31–40 of 85 posts
What is the consequence of this? Does it limit the theoretical ability to add GPUs?
You already can't add GPUs but since there's only 16 real lanes and a GPU can use 16 lanes it could cause issues. I would think this would lead to bottlenecks for instance if you were trying to write to two different 16x PCIe SSD RAID cards simultaneously.
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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.…
You do know that the Mac Pro is targeted specifically at those workloads.
Apple 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.
It is really starting to look like either COVID and new Campus architecture had seriously crippled engineering capabilities of Apple, or if not all the capabilities are redirected into futuristic projects such as cars and Vision VR goggles. They could have made Pro a cluster supercomputer on a backplane just as a flexing and a nod to NeXT, but didn't. They just spread out Studio motherboard into existing Pro case. Sony would do more.
Apple 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.
The new Mac Pro can be rack mounted. It has PCIe gen 4 for audio and video I/O, networking, and storage cards.
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/legacyproducts/rackmacpro... https://www.myelectronics.nl/us/mac-studio-empower-station-r...
At least the new case is available with rails, but cooling and management are still crap.
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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.
Apple Silicon CPUs have been "in a whole different league" for performance per watt when compared with other laptop or desktop CPUs for 2 reasons, they where made using a newer CMOS process to which competitors did not have yet access and they were designed to have a higher IPC, so that they have the same speed as competing CPUs at much lower clock frequencies, which results in a lower power consumption. On the other…
I’m not sure how to interpret this. Of course server applications care about IPC. Maybe moreso! The only difference I can imagine is that server applications are more likely to be memory-bandwidth bound, which does indeed make IPC irrelevant, but also plays in favor of the high bandwidth architecture of the M- series.
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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…
> The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD. 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…
The trivial way I disagree is that I believe people don’t want this: they want to be able to use their phone while “computing”. Perhaps AirPods are enough for that (use Siri to make a call while otherwise mousing) and thus I’m wrong.
The big way I disagree is that the phone is already many people’s only internet terminal and and for most has taken over almost all uses of a “computer”. Even I use my bank’s phone app when sitting in front of my computer because it has features the web interface doesn’t.
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Why must hot swap cpu inherently be expensive?
Because engineering effort is not free.
Obviously, but that does not explain why CPU hot swap is inherently expensive. Engineering effort is required to make any CPU.
Why must the engineering effort specifically relating to CPU hot swap inherently cause architectures that supports CPU hot swap significantly expensive compared to architectures that does not?
As a lay man without any experience with actual semi conductors outside of university, I would have thought that this would mostly be something that needs to be designed and specified once and then it could be mass produced. Clearly it will take some effort and you would have to spend some gates on it in the chip design.
Considering all the other stuff that are in modern CPUs and chipsets, I would have thought it would be possible to do rather cheaply if mass produced.
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.
What is exactly the use case for hot-swapping CPUs?
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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.
What is exactly the use case for hot-swapping CPUs?