Mac Pro on apple silicon?

[trs96]

With all that history in mind I'd be surprised to see a change of case design with change of platform given that they only just launched the case and are likely expecting act least 7 years out of it.

What is different with this transition is that they are moving away from traditional socketed CPUs and separate ram slots and PCIe slots for graphics cards. Three things that the 2019 Mac Pros have. When you create an SoC with the ram and graphics on the chip why would you need all those DDR4 and PCIe slots that would not be used ? I think they'll come up with something many times smaller than the 2019 MP case for the first ASi Mac Pros that debut 2 or 3 years from now. Since the Apple SoCs will run so much cooler and not consume half as much power there will be no need for the 1.3 Megawatt PSU and the elaborate cooling system that the '19 Mac Pro has. Keeping the same Cheese grater #2 chassis for the Apple Silicon MP would be like putting a Toyota Corolla engine in a Hummer. Not the best match in my opinion. Who knows, we might even see the return of a chassis as small as the Trash Can MP for the first ASi MP.

 

[hanuman]

Who knows, we might even see the return of a chassis as small as the Trash Can MP for the first ASi MP.

They were taught a lesson, though, by the Trashcan experience in that some pro use cases really require PCIe expansion and not via thunderbolt. The Xeon is actually still a very compelling option for a Mac Pro, partly because of PCIe capacity so it will be interesting to see how Apple tackles this problem for a workstation.

 

[trs96]

It will be interesting to see how Apple tackles this problem for a workstation.

Yes, I'm interested to see just what their integrated graphics in the first ASi Macs can do. One thing is for certain, they've left Nvidia GPUs behind for the longer term. They may not even use AMD dedicated graphics either. How to make a Pro oriented MP have enough graphics power is probably the biggest challenge they are up against. This is probably why they'll keep the Intel based 2019 MP supported much longer than other Intel Macs. They owe it to all the Pros that have invested a lot of cash in them.

Apple has built its own Mac graphics processors

Apple Silicon Macs will use an Apple-designed GPU – which makes complete sense and promises useful performance advantages.

www.computerworld.com

 

[Gigamaxx]

Yes, I'm interested to see just what their integrated graphics in the first ASi Macs can do. One thing is for certain, they've left Nvidia GPUs behind for the longer term. They may not even use AMD dedicated graphics either. How to make a Pro oriented MP have enough graphics power is probably the biggest challenge they are up against. This is probably why they'll keep the Intel based 2019 MP supported much longer than other Intel Macs. They owe it to all the Pros that have invested a lot of cash in them.

Apple has built its own Mac graphics processors

Apple Silicon Macs will use an Apple-designed GPU – which makes complete sense and promises useful performance advantages.

www.computerworld.com

I think the big key is their transition to metal graphics. The iphones crank out performance comparable to intel MacBooks in metal. The metal framework will allow them to proceed as software will have to transition to metal to work in Apples ecosystem.
Another option is cloud processing, where all your data is theirs, for a price you can access it. This unfortunately seems to be the way things are heading (office 365). Once California bans high capacity video cards the rest of the states will likely follow suit.

 

[trs96]

Once California bans high capacity video cards

What is this ? Haven't heard this yet ? Look at the BitCoin mining craze where you could link together multiple lower end AMD cards 560s/570s on mining farms and use massive amounts of electricity 24/7. Why don't they try shutting down Vegas too ? Look at all the electricity wasted there.