So with intrepidation I decided to look at the new implentation of the Mac Pro which is forthcoming. Watched the video with Jonny to get the marketting point of view. So what has Apple created? It depends on who you are.
If you are power hungry content creator with a ceilingless budget then all your prayers may have been answered. If you are Greta Thunberg then you will be angry unless you need to simulate climate change using AI.
Essentially the chassis can be fully open at all sides for upgrades. The cooling system blows cool air into the hotter regions which an exhaust blower then dissipates heat out of the back. That itself is not unusual as many tower systems already do this.
Large PSU, multiple GPU's and one thing that caught my attention was the lack of Nvidia Which means anybody wishing to use Nvidia Cuda, Raytracing and AI is out of luck. Instead you have team reds, Radeon Pro Vega II gpu's which use HBM2 memory which is very efficient and has lot of bandwidth (up to 1TB/s).
The processor are Xeon based, there is no cost advertised however a ball park figure would be starting at $5000 for a basic configuration. So unless Apple made a great deal with their partners, the mark up for everyone else is incredibly expensive.
In the PC world, to do something similar could cost slightly less but not by much. I would say unless you do actually professionally need create multimedia, CGI, games development, 4k/8k video editing and so on then you are better to buy new things for the house or garden.
In a way, Apple have priced themselves out of the public domain and it's not even about bragging rights here. As long as the software and hardware ecosystem all works here then, people who use one of these should be very happy.
Interestingly enough, they have decided to stick to one processor socket and use the power of Xeon capabilities which is currently 28 cores (56 hyperthreaded) and up to 192GB system RAM. To create something like that on your own is no easy task.
There was mention of storage on the Apple website, however I think most people will opt for high capacity PCIe solutions and so forth.
For joe public, this really means nothing although for those into this sort of thing it shows more leaps than bounds for technology itself.
Samsung Galaxy S10, Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
