even if the market is not that
significant anymore (relative to the $$$ Apple makes on consumer, anyways).

~~~
KaiserPro
I know its not fashionable, but HP really still is the tech leader when it
comes to workstations: [http://www.hp.com/united-
states/campaigns/workstations/z620_...](http://www.hp.com/united-
states/campaigns/workstations/z620_features.html#.UcWE9ev7Bbs)

When the next gen Xeons come along with the release of the new macpro, it'll
be literally twice as fast. in side by side comparisons*

*there maybe some apple GPU special sauce for inter GPU communications

The other awesome thing about the z series is that they have a three year next
day engineer on site warranty.

~~~
RexRollman
Too bad you can't run Mac OS X on it.

~~~
everyone
Why do you want OS X? I'm really genuinely curious and flabbergasted by people
wanting apple stuff . What is it that you cannot get cheaper with more
flexibility and choice on linux or windows?

~~~
peteretep
It's like Linux, only, it:

* Runs Office, which means it runs Excel (and Word). Gotta love Excel. I'm sure there are unholy combinations of calendering software that mean I can interact sort-of sometimes with the Exchange server in the office, but Outlook Just Works too, on a Mac.

* I never ever ever ever have to interact with XF86Config. Literally days of my life wasted on that.

* Runs Omni(Outliner|Graffle|Plan|Focus). I guess I could cobble together something from org-mode, some terrible Visio clone, etc.

* It does sleeping properly when I close my laptop. Always. Reliably.

I just don't have time to run Linux on my laptop.

~~~
qb45
Your hardware support experience is exactly opposite to mine. My laptop runs
Linux just fine and all hardware works correctly, but OSX doesn't even want to
boot on it. Weird.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Grandparent wrote “Just Works too, on a Mac”, he didn’t state OS X Just Works™
on any random Acer thriftbook.

OS X works better on Macs than Linux distros and Windows do. OS X rarely works
well on computers other than Macs.

------
Keyframe
I find it easier to think of it as an upper mid class workstation. It's not a
high end workstation. Exciting and weird thing about is that all extensions to
it are planned to be external, we'll see how that works out. Also, my concern
is about the cooling design, looks like it will suck dust from below, like a
really inefficient vacuum cleaner. Doesn't matter it's supposed to go on desk
and not on the floor. Dust is always an issue, no matter where you are. Also,
ATI graphics is not something I am excited about.

------
bobthedino
All Apple really had to do was produce an HP Z820 equivalent machine running
Mac OS X, and everyone would have been happy.

------
kmfrk
Again, always be careful with buying the first iteration of any hardware.
Especially at that price.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
> at that price

No price has been announced. Apple may surprise us. Before they came out with
the iPad, journalists and analysts thought Apple’s tablet would cost $1000 or
more[1].

The current entry level Mac Pro costs $2500, while the most expensive iMac
costs $2000. I expect the new Mac Pro to cost between $2000 and $2500.

[1]
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/19/minor_issues_could...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/19/minor_issues_could_result_in_june_launch_for_999_apple_tablet.html)

~~~
leoc
Apple's big advantage here is that it certainly hasn't paid rack rate for
those "pro" graphics cards. How much of that saving it will pass on to buyers
is the question.

------
nicholassmith
I agree with the idea, this is Apple having a radical rethink of what it means
for a pro level workstation going forward. The majority of criticisms have
been levelled at the lack of expansion, not at what the potential for the
machine is.

------
alan_cx
Is this a Mac fanboi's idea of writeen(1) porn? It reads like a diary of a boy
about to go out on a first date, while already dating... Actually, it's kinda
cute. Or is it creepy? Lets hope the writer doesn't end up, er, "injuring" his
or her self on this new computing phallus.

Anyway, I think the writer needs a cuddle.

(1) Well, yes, initially it was a typo, but on second thoughts I like how it
worked out.

~~~
rdouble
pointless and tasteless

~~~
alan_cx
If it really was, why do you think you need to tell people? Do you think
people are a bit stupid know and need telling? Do you need to tell every one
for your own sense of well being?

Or are you just a karma whore?

