If you have switched PCIe anyways I would have loved a Mac Pro with a "passive" switched PCIe backplane where you can hotplug PCIe devices in including M2 CPU PCIe cards. Also polish the OS accordingly that you can upgrade/switch your CPU in live operations without shutting down the OS or may be even run Apple silicon CPUs and x86 CPUs alongside.
Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it "essentially" a phone CPU? Please don't say "because of the ISA". It has 24 CPU cores, 60+ GPU cores, an insanely fast memory bus and a purported 60 watt power envelope. There's nothing "phone" about it.
All fabs have libraries that their customers use to turn chip RTL to actual transistor layout to be fabbed. Apple silicon is made using mobile libraries, same as their iPhone and iPad chips. Even though they're made on these dense libraries, the chip is still very big, since they need to include CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and all of their fixed function hardware. All of this puts a limit in terms of frequency and core count.…
I think the power envelope, not the price tag, is the better metric when comparing how server-y or phone-y the silicon it.
> "M2 Ultra has some 134B transistors, when you compare with an equivalent chip like MI300 (146B), you find that really, in terms of raw compute, there is no comparison. We will have more details on MI300 today, watch out for the news cycle."
And unsurprisingly it will certainly come with an incomparable TDP.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#23If you have switched PCIe anyways I would have loved a Mac Pro with a "passive" switched PCIe backplane where you can hotplug PCIe devices in including M2 CPU PCIe cards. Also polish the OS accordingly that you can upgrade/switch your CPU in live operations without shutting down the OS or may be even run Apple silicon CPUs and x86 CPUs alongside.
I think we collectively decided that we didn't want hot-swap CPUs and instead wanted inexpensive compute (so we could have a lot more of it) when we let SPARC die.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we collectively decided that we didn't want hot-swap CPUs and instead wanted inexpensive compute (so we could have a lot more of it) when we let SPARC die.
Why must hot swap cpu inherently be expensive?
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#25Apple Silicon is low-power low-end laptop hardware. Of course their I/O capabilities are limited, because their users do not need lots of I/O. If you are looking for stuff with lots of I/O capabilities you have to buy proper server hardware.
Of course Apple positions this as a proper workstation.
Why worry it someone calls it a workstation. That has to be one of the world's most boring technical arguments.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it "essentially" a phone CPU? Please don't say "because of the ISA". It has 24 CPU cores, 60+ GPU cores, an insanely fast memory bus and a purported 60 watt power envelope. There's nothing "phone" about it.
And Thunderbolt. Show me all those phones with Thunderbolt :).
Not really sure how many ppl would use this but if apple switches to Type C connectors they’re more likely to strut it at the high end than just just mention it in passing.
The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course Apple positions this as a proper workstation.
I remember being downvoted for saying this is essentially a phone CPU and motherboard, just without consideration for constraints imposed by the phone's footprint. It means it can be designed with higher TDP in mind etc. and yet, Apple charges for it as if it was a real workstation equipment rather than a phone in a massive enclosure.
That's not really the pejorative that you think it is.
Intel crushed the Unix workstations with volume - it was more economically efficient to make a workstation version of a desktop chip than to design one from scratch that wasn't supported by the desktop's volume.
Well, Apple is doing to Intel what Intel did to HP, Sun, IBM, DEC, and SGI: using their phone (and watch, etc.) volume to compete with Intel.
Perhaps Intel (and AMD) will stave them off. But if history is any guide, they'll be paddling upstream to do so.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#28Apple Silicon is low-power low-end laptop hardware. Of course their I/O capabilities are limited, because their users do not need lots of I/O. If you are looking for stuff with lots of I/O capabilities you have to buy proper server hardware.
Not defending the Mac Pro's architecture here, I think there are issues, but calling Apple Silicon "low-end laptop hardware" is just false. The Max/Ultra chips easily outperform most server-grade CPUs, and are similar to top end Intel i9 chips. Then if you also take into account performance per watt, they're in a whole different league.
On the other hand the comparison between Apple Silicon CPUs and "server-grade CPUs" has always been much less favorable for Apple. The reason is that the higher IPC of Apple CPUs does not matter for server applications. The server CPUs use the same low clock frequency as the Apple CPUs, resulting in the same low power consumption. An Intel or AMD core is slower than an Apple core, but that is compensated by more cores, and more cores with lower IPC have a better performance per watt than fewer cores with higher IPC.
Therefore, until recently the Apple Silicon CPUs had a single advantage vs. "server-grade CPUs": they were made in various "5 nm" process variants, while the best "server-grade CPUs" were made in various "7 nm" process variants.
Since the end of last year, and especially after the launch of today of AMD Bergamo, the existing Apple Silicon CPUs do not have any advantage for server applications a.k.a. multithreaded applications.
Only after the launch of the next Apple Silicon CPUs, made in a "3 nm" process, they would become competitive again. However that does not matter anyway, because Apple has abandoned a long time ago the idea of competing in server applications and for now they are not interested in such applications.
Whenever the intention is to praise the good performance per watt of Apple Silicon CPUs, they should always be compared with laptop or desktop CPUs, never with "server-grade CPUs", because in the latter case the numbers are very different.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#29If you have switched PCIe anyways I would have loved a Mac Pro with a "passive" switched PCIe backplane where you can hotplug PCIe devices in including M2 CPU PCIe cards. Also polish the OS accordingly that you can upgrade/switch your CPU in live operations without shutting down the OS or may be even run Apple silicon CPUs and x86 CPUs alongside.
Re: Apple Silicon Mac Pro uses PCIe switches to support all slots
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Thunderbolt. Show me all those phones with Thunderbolt :).
Maybe the “pro max” version of next September’s iphones. The iPad Pro versions have had TB3 for a while (though they ship with M2 CPUs, not the A series). Not really sure how many ppl would use this but if apple switches to Type C connectors they’re more likely to strut it at the high end than just just mention it in passing. The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB…
IMO, eventually, phones will replace low end desktop/laptop computers.
Someone (probably Apple, since their CPUs are head and shoulders above the competition) will have to do the work of designing a mode switching UI, but once that's done, they'll really be able to cut into desktop volume.
I'm sure the early devices will be... awkward to use - mostly limited to the browser[1].
But after a few iterations, I'm sure it'll mature into something that can stand on its own.
No idea when it'll happen, but I do think that economics will push it into being sooner or later.
---
1. Presumably people would also be able to use other phone apps, but a lot of those look weird when scaled up. And transiting from touch to mouse/trackpad is not straightforward.