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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#641

Post by ti_ranger »

justinclift wrote: post #613
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.

> You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match. High end networking gear already has higher throughput: http://www.mellanox.com/page/ethernet_cards_overview https://www.servethehome.com/mellanox-connectx-6-brings-200g... A SAN/NAS using the same PCIe 4.0 SSD's you mention could probably fill the pipes too. ... and it would probably need a bunch of network stack tuning. ;)

>> You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match.

> High end networking gear already has higher throughput:

100GB/s > 200Gbps

You would need 4x 200Gbps ports to reach 100GB/s, so 2x MCX653105A-ECAT (each 2x 16-lanes) at > $700 each, and pay for 1/10th of a ~$30 000 switch, IOW 100GB/s would cost you ~ $4400, before paying for the storage.

Sure, it could be done, but it wouldn't be cheap, and you'll have used most of the PCIe lanes.

Re: New Mac Pro

#642

Post by carlob »

blevin wrote: post #467

The most interesting and least elaborated detail is the Afterburner FPGA. I’m curious what the programming model is (Metal compute kernels?) and how it compares to GPU.

During the keynote they used FPGA and ASIC interchangeably, which one is it?

Re: New Mac Pro

#643

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

lnanek2 wrote: post #540
llampx wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find 256GB fine for writing apps. I think more space would be a waste compared to a faster processor to speed up my compile times. If I had infinite money I'd probably put any additional space on extra drives as a RAID array to help with IO read bottlenecks during compiling since I don't have any use for more. I totally understand gamers need more space, people who collect movies and videos need space, graphic desi…

Most often (depending on the cycle in the SSD tech generation) larger SSDs are faster (see new PCI4 controllers who need a number of NAND chips for best performance). A 256GB has a high probability of being not the best choice for compilation. A 2018 MacRumors thread shows:

    - 256 SSD 1400 MB/s Write 2200 MB/S Read
    - 512 SSD 1846 MB/s Write 2500 MB/S Read
    - 1T SSD 2500 MB/s Write 2600 MB/S Read
    - 2T SSD 2600 MB/s Write 2700 MB/S Read
So this is mostly with write, the iMac Pro I'm writing this on with 1TB is in line with ~2800 MB/s write speed.

But of course this could be very different with the new iMac which might have a very fast write SSD in the 256 GB model.

Re: New Mac Pro

#644

Post by copperx »

chaostheory wrote: post #561
nihonde wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro machines for A/V production are routinely $7-10k and have been for as long as I can recall, right back to the 90s. You’re probably just not in the market. These are for commercial buyers who make lots more money from these machines than they spend. Also, six months ago everyone was bellyaching about how Apple has no serious pro devices and was abandoning the desktop. Now it’s too expensive, and my eyes can’t roll…

Those machines tend to have way better specs. Apple just isn’t listening. I guess you’re not very familiar with the Mac Pro line. The ones Apple let die in 2012. You know the ones with starting prices at $2000-$3000 adjusted for inflation Apple leadership also deems developers as “pros” as well at least publicly. I don’t know what they were thinking

Makes me wonder. If you're a software engineer at Apple, are you given a $6k Mac Pro and $5k display to program with?

Re: New Mac Pro

#645

Post by justinclift »

ti_ranger wrote: post #641
justinclift wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match. High end networking gear already has higher throughput: http://www.mellanox.com/page/ethernet_cards_overview https://www.servethehome.com/mellanox-connectx-6-brings-200g... A SAN/NAS using the same PCIe 4.0 SSD's you mention could probably fill the pipes too. ... and it would probably need a bunch of network stack tuning. ;)

>> You could very easily reach 100 GByte/s read which no network will match. > High end networking gear already has higher throughput: 100GB/s > 200Gbps You would need 4x 200Gbps ports to reach 100GB/s, so 2x MCX653105A-ECAT (each 2x 16-lanes) at > $700 each, and pay for 1/10th of a ~$30 000 switch, IOW 100GB/s would cost you ~ $4400, before paying for the storage. Sure, it could be done, but it wouldn't be cheap, an…

Agreed. Higher end network gear is $$$. :(

EPYC servers (128 PCIe lanes) would probably be the go too, not Xeons.

This is just Imagineering though. ;)

With the specifics, wouldn't it be 4 cards needed? Each card has 2x 100Gb/s ports, so 8 ports in total.

Re: New Mac Pro

#646

Post by eemil »

shoo_pl wrote: post #298

What about Mac Mini + minimum viable ssd (256-512GB) + eGPU + decent SSD like Samsung T5 (budget) or X5 (high end) ? After today's announcements this is what I am looking at. The only problem I see is that current eGPUs do not support the 5k thunderbolt monitor, with exception of Blackmagic (but like most of apple products those are crazy expensive and non-upgradeable). Until that 5k monitor situation is solved, I am…

Compared to a Mac Pro, you'll be giving up

* Desktop-grade cooling

* Multithreaded CPU performance (4-6 vs 8-28 cores)

* PCI-e lanes + expandability (via PCI-e slot)

* RAM expandable to 1.5 TB

* dual 10 GBit ethernet

Not all "pros" have the same requirements. In your case, maybe the Mac Mini is adequate.

Re: New Mac Pro

#647

Post by hu3 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #582
mantap wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pixar.

Not according to electricslpnsld:

> I worked at two movie studios (Pixar, Weta Digital) and they were both almost 100% Linux with a smattering of Windows machines here and there. Apple stuff was mainly iPads for story boarding and that kind of stuff.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20088170

Re: New Mac Pro

#649

Post by AmericanChopper »

reaperducer wrote: post #27

Hopefully this will stop people from moaning that "Apple has abandoned the pro market!" Or probably not. They'll just redefine "pro" to meet their complaining needs.

> Or probably not. They'll just redefine "pro" to meet their complaining needs.

Yep. The thread has spoken, and it has decided that a Mac Pro should cost less than a MacBook.

Re: New Mac Pro

#650

Post by cm2187 »

justinclift wrote: post #570
cm2187 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried between two enterprise dlink switches, and also between a synology NAS and a dlink switch. Link aggregation in general only provides performance with multiple connections to multiple machines, so using link aggregation between one client (Mac) and one NAS will like result in zero performance improvement (the packets will only use one of the cables). It only makes sense if you have two or more NAS that you wan…

> enterprise dlink switches "enterprise" DLink switches aren't really a thing yet, regardless of what their marketing team wants to brand them as. :( Cisco, HPE, etc have "enterprise" switches. DLink might be in a decade. > it is hard to saturate a 10gbe connection with a single NAS, unless it is packed with SSDs No, it's just a matter of having enough spindles behind it. As a rough guide, with a (say) average spinni…

I would defer to people with more enterprise hardware experience than me for serious NAS set ups, but my experience with various generations of 12 disks synology nas is that you loose a lot of performance to disk vibrations / inefficiencies of the raid implementation / sync between drives / tcp, etc. So I don't think it scales linearly. With a synology DS3615 and 12 HGST Helium drives in RAID5, I barely get over 1GB/s locally while each drive individually is capable of over 200MB/s sustained speed.
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