So the article quotes another article from bloomerg (by Mark Gurman), which can be found here
The gist:
The new high-end Mac Pro with Apple silicon is behind schedule, and you can blame changes to the company’s chip and manufacturing plans.
The gist:
The new high-end Mac Pro with Apple silicon is behind schedule, and you can blame changes to the company’s chip and manufacturing plans.
The Cortex X3 at TSMC N4 used in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 clocked at 3.26Ghz gets you about ~1500 GB5 Single Core at ~4W.
The Apple A16 on the same TSMC N4 clocked at 3.6Ghz gets you about ~1900 GB5 Score using ~5W.
The Cortex X3 is much smaller in die size, and only just started optimising specifically for AArach64. Compared to Apple which is on their forth or fifth iteration. I would not be surprised if the Cortex X4 breaks the 1800 barrier using under 5W. Compared to a few years ago Apple SoC vs Snapdragon where single core performance differ by more than 2x. The projected difference between the two will be less than 20%.
The more interesting question would be, what happens when Cortex X4 and Cortex X5 reaches these sort of performance, which is good enough to be used in PC and only cost a a few dollars per core in licensing?
So it's amazing to see the bread and butter catch up, what we really need are those other blocks available under license from someone akin to ARM.
There are plenty to choose from. Samsung or Mediatek didn't invent all the stuff in their SoC, and neither did Apple. GPU IPs are available from ARM ( Mali ) and IMG ( PowerVR ). FPGA form Lattice which Apple are using. DSP and other 5G modem solution from CEVA. There are plenty of options to choose from. And as far as I am concern, none of them are as far ahead, or as difficult to overcome than CPU design.
Are they still using their Technology and IP [1]. Yes.
[1] https://www.imaginationtech.com/news/imagination-and-apple-s...
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-ha...
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-archite...
> an M2 Extreme version of a Mac Pro would probably cost at least $10,000 — without any other upgrades
That would be a very niche market compared with the lower end devices.
If the M2 Extreme is to the M2 Ultra what the M1 Ultra is to the M1 Max, namely that it's just two chips pasted together, then the M2 Extreme might start with 128 GB of RAM (Max: 32 GB, Ultra: 64 GB). That alone is a $1000+ upgrade to the current Mac Pro.
I wonder if it's just more of a 'it's not where the market is' thing. Working in tech and creative industries even previous to the garbage can there was a dramatic shift in people just opting into laptops instead of desktops. With only the people with really demanding workflows sticking with the desktops. Now I mostly only see mac desktops in video production contexts (editing stations, compositing/effects, 3d.. maybe you'd also see that in high end audio production as well).
As offices have changed over the years with more hot desking etc. it's hard justifying a desktop machine... not to mention the pandemic. So maybe apple made a conscious decision. Keep the mac mini to serve a lower end mostly stationary workforce or for installation type work, kill the whole middle-to-lower-highend desktop line and cater to a high end 'studio' workstation.
The boss blinked and said something along the lines of "we're not spending that kind of money for your system" and I pointed out that with 16gb of ram but otherwise base config, it was about the same price and a much better deal performance-wise than a Macbook Pro. Xeons versus an intel mobile i5, and the widest/fastest memory bus around at the time? No contest.
The water-cooled ones were an absolute shitshow...Apple was pushing the edge too hard on that. AIO coolers are still kinda hit-or-miss (the good, well-made ones are fine.)
That's also because they didn't bother updating it for years. Just like the previous trashcan model.
I don't really understand how Apple gets away with that. The people that spend this kind of money to get top of the line hardware are the same ones that are ok buying 4-year-old hardware at introduction price???
Apple MacBook Pro 13in Core i5 Retina 2.7GHz (MF840LL/A), 8GB Memory, 256GB Solid State Drive (Renewed) $379.99
I wanted a 90's era Powerbook so bad. The 2015 is a great machine in 2022. Over the years I heard the elders say it: buy used on the cycle if you can't afford the newer gen. It's really true. And I rarely hear someone who buys the expensive loaded kit complain, even 10 years later. This is how they get away with it. I think I must have learned Linux attempting to rescue my Windows systems, haha. Now I want to rant about Darwin...
If Apple believed it has to sell it for 10k for the single reason of avoiding Mac Studio canibalization, and at the same time Apple believed 10k is too high for the customers, then Apple would kill the product.
> The company made the decision because of both the complexity and cost of producing a processor that is essentially four M2 Max chips fused together. It also will help Apple and partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. save chip-production resources for higher-volume machines.
Apple's foothold in video production is a delicate thing and it seems prone to disruption by a player able to offer a macOS comfort with generic x86 prices.
edit: removed wrong part
I doubt it would be all that cheap.
TSMC is said to be charging $20k for a 3nm wafer, and initial yields for a large die size made on a brand spanking new process node wouldn't be expected to be great.
When you're charging $1,000 for a monitor stand, all prices are arbitrary.
The target market for that screen are buying the VESA mount, but Apple didn't include the VESA mount and added it as an add-on, I'm not sure why; meaning the "$600 Monitor stand upgrade" - which is basically to prevent people buying it as a monitor unless they're going for "Luxury" - became $1,000.
The Pro Display XDR is competing with $40,000 screens for tv/movie production- and studios that use displays like that swap them out quite often because they lose their calibration; they have rows of VESA mounts.
It's like buying one of those artic polar watches that can go to 150M that's gold plated.
The gold plating is not helping you in that situation, whoever is buying the gold plated edition of that watch is buying it as a fashion accessory, not as an expedition watch.
If they want to part with their money: let them.
You can buy it with nothing, with a relatively cheap VESA adapter, or a stand for desktop use cases.
The high-end display market is niche; using such a display with a stand to sit on a desk is even more niche. It's a very low volume stand but it also has to be relatively good in both form and function so that people don't whinge that they got what feels like a flimsy $300 monitor's stand for their $5k monitor.
Who buys the stand? Unusual pro uses where they're better off with a stand than a VESA mount; and people who are just looking for the highest end "fanciest" monitor ever.
You make a clear case, except paying 20% of the cost of the device for a stand that sits on the desk seems ridiculous to me.
Heck, I can't remember the last monitor I had that I kept the stand - it goes back in the box, and into storage until the warranty expires and then it goes in the trash. The Monitor goes on a VESA mount arm.
This chatter about VESA mount arms and if you buy them or not is irrelevant. The price of the monitor stand as stated by Apple what is being discussed.
If it seems ridiculous, don't buy it-- most of us would be using a monitor arm for a monitor like this.
It has a nice 4 bar linkage, bearings, etc. It's intrinsically not cheap and is made in extraordinarily low quantities.
* Apple realistically needs to provide a stand, even though most users in their target market won't use it
* The target market is already small/niche
* The stand has to be relatively nice
* All in all, this means low quantity, high quality == very high cost.
Wrong advertising makes it a differentiated good?! I bet you believe the BS about holding your iPhone wrongly, too.
Apple is a real cult.
Why? Did they force you to buy one? I keep telling you the target market for these; A: doesn’t need a stand & B: wouldn’t use it if it was included.
It’s for people cosplaying as high end video production people; or playing into the “fashion” side of Apple.
Why are people so up in arms about Apple trying to be a tech company and a fashion company? Evaluate their products coldly and if they have value to you then buy them, if not: don’t.
That stand by all rights has no value to anyone: but the same is true of SUPREME clothing or those trendy Fendi handbags.
Get over yourself, it’s all just tools; and a $5k monitor that can do the job of a $40k one is a good value to someone. Just not to you, and that’s fine.
I also don’t need to buy a $3,000 phone skin. But people buy that shit too.
That itself is marketing spin. It's not like studios are throwing away their reference monitors for the apple display. You can design anything to compete; winning is the important bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd7UzLJHrU
You're crying about another company existing?
Why do you do that? Does it offend you that people choose things that aren't to your values?
This is the same kind of weird bigotry that homophobes use. Who cares? Why does it offend you so much?
The market of high end computers? Apple definitely does not have a monopoly there. Bringing in US medicine is not really a relevant arguement.
That almost-doubling from the already insanely expensive machine could push it past a breaking point for a lot of current customers though, I don't know.
Oddly enough, the one I played with felt slower than the Mac Studio.
The Mac Studio is faster than the 2019 Mac Pro.
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/mac-studio-vs-mac-pro-buyers...
When the Mac Pro came out it was the fastest Mac that existed, but those Intel Chips were already dated and were being roundly beaten by AMD chips of the era.
The "killer feature" was the encoding acceleration card, but a faster variant is available inside Apple Silicon.
I'm not sure where the cut-off is, but I think the M1 Max (Not ultra) is also faster than the Mac Pro 2019.
It still can have 1.5 TB of RAM.
all the workflows I can conceive of right now would struggle to use more than 128G of RAM, but I am open to ideas.
I can think of a few, but they all involve terabytes of data sitting on local storage. At the terabyte sizes, it starts to take more time to transfer the data to the cloud instance than to process it with a beefy workstation.
I traded it in for a microphone.
Oh, okay.
That's not how it works with computer prices.
For example, in 2012 the 13-inch MacBook Pro started at $1699. In 2022 it starts at $1299.
EDIT: since I can't respond - I meant the latest and greatest in that size class. Back then we had that 13" and the 15" rMBP. Now we have the 14" and 16" M1. The 13" MBP is a low cost entry w/ a legacy chassis.
I don't disagree computer costs can fluctuate, but generally where there are leaps forward in design and capability they do go up in price, perhaps not keeping inline w/ inflation though.
How about an iMac, which started at $1299 in 2012 and starts at $1299 in 2022?
Last I checked for a few thousand USD you could have 64 CPU cores with 128 threads, 128 gigs or more of RAM, and one or more top tier GPUs.
That said, the Mac Studio still doesn't quite enable everything to be loaded on one machine, so the PC farms are still in use; worse, the primary software used to utilize those PC farms, Vienna Ensemble Pro, isn't yet Apple Silicon native, so...for the time being, the Mac Studio still isn't quite ready for prime time. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro would likely enable finally moving to using a single machine running macOS with the CPU performance and amount of RAM needed, so you best believe that film composers will move to it in droves once it comes out, whatever the price, as VEP being native or not will no longer be a factor.
Source: was a fairly successful film composer myself until I developed an ear condition called Hyperacusis, now working as a programmer writing custom tools for my peers, and as a tech consultant designing their rigs.
And sure enough, that is a real workflow! Thanks for the knowledge.
I have 12tb of storage, nvme ssd and an optical burner!
I’ve put this machine together over a few years and total cost is 3k Aud.
They’re still great value, this machine can still run drivers for hardware from 2005 (with FireWire!). I can run any os from snow leopard to big sure. I can put a Thunderbolt card in it. I can put most GFX cards.
I have a laptop for my performances, but in the studio, this thing is a beast and I hope it works for quite a few more years as a replacement will be very expensive.
This "$10K is too expensive" line doesn't fly. Right now, just upgrading a Mac Pro processor can push the price over $13K. Again, so what? I'm certain there were more than a handful $50K configured 2019 Mac Pros sold. This kind of thing is expensive for the individual, but for a business it's merely a commodity. $50K is cheap because it couldn't even pay the salary of one developer for a year, and the Mac Pro is useful for at least a few years, so cost is more like $16K/yr. That's an absolutely nothing business expense.
Profitability isn't sufficient for a company like Apple. It has to be the best use of these resources - it needs to be more profitable than dedicating the team to work on something else at Apple.
In todays dollars that’s $85,000 for a high end graphics production workstation to $27000 for a low end.
Kids these days are spoiled.
I didn’t say it was too expensive, I said it was a niche product - resources are tight at Apple, and it looks like we’re heading into a recession so they are concentrating on the products that sell in the millions rather than others