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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#551

Post by opportune »

jahnu wrote: post #240
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything about the base specs are just good enough. I’m not defending it per se, but if you spec’ed the machine for any given purpose, whether software dev, or rendering, it’d probably raise the cost by at least $1-2k, and then you’d have the “real” machine. So, the reason the price looks egregious is because most of it is just base cost. This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are m…

Who and/or how many engineers are making $500k a year!?

Some Senior/Most Staff SWE and above at FAANG, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Dropbox, LinkedIn, etc.

Re: New Mac Pro

#552

Post by aczerepinski »

llampx wrote: post #186
duskwuff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step up from 256GB is 2x512GB, and there's configurations up to 2x2TB. My guess is that the 256GB configuration is meant for users that work primarily with data that's kept on network storage.

There's no professional that would buy a machine with 256GB of storage. Let's call it what it is - a throwaway configuration meant to hit a price point.

A lot of people are disagreeing with you but I certainly concur. Sure, there are ways to work around it, but this is a $6,000 computer and you could get more storage than this in the 2004 iMac.

I refuse to believe that meticulously emptying out your trash and downloads folder so that you can continue to squeeze by with 256GB is now acceptable for ultra high end, "I don't know a single person who can afford this" computing.

Re: New Mac Pro

#553

Post by your-nanny »

llampx wrote: post #186
duskwuff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step up from 256GB is 2x512GB, and there's configurations up to 2x2TB. My guess is that the 256GB configuration is meant for users that work primarily with data that's kept on network storage.

There's no professional that would buy a machine with 256GB of storage. Let's call it what it is - a throwaway configuration meant to hit a price point.

I have petabyte network storage, so don't disparage me my 256 Gb SSD.

Though it is a bit slim if you want to store lots of multimedia or host multiple VMs.

Re: New Mac Pro

#554

Post by __d »

chx wrote: post #500
ianhowson wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of cheap NVMe SSDs that can push 3.5Gbytes/sec (Samsung 970, Adata XPG). Even with dual 10Gbe NICs, you can't match that, nor the low access times of local storage. But I do agree that SAN storage is the norm here.

We are past that now, new PCIe 4.0 SSDs just have been showcased along with the new AMD chips and they can do 5GBytes/s read and a bit above 4GB/s write (AMD is rumored to have invested in the R&D of the controller). You'd need 40 GbE to match one -- and EPYC Rome, also scheduled for this fall, will have 160 lanes allowing for dozens of them. You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match.

Twin ConnectX6 adaptors, gives you 800Gbps, or ~1GB/s, at an absolute theoretical max.

It's good to see that local storage has finally returned to the reasonable state of being faster than network storage. SATA / SAS was a long, slow period ...

Re: New Mac Pro

#555

Post by vondur »

macNchz wrote: post #414
seltzered_ wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were even higher in the early 90's. In 1993 the Power Macintosh 8100 (one of the first ppc computers) started at $4200 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_8100

I found the invoice a while ago for the professional desktop publishing setup that my parents bought in 1993...a Quadra 800 mac, upgraded video memory, a flatbed scanner, b&w laser printer, a 20" monitor, a 14400 modem and some kind of fancy magneto optical drive or something for FedExing large files. Total price was $13k at the time.

A 20” monitor in 1993? That had to be super expensive!

Re: New Mac Pro

#556

Post by __d »

Koshkin wrote: post #492
jlgaddis wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what good two 10gbe ports do. 1 x 10 GbE for your regular Ethernet/IP traffic and 1 x 10 GbE for your storage traffic. You do run your network storage over a physically separate network, right?

I am not sure what “a physically separate network” means when it is used by the same computer. (Also, what about accessing your storage over WiFi? Or, you have to have cables strewn all over the place?)

For a lot of "pro" usage scenarios, the local environment will have one "LAN" that has Internet gateway, and various local services on it, plus a dedicated storage network using a separate switching infrastructure (and thus, separate NIC port on your machine).

WiFi is not really an option, for performance but also often for security reasons.

So yes, you'll have two cables from wall-jacks to the machine for networking.

Re: New Mac Pro

#557

Post by your-nanny »

bscphil wrote: post #475
jwr wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's cool, but that's comparing Apples to Linux-Oranges, I guess. I do have a Linux box with a fast Intel CPU and it's nice and fast, but a Mac it ain't. I'm happy to pay more for a Mac machine, if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications. I won't be buying the Mac Pro anytime soon, though, I'm not willing to pay that much. But there are people who are and I'm glad there…

>if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications That's such an oddly specific reason to require MacOS. Can you say more? I can't say I've ever had a problem with copy/paste in Linux, in any application. If this issue were serious enough to me to consider doubling my computer's price tag, I'd at least first look at Hackintoshing, which tends to be pretty solid these days when you can…

I suspect the issue is that in Linux the copy paste comnands are specific to each application, which can be annoying when copy pasting between multiple alplications., without a lot of configuring.

Re: New Mac Pro

#558

Post by mantap »

_bxg1 wrote: post #89
vbezhenar wrote: post #2

That price is just absurd. I waited for Mac Pro announcement to decide whether I'll stay with Windows or jump to macOS. Macbooks are not for me, but I hoped for a remotely reasonable priced computer, something like $2000 with another $1000 to expand with more memory, etc. But $6000 for 8-core CPU, 256 GB SSD, GPU that is less powerful than my old $200 NVidia 1060? It's just laughable. Otherwise seems like a good mach…

You are not the target market.

And who is? Who exactly is buying $13000 workstations with AMD GPUs?

Re: New Mac Pro

#559

Post by justinclift »

ianhowson wrote: post #268
wayoutthere wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would if you had a storage appliance on a SAN, as the SAN is almost certainly faster than a single SSD. This is an extremely common setup for video production, so it’s not out of the target market at all.

There are plenty of cheap NVMe SSDs that can push 3.5Gbytes/sec (Samsung 970, Adata XPG). Even with dual 10Gbe NICs, you can't match that, nor the low access times of local storage. But I do agree that SAN storage is the norm here.

Lots of animation / multimedia houses use workstations with 40Gbps+ adapters (40GbE or Infiniband) connecting to network storage.

It's done this way so people can connect to the storage that's appropriate for the task at hand.

Different projects can be stored on different SAN/NAS arrays , each specc'ed out according to the size/needs of the project.

eg a short run animation doesn't need the same storage capacity of a full length feature film. They may have similar throughput needs though. (Summarising here, but the general concept is ok)

So, lets say someone is a Flame editor (Flame generally has high bandwidth needs). They're working on project A for today. So they connect to the storage being used for that project from their workstation. The next day, they might be working on a different project, so will be connecting to a different set of storage.

Other people using different software will connect to the same storage for their tasks, but can have different latency/throughput needs.

Obviously, this isn't the approach taken by single person multimedia er... "houses". ;)

Re: New Mac Pro

#560

Post by justinclift »

__d wrote: post #554
chx wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are past that now, new PCIe 4.0 SSDs just have been showcased along with the new AMD chips and they can do 5GBytes/s read and a bit above 4GB/s write (AMD is rumored to have invested in the R&D of the controller). You'd need 40 GbE to match one -- and EPYC Rome, also scheduled for this fall, will have 160 lanes allowing for dozens of them. You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match.

Twin ConnectX6 adaptors, gives you 800Gbps, or ~1GB/s, at an absolute theoretical max. It's good to see that local storage has finally returned to the reasonable state of being faster than network storage. SATA / SAS was a long, slow period ...

cough 1GB/s can by done by 10GbE.

Maybe a slight typo there? Need to add a few zeros? :)

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