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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#661

Post by petepete »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #601
petepete wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a sit/stand desk so mine's on top, it makes organising the cables much easier. Nothing as swish looking as a Mac Pro though, it's a plain black Lian Li behemoth from the late 00s.

If it is really a behemoth, how does you stand desk hold it up? I have a Lian Li anniversary edition snail case and I don’t think any moveable desk could hold it.

So it might not be quite as bulky as one of those, pretty sure this is it.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/lian-li-pc-60fnb-black-alumi...

My desk can probably lift me though.

https://files.catbox.moe/r3fqqv.jpg

Case looks small here but it's a 42" monitor for scale.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#662

Post by zozbot234 »

gloxkiqcza wrote: post #659
zozbot234 wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With proper mmap support you don't really need the entire model in memory. It can be streamed from a fast SSD, and this is more useful for MoE models where not all expert-layers are uniformly used. Of course the more data you stream from SSD, the slower this is; caching stuff in RAM is still relevant to good performance.

You can do this on a Mac as well tho, right? So that 128 GB unified memory becomes cache for very fast 1+ TB Apple SSD.

I think the advantage of Flash-MoE compared to plain mmap is mostly the coalesced representation where a single expert-layer is represented by a single extent of sequential data. That could be introduced to existing binary formats like GGUF or HF - there is already a provision for differently structured representations, and that would easily fit.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#663

Post by asimovDev »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #651
asimovDev wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do / did you have to always work in the office or do you get to work from home by taking a test rig with you ? always been curious about this

Hardware generally isn't allowed outside of lockdowns. There are things you can do with dev fused hardware to remotely control it which make life easier. But most devs just come into the office since being there in person is nicer.

yeah that makes sense. thanks for replying!

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#664

Post by nottorp »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #621
nottorp wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder why he showed it off. Probably because it ran Maya. Which was a SGI product back then, not an Autodesk product yet.

Ha, you nailed it. That's exactly what it was. Thanks for jogging my memory. Back then Maya seemed like this unobtainable, magical machine for producing impossible imagery. When I finally got my hands on it, I was so disappointed to realize I still needed skills to make it do the cool things. I was ~16 and pretty clueless. I just knew Maya was used for the crazy stuff I was seeing in cut scenes from games or special…

Took me until i was 20 and some change to give up.

I was much faster in 3ds max than my artist friend. But I was modeling cubes and he was ... actually modeling fantastic creatures and landscapes. So I stuck to programming and other text based activities and he's usually 'visual FX lead' in the gaming industry :)

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#665

Post by 0x457 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #635
0x457 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What MoE has to do with it? Aside from Flash-MoE that supports exactly one model and only on macOs - you still need to load entire model into memory. You also don't know what experts going to be activated, so it's not like you can predict which needs to be loaded.

With proper mmap support you don't really need the entire model in memory. It can be streamed from a fast SSD, and this is more useful for MoE models where not all expert-layers are uniformly used. Of course the more data you stream from SSD, the slower this is; caching stuff in RAM is still relevant to good performance.

Okay, yes, you don’t need the entire MoE model in memory for it to function.

But you still need the working set of frequently used experts to actually fit in RAM, or at least stay cached. Expert routing happens per token, per layer. If those weights aren’t resident, you’re effectively pulling them from disk on the critical path of generation — over and over again.

That’s not “just slower,” that’s order of magnitude slower. You’ll end up with constant page faults and page cache churn. And if swap is on the same device as the model, you’re now competing for bandwidth on top of that.

IMO the main benefit of mmap is ability to reclaim cold pages during high memory-pressure events when model isn't active.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#666

Post by gk-- »

rantingdemon wrote: post #572
gk-- wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with Apple devices you are forced to use macOS that kind of sucks, especially for a server usage you can just install linux?

Only really possible with the M1. If referring to Asahi.

ahhh i wasn't aware. my old macbook was intel and retired happily as a jellyfin/pihole server :D

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#667

Post by TMWNN »

wolfhumble wrote: post #279
spacedcowboy wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I’m planning on selling my 512GB M3 Ultra Studio in the next week or so (I just wrenched my back so I’m on bed-rest for the next few days) with an eye to funding the M5 Ultra Studio when it’s announced at WWDC. I can live without the RAM for a couple of months to get a good price for it, especially since Apple don’t sell that model (with the RAM) any more.

Just out of curiosity, where do you think is the best place to sell a machine like that with the lowest risk of being scammed, while still getting the best possible price? Wish you a speedy recovery for your back!

I sell Apple products on Craigslist.

(I speak as an experienced third-party seller on Amazon/Walmart/eBay.)

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#668

Post by dangus »

wpm wrote: post #630
NetMageSCW wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you just get a multi-slot PCIe box?

I could. It would be even cooler if that box was also housing my computer and powered by the same power supply. And then the PCIe lanes could just run to the CPU/SoC instead of having to be wrapped in Thunderbolt.

And here I am with a gaming PC that has absolutely nothing in the PCIe card slots except for a graphics card. 1 out of 5 slots filled!

The truth of the matter is that there's basically no hardware on the market that actually depends on PCIe bandwidth besides graphics cards.

Furthermore, us computer nerds don't like to hear it, but making someone open up a computer is a barrier for many customers.

E.g., I'm selling a computer to a video professional and they want a processing appliance that connects to a computer to help with their video workflow.

Is that video professional also skilled in computer subjects like opening up computers? Probably not! A nice box that you plug in to Thunderbolt is way simpler.

Bonus points, you can plug that box into any other computer without taking your whole computer apart.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#669

Post by nsteel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #590
nsteel wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they don't use DDR5. LPDDR5 is always soldered. LPDDR5 requires short point-to-point connections to give you good SI at high speeds and low voltages. To get the same with DDR5 DIMMs, you'd have something physically much bigger, with way worse SI, with higher power, and with higher latency. That would be a much worse solution. GDDR is much higher power, the solution would end up bigger. Plus it's useless for sy…

> LPDDR5 is always soldered. No it isn't: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-32gb-ddr5-7500-cas-latency-cl... CAMM2 is new and most of the PC companies aren't using it yet but it's exactly the sort of thing Apple used to be an early adopter of when they wanted to be.

OK, but that's significantly slower and larger. It's a worse solution. Am I missing something?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#670

Post by kranke155 »

simondotau wrote: post #629
Melatonic wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodluck storing all those 8k videos, plates, and other content on soldered in SSD

1. Thunderbolt 4 exists. 2. Even with today's prices, storage is a relatively minor expense for professionals working at this level. 3. When material above 4K is used in a serious workflow, it tends to be at the acquisition phase only. In post production, raw files get transcoded to a proxy format (e.g. ProRes 422 Proxy) for editing. 4. In multi-user workflows, media is commonly accessed directly from shared network…

SSDs can do fine even on USB3 with 4k ProRes 4444 files. At least on my projects. Not sure what OP is doing.

I dont know anyone who shoots/finishes in 8k. Most pipelines I know of are 4k.

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