Up Close with the New Mac Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 10, 2013 3:15 PM EST
In its keynote this morning, Apple teased its next-generation Mac Pro, due out later this year. Based on Ivy Bridge E, the new system will ship with two AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 4096 SPs and capable of delivering 7 TFLOPS of peak FP performance.
We got a close look at the chassis, which is 1/8 the size of the current Mac Pro. You lose any hope for internal expansion, but Apple outfitted the machine with three Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt 2 controllers to enable expansion via external storage and external Thunderbolt 2 expansion chassis options. Apple won't make any of its own Thunderbolt 2 expansion chassis, but you can expect that others will fill that void. With 20Gbps up/down on Thunderbolt 2, you should have enough bandwidth for any PCIe expansion.
Internally there are four DDR3 memory slots, as well as what looks like a proprietary PCIe SSD connector (I don't think it's M.2 unfortunately). Both GPUs are technically removable, but at least one is mounted as the same card as the PCIe SSD. Apple is putting every single PCIe lane available to use on the new Mac Pro.
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rlkelly - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
Since they seem to be a non standard format and the market for Mac Pro's is small so I can't really see anyone making third party cards for them.SunLord - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
That sorta reminds me of the sweet little SGi 02 from the 90s... I like how it's blackish not white or silver like every other apple product which always annoyed me.DramaD - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Hopefully this will not fail like the G4 Cube. Consumers get wiggy if you go too far out there, with the design.tipoo - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link
The G4 cube failed because it was so much more expensive than the regular Power Mac G4, for no extra performance or features, just the design. We'll see what the situation with the new Pro is. But in this case, they won't even update the old chassis Pro along with it, so there's nothing to cannibalize its sales.rlkelly - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
And it had cracking and overheating issuesHisDivineOrder - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
It's like the next gen version of the Cube to me. It's like Ives said, "I want to do something Jobs couldn't do."So he set out to take his idea of simple basic shape and use modern technology to do what he couldn't do.
To which, I say, "Eh." I don't call this innovation because I don't see the value in the shape being different. It's just different. That doesn't make it better and there are a lot of reasons it's worse, so...
Not innovative. Just different.
steven75 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
Do you understand the cooling design?tipoo - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link
Yes, but what's better to a consumer about the cooling? The cooling design allows for the shape, the shape didn't follow the cooling design. The current mac Pro could already be quiet.Heathmoor - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link
How could you cool the current MacPro with only one fan?rlkelly - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
Yes I do. It is interesting, and I hope it is effective but it is not scalable. As a workstation, what the previous Mac Pro's were, it fails. By limiting it to one processor and only 4 memory slots they have ceded the high end workstation market to Dell and HP.