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Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

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Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#131

Post by wffurr »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #104
barkingcat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 mac pros were always going to come. Apple themselves announced that the next 2 years will be transition. I'd say if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with (probably modern threadripper pro would be what you should have been looking for) If the computer satisfies all your performance needs, what use is it to "feel frustr…

> if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with This is the reality really, if you actually wanted power then the Mac Pro just wasn't what you should have bought. Threadripper + Nvidia cards would take you way further for far less and with a clear sustainable upgrade path. Also really after the past 10 years of Apple's pro mov…

I'm still using a trashcan Mac Pro on my desk, and it works just fine and is still receiving updates. macOS Big Sur 11.3.1.

It's a little upsetting to see even the 12-core version get smoked by the M1 Mini, but it's from 2013 so what do I really expect.

Still nice and quiet and compiles iOS apps just fine.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#132

Post by wmf »

ja27 wrote: post #25

I really wonder how many performance cores they could pack in a Mac Mini before the thermals broke.

The Mac mini used to have a 65 W Intel processor. If the M1 uses ~15 W then they could fit something like 16 big cores, a few small, 32 GPU cores, maybe a 256-bit memory bus, etc. in the existing case.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#133

Post by dylan604 »

barkingcat wrote: post #121
dylan604 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(probably modern threadripper pro would be what you should have been looking for) Comments like this are always just so empty to me. This person was looking for a more powerful Mac, so suggesting they should have been looking for a CPU that's never going to be available for use in a Mac is just grandstanding. This person had been waiting for years for a product from Apple to replace the worthless trashcan systems. H…

Of course, as soon as the M1's were announced with the 2 year transition plan, the actual suggestion would have been to wait until the M1 mac pro comes out. My suggestion was if there wasn't enough power, and the person needed a computer (which is the only reason one would buy a mac exactly during this changeover point), then a threadripper pro running linux would be the way to go for many workloads. The alternative…

> then a threadripper pro running linux

Except for all of the software that doesn't run on Linux.

>The alternative is to just wait a few months and see what comes.

If one did this with Apple, one would never buy a product.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#134

Post by _ph_ »

As someone who planned to buy the new MacPro since the first rumors and only skipped it when I learned how much the prices had risen compared to its predecessor - and the entry level 8core Xeon wasn't that impressive either - I am so ready to finally upgrade my aged iMac. The 4+4 core M1 already gets glowing reviews, it will be very impressive with 16+4 or even 32+8 cores. I like those rumors very much!

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#135

Post by chrisjc »

oneeach wrote: post #77
tyingq wrote: post #46

It says the split for performance versus efficiency cores will be: - 20 total, 16 high performance, 4 efficiency - 40 total, 32 high performance, 8 efficiency Which is kind of interesting given that the 8 core M1 is split half/half at 4 high performance, 4 efficiency. Sounds like perhaps MacOS doesn't typically have more than 4 cores worth of low-priority work, regardless of the system size/workload?

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

I'm not sure I get your point, but isn't the M1 used in the Mac Mini and iMac, both of which are always plugged in and have no batteries?

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#136

Post by jmull »

bebna wrote: post #28
ja27 wrote: post #25

I really wonder how many performance cores they could pack in a Mac Mini before the thermals broke.

Based on how well Apple designs thermals, we can only throw dice. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCBYAP_Sgg

That’s not a valid criticism of the cooling design of that computer. It may or may not be an adequate design, but this video doesn’t really address it.

There’s no particular reason the fan should be physically next to the CPU or heat sink. Its job is to draw air into the computer, across the heat sink, and then back out.

You generally don’t want the air intake and outflow to be too close to each other since that would typically cause heated air to be drawn back in, making the cooling a lot less effective. And you mostly want the air flowing in a channel (rather than blown all around inside), so you can expel most of the heated air.

So, e.g., you have intake on one side of the computer, a channel for the air to flow inside the computer, and a fan at the other side of the channel, pulling air through.

This will be effective if the heat sink on the CPU is anywhere along the channel. There’s no reason it needs to be next to the fan.

A piece of copper, BTW, is a way to move heat from some place that doesn’t have good exposure to the air channel to a place where it does. You only need to do that if the heat sink doesn’t already have good exposure.

To do this properly, I think you’d want to analyze the design and then run some tests to see under what circumstances heat builds up.

Lost a little respect for that guy. He’s a smart guy, so I know he understands this stuff. You’ve got to wonder why he’s bullshitting his audience like this. Seems clear to me this video is about promoting himself rather than discovering or explaining flaws in the cooling system of Apple laptops. (Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit, and he really doesn’t understand this stuff. Either way, it’s not a good look for him.)

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#137

Post by andrewmunsell »

mumblemumble wrote: post #127
988747 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why put efficiency cores in the desktop processor at all?

As has been mentioned elsewhere, devoting some cores to background tasks and reserving the others for higher-priority stuff also makes the system feel more responsive. See, for example, this article from yesterday: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-... Long story short, segregating background work from foreground work means that Spotlight indexing won't cause the UI to become sluggish. I'm g…

But separating the background work doesn't actually require efficiency cores. With 40 performance cores, you could still dedicate 4 or 8 of them to "background" processes only. As that article you linked shows, the background processes would simply complete more quickly without affecting interactive work on the machine.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#138

Post by wmf »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #72
newsclues wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t forcing you to phase out your machine. They will continue to support it.

They’re not. The Mac Pro modular design has always been a lie. Yes, it’s modular, but there’s nothing you can put in there because there are no useful drivers.

You can upgrade RAM, storage, GPUs (e.g. 6900 XT), 100G NICs, and even SAS/FC.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#139

Post by bin_bash »

chrisjc wrote: post #135
oneeach wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

I'm not sure I get your point, but isn't the M1 used in the Mac Mini and iMac, both of which are always plugged in and have no batteries?

Because the M1 is used in laptops and desktops and this chip likely would only be used in the Mac Pro

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#140

Post by cogman10 »

xadhominemx wrote: post #79
cogman10 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that's pretty easy if you do anything involving video. AV1 will eat all the cores.

It’s definitely not easy. In general it is very hard. Some applications have been optimized and for a few applications the fit is very natural (ie, where it is easy to avoid single threaded bottlenecks, or where you don’t need to pass data from core to core via the cache). But for general purpose workloads, it will take a lot of optimization.

Agree to disagree. There's a large host of applications that can benefit from parallel processing power (think, anything that can take advantage of a GPGPU).

I don't dispute that some applications are hard to parallelize. However, in my day to day work, I've found that parallel operations are often not that complicated to introduce.

The bigger issue is that CPUs are now so fast I find myself blocked by IO far more often than I'm blocked by actual processing.

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