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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#431

Post by steve_adams_86 »

nottorp wrote: post #422
spacedcowboy wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t actually use the memory anywhere near as much as I thought I would. 256GB would be fine for me :)

Heh, my main "heavy stuff" desktop only has 64GB. But it feels really good to have more ram than you can think of a use for. I have a faint memory of an interview ages ago with Knuth I think where he mentioned as an aside he was using a workstation with 3.2 Gb of storage and 4 Gb of ram :)

Around the year 2001 I recall watching 3d studio Max R3 tutorials in which the teacher had an electric purple desktop which possessed an entire 4 gigs of ram. It blew my mind. My computer had 128mb and an ATI Rage 128 Pro.

I was young and dumb and never would have guessed I'd own a computer with 32gb of RAM that felt pitifully underpowered for today's tasks.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#432

Post by jeffffff »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #263
rubyn00bie wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple just stumbled into it, and while I totally agree that Apple is killing it with their unified memory, I think we're going to see a pivot from NVidia and AMD. The biggest reason, I think, is: OpenAI has committed to enormous amount capex it simply cannot afford. It does not have the lead it once did, and most end-users simply do not care. There are no network effects. Anthropic at this point has com…

> A huge reason for this is Apple needs unified memory to keep their money maker (laptops) profitable and performant None of the things people care about really get much out of "unified memory". GPUs need a lot of memory bandwidth, but CPUs generally don't and it's rare to find something which is memory bandwidth bound on a CPU that doesn't run better on a GPU to begin with. Not having to copy data between the CPU an…

> None of the things people care about really get much out of "unified memory". GPUs need a lot of memory bandwidth, but CPUs generally don't and it's rare to find something which is memory bandwidth bound on a CPU that doesn't run better on a GPU to begin with. Not having to copy data between the CPU and GPU is nice on paper but again there isn't much in the way of workloads where that was a significant bottleneck.

the bottleneck in lots of database workloads is memory bandwidth. for example, hash join performance with a build side table that doesn't fit in L2 cache. if you analyze this workload with perf, assuming you have a well written hash join implementation, you will see something like 0.1 instructions per cycle, and the memory bandwidth will be completely maxed out.

similarly, while there have been some attempts at GPU accelerated databases, they have mostly failed exactly because the cost of moving data from the CPU to the GPU is too high to be worth it.

i wish aws and the other cloud providers would offer arm servers with apple m-series levels of memory bandwidth per core, it would be a game changer for analytical databases. i also wish they would offer local NVMe drives with reasonable bandwidth - the current offerings are terrible (https://databasearchitects.blogspot.com/2024/02/ssds-have-be...)

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#433

Post by nextaccountic »

sippeangelo wrote: post #394
rafram wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where are you going to find an Nvidia GPU with 128+ GB of memory at an enthusiast-compatible price?

Some Chinese sources sell modded Nvidia GPUs with extra VRAM. They're quite affordable in comparison to even a Mac Pro.

Any links to them? Never heard of this..

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#434

Post by Lalabadie »

wappieslurkz wrote: post #414
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But inference is unique because its performance scales with high memory throughput, and you can’t assemble that by wiring together off the shelf parts in a consumer form factor. Nvidia outperforms Mac significantly on diffusion inference and many other forms. It’s not as simple as the current Mac chips are entirely better for this.

Do NVIDIA solutions also outperform the Apple M-series in performance per Watt?

Probably comparable, but that's only with business-grade products, it's why Apple's current silicon is so remarkable on the market at the consumer level.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#435

Post by darkwater »

embedding-shape wrote: post #415
kaashif wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market. This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

Seems I misunderstood what a "enthusiast" is, I thought it was about someone "excited about something" but seems the typical definition includes them having a lot of money too, my bad.

An enthusiast in the hobby space is by definition someone willing to pour much more money that someone else not that enthusiast in whichever hobby we are talking about.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#436

Post by darkwater »

kaashif wrote: post #411
embedding-shape wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you gonna find Apple hardware with 128GB of memory at enthusiast-compatible price? The cheapest Apple desktop with 128GB of memory shows up as costing $3499 for me, which isn't very "enthusiast-compatible", it's about 3x the minimum salary in my country!

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market. This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

1200$ as the minimum salary covers probably 70% of Europe by population?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#437

Post by traceroute66 »

jiwidi wrote: post #426
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But inference is unique because its performance scales with high memory throughput, and you can’t assemble that by wiring together off the shelf parts in a consumer form factor. Nvidia outperforms Mac significantly on diffusion inference and many other forms. It’s not as simple as the current Mac chips are entirely better for this.

tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. I never liked apple hardware, but they are now untouchable since their shift to own sillicon for home hardware.

> tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance.

And power consumption !

The performance per watt of Apple is unmatched.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#438

Post by joe_mamba »

embedding-shape wrote: post #404
joe_mamba wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's about 3x the minimum salary in my country! Enthusiast compute hardware doesn't cater to the people on the minimum salary in any country, let alone developing nations. When Ferrari makes a car they don't ask themselves if people on minimum salary will be able to afford them. In in the bottom two poorest EU member states and Apple and Microsoft Xbox don't even bother to have a direct to customer store presence h…

Right, I think maybe we're then talking about "upper class enthusiasts" or something in reality then? I understood that to juts be about the person, not what economic class they were in, maybe I misunderstood.

>Right, I think maybe we're then talking about "upper class enthusiasts" or something in reality then?

Why? Enthusiasts are by definition people for whom value for money is not the main driver but top performance and cutting edge novelty at any cost. Affording enthusiast computer hardware is not a human right same how affording a Lamborghini or McMansion isn't.

But you don't need to buy a Lamborghini to do your grocery shopping or drive your kids to school, same how you don't need an Nvidia 5090 or MacBook Pro Max to do your taxes or do your school work.

So the definition is fine as it is. It's hardware for people with very deep pockets, often called whales.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#439

Post by bitbckt »

audunw wrote: post #390
andrewl-hn wrote: post #332

This would probably push some high-end audio professionals away from Logic. One of the niches Mac Pro has been popular is audio production. And with cheesegrader the ability to slot in many-many different audio interfaces into a box instead of dangling out to various PCIe enclosures has been a big win. Here's a good video how it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIQINCWMd6I&list=PLi2i2YhL6o... (at 1:40 Neil…

Feels like it'd just create a market for a big rack-mountable multi-bay PCIe enclosure, with its own internal power supply, that you could connect with one ore more thunderbolt cable. I don't see any reason why a solution built around a Mac Studio should have to be significantly more cluttered. I don't know if such a solution exists right now, but I'm thinking there's a fair chance it will soon as the Mac Pro disappe…

The DAD AX32/AX64 is such a thing.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#440

Post by alberth »

chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

Just a reminder that the old Intel Mac Pro could handle 1.5TB of RAM ... today's Mac Studio can only handle 0.25TB.

Seem odd that a computer from a decade ago could have more than a 1TB of incremental RAM vs what we can buy today from Apple.

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