Jump to content

Apple finally announces all-new Mac Pro


Ed
 Share

144 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

No, it won't be more expandable, just more upgradable and user-serviceable. Saying otherwise is not "just your opinion", it's objectively false outright. Simple as that. Precisely this kind of incorrect statement, mixing apples and oranges as if they were the same, is what's helping to spread the FUD. The new mac pro, thanks to the TB2 ports, is more expandable (again, not upgradable or user-serviceable) than any other past Macintosh computer and, more importantly, more expandable than any of the professional workstations it is set to compete.

The beginning of this paragraph states "[n]o, it won't be more expandable, just more upgradable and user-serviceable," but the end of it says ". . . thanks to the TB2 ports, is more expandable (again, not upgradable or user-serviceable) than any other. . . ." I'm not quite sure on which side of the fence you are.

 

My point is, the industry leading multimedia professionals - who are the target audience (not "Apple fanboys") and who mostly already use Apple hardware and in many cases, software - don't really care about user-serviceability and won't feel the need to upgrade graphics, since they'll have the best, maxed out configuration, for the Apple software they already use (i already posted sources about how AMD crush nVidia in OpenCL) and even the Adobe ocasional user (since Adobe's cleverly improving OpenCL support).

I don't much doubt that it will be popular among Apple users who "don't really care about user-serviceability and won't feel the need to upgrade graphics." There are a lot of those. I do doubt severely that it will be popular among people as me who like to fit everything inside their computer case, upgrade bits of it here and there, etc.

 

Enthusiasts and prosumers and professionals with smaller budgets (such as me) might as well need an user-serviceable and upgradable machine so to fix it ourselves and make it better step by step, when we can afford to. This is not true on the high profile professional level! This kind of individual/company wants a solution that offers out of the box the best performance for the tools they use (and the net MacPro will offer it), compatible with the newest standards of the industry they work (and this, only the new MacPro will offer) and, more importantly then all, with the best support possible (and no company beats Apple Care support, would you disagree?). This high-end professional is their audience, not us.

 

All the best!

As long as you are acknowledging that they are them and we are us, so to speak, then I find that argument plausible if not probable. I find it improbable that such a particularly high number of professional users, regardless of their budget, are going to accept and/or like the lack of internal expandability, upgradability as a good thing that is magically fixed by Thunderbolt. I think the new Mac Pro will be great for people who like out of the box hardware and software, but then that's Apple's speciality. What I don't think is there are very many people who both need such a powerful machine as a Mac Pro and will not demand for expandable and upgradable hardware.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The beginning of this paragraph states "[n]o, it won't be more expandable, just more upgradable and user-serviceable," but the end of it says ". . . thanks to the TB2 ports, is more expandable (again, not upgradable or user-serviceable) than any other. . . ." I'm not quite sure on which side of the fence you are.

 

 

I was answering directly the statement i quoted from you, my friend. You were saying any old MacPro or Hackintosh would be more expandable, when it's not true. Expandable is not the same as user-serviceable or upgradable. You, as many more, are mixing the concepts and helping FUD to spread. :)

 

See, you make the same confusion here:

 

 

What I don't think is there are very many people who both need such a powerful machine as a Mac Pro and will not demand for expandable and upgradable hardware.

 

The new MacPro, again, is more expandable than any previous iteration - can hold 36 high end devices in the TB ports alone! - and more expandable than any competition (i dare anyone to challenge that with numbers, instead of "oh, it doesn't have free PCI-e slots" mantra and call case closed). It won't be upgradable (well, RAM will be), but then again, Apple machines' upgradability was never ever really a selling point, so my argument stands, it appears. And graphics-wise, it won't need to be upgraded, because it appears it will come maxed from factory.

 

 

There are a lot of those. I do doubt severely that it will be popular among people as me who like to fit everything inside their computer case, upgrade bits of it here and there, etc.

 

 

I find it improbable that such a particularly high number of professional users, regardless of their budget, are going to accept and/or like the lack of internal expandability, upgradability as a good thing that is magically fixed by Thunderbolt.

 

Here you really have a point. An interesting debate about this in this article and subsequent comments: http://www.cultofmac.com/235224/the-sad-truth-about-expansion-on-the-new-mac-pro-image/

 

All the best!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 theconnactic, its less serviceable to upgrade parts because I would have to buy a 3rd party TB to PCI box to add a PCIe card for example. Also the bandwidth drastically goes down when you start adding more components and most TB devices have serious issues when daisy chaining devices but not all. 

 

Small sample of CUDA enabled apps and plugins:

 

http://www.nvidia.in/object/cuda_app_tesla_in.html

 

NVIDIA® Quadro® CX is the accelerator for Adobe® Creative Suite ...

 

Elemental CUDA plugin for Adobe Creative Suite CS4 - Guru3D.com

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's hard to tell how exactly the VGA cards are designed in the new MP (from pics I've seen so far), but I guess Apple probably may offer different configurations of the machine, possibly including Nvidia cards. It may be just the prototype/first production models would be equipped with AMD solution. Since it doesn't look like a single one piece motherboard with all the main components (CPU, VGA) soldered permanently (like in MacBooks).

 

It is also possible that the cards could be replaced later on (by Apple's service, not by the user), as an official upgrade kit. Same may possibly be true with some other components. So it may still be upgradable, albeit not by the user.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's hard to tell how exactly the VGA cards are designed in the new MP (from pics I've seen so far), but I guess Apple probably may offer different configurations of the machine, possibly including Nvidia cards. It may be just the prototype/first production models would be equipped with AMD solution. Since it doesn't look like a single one piece motherboard with all the main components (CPU, VGA) soldered permanently (like in MacBooks).

 

It is also possible that the cards could be replaced later on (by Apple's service, not by the user), as an official upgrade kit. Same may possibly be true with some other components. So it may still be upgradable, albeit not by the user.

 

Watch the keynote as the make it very clear about shipping all models with dual AMD Pro GPUS only.  If you look at pics that were taken from the displays there is no clear way to tell how the CPU is in there or how the GPU are mounted. However if you look at the side he PCIe SSD is it is mounted to the back of the GPU which means that the GPU could be integrated into the logic board. Cant wait to see one taken apart and the first one smashed (look on you tube...)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 theconnactic, its less serviceable to upgrade parts because I would have to buy a 3rd party TB to PCI box to add a PCIe card for example. Also the bandwidth drastically goes down when you start adding more components and most TB devices have serious issues when daisy chaining devices but not all. 

 

Small sample of CUDA enabled apps and plugins:

 

http://www.nvidia.in/object/cuda_app_tesla_in.html

 

NVIDIA® Quadro® CX is the accelerator for Adobe® Creative Suite ...

 

Elemental CUDA plugin for Adobe Creative Suite CS4 - Guru3D.com

 

I agree it's less serviceable and upgradable - i think the right words would be less configurable. The problem is, nothing new as far as Apple is concerned: folks are bashing Cupertino for the lack of a feature Apple doesn't offer since more than a decade. Perhaps, and that's personal opinion, it's disappointment of a growing prosumer market (many on hackintoshes, btw, planning to go legit as soon as the wallet allows) because this MacPro won't be the X-Mac they were expecting (http://512pixels.net/2013/03/mac-pro-xmac/, check out the first quotation).

 

About the CUDA plugins list: well, the first is a list of CUDA-accelerated applications, most of them not related to what we're discussing (or to my work, but this is my problem, hehe). I can give you a list of Open-CL accelerated apps as well, and remember: Open-CL is an environment where AMD crushes nVidia (source in one of my previous posts): http://openclnews.com/apps.

 

The second is a CUDA-accelerated video encoder: are you suggesting there's no Open-CL video encoders? Here's one: http://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration/opencltm-h264avc.html. Notice that the CUDA version developed by the same company is not quite as stable and lacks some features (http://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/gpu-acceleration/cuda-h264avc.html).

 

The third is a plug-in for Adobe software. I think Adobe-Macintosh compatibility interests more to Adobe than to Apple, since they compete each other in the software field, but Apple hardware users are an important chunk of Adobe's pro user base. So it's more likely Adobe adapts to Apple, not the opposite, and this in fact is happening as we talk here (http://www.dslrfilmn...support-update/). By the time the new MacPro is out, most of Adobe's plugins will be Open-CL compatible (call this wishful thinking, but i think it's a logical consequence of what i said here). Thank you for the links!

 

All the best!

P.S.: and, like it's obvious given all that i said, i think Apple going AMD is the right decision, besides it would be un-Appleish to be at mercy of someone else's proprietary standards such as CUDA. Being a market leader in the niche, and freeing itself from nVidia, Apple in fact is increasing people's ability to make choices, even for non-Apple users for that matter. People whine about changes, as usual, but they don't perceive now the good this change will do to all industry. Congratulations, Apple!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CUDA is definitely faster than OpenCL when both run on a nVidia GPU, Rampage, as exemplified here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1005.2581.pdf. Both were tested in the same nVidia card, which is the only means an unbiased test could've been done - and this is debatable, since is much likely that nVidia cards are by the design best suited with CUDA, since it's nVidia proprietary interface.

 

But even assuming the tests were truly unbiased, and there's indeed a slight performance advantage of CUDA over OpenCL, then again: AMD performance with OpenCL simply squash OpenCL results with nVidia, no exaggeration (http://www.phoronix....item&px=MTQwMDI), so this improved OpenCL performance on AMD side more than make up for the (supposed) CUDA advantage.

 

All the best!


P.S.: Another benchmark showing the overwhelming dominance of AMD over nVidia under OpenCL: http://clbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?config_0=14470292&config_1=11905561. Yes, the behemoth called GTX Titan looks like a joke compared to the much cheaper AMD 7970 GHz edition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was answering directly the statement i quoted from you, my friend. You were saying any old MacPro or Hackintosh would be more expandable, when it's not true. Expandable is not the same as user-serviceable or upgradable. You, as many more, are mixing the concepts and helping FUD to spread. :)

I still hold it is true; see below.

 

The new MacPro, again, is more expandable than any previous iteration - can hold 36 high end devices in the TB ports alone! - and more expandable than any competition (i dare anyone to challenge that with numbers, instead of "oh, it doesn't have free PCI-e slots" mantra and call case closed). It won't be upgradable (well, RAM will be), but then again, Apple machines' upgradability was never ever really a selling point, so my argument stands, it appears. And graphics-wise, it won't need to be upgraded, because it appears it will come maxed from factory.

In raw bandwidth, the new Mac Pro offers 15 GBps over its six Thunderbolt 2 ports and an additional 2.5 GBps via its four USB 3.0 ports, making a total of 17.5 GBps of user-available bandwidth, all of which must be used outside the computer. The mid 2012 Mac Pro offers 12 GBps of raw bandwidth with one PCI Express 2.0 x16 and two PCI Express 2.0 x4 slots, 2.3 GPbs via 5 USB 2.0 ports, 3.1 GBps via four FireWire 800 ports, and 1.1 GBps via four SATA II ports, coming to a total of 18.5 GBps, 13.1 GPbs of which can be utilized without external equipment.

 

And, saying that one can connect 36 high-end devices is, in my opinion, a bit misleading. Six Thunderbolt 2 ports give 15 GBps. 15 GPps divided by 36 devices is .417 GBps per device, so 36 devices, all fighting for bandwidth, would get a maximum of 417 MBps per device. This daisy-chaining feature is akin to the way ISPs sell their services: everyone can have their advertised bandwidth as long as everybody doesn't try to download at the same time. Now, it's also akin to ISPs in that it'll almost always work just fine, after all, when's the last time you were maxing out 36 SATA III SSDs all at the same time?

 

About the graphics, maxed now won't be maxed in five years. There's a fair chance the mid 2012 Mac Pro will work just fine with OS X "2018" and whatever the current highest of the high end GPU is, whereas the new Mac Pro will do the same minus the GPU. Of course, if, as 3.14r2 said, Apple releases a GPU upgrade kit for the new Mac Pro, then this is probably a moot point.

 

Here you really have a point. An interesting debate about this in this article and subsequent comments: http://www.cultofmac.com/235224/the-sad-truth-about-expansion-on-the-new-mac-pro-image/

 

All the best!

Yessir; that image pretty much says why I don't like the lack of internal expandability!
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And, saying that one can connect 36 high-end devices is, in my opinion, a bit misleading. Six Thunderbolt 2 ports give 15 GBps. 15 GPps divided by 36 devices is .417 GBps per device, so 36 devices, all fighting for bandwidth, would get a maximum of 417 MBps per device. This daisy-chaining feature is akin to the way ISPs sell their services: everyone can have their advertised bandwidth as long as everybody doesn't try to download at the same time. Now, it's also akin to ISPs in that it'll almost always work just fine, after all, when's the last time you were maxing out 36 SATA III SSDs all at the same time?

This is just a rhetorical trick, i'm sorry: you can argue that the sum of the bandwidth of each port offered by the old MacPro is higher, but more than half of it is provided by PCI-e alone, and each ports accommodates only one device, so in the end the old MacPro can handle less devices, so it's less expandable.

 

Your numbers only reinforce my point, and additionally could point to the waste of bandwidth that old technology can be compared to TB-2 - but besides all this, your calculations are wrong: each USB3.0 is 20 times as fast as a USB 2.0 port, so you should have revised your calculations: 4 USB 3.0 ports make up for 20Gbit/S!, while the lousy 5 USB 2.0 makes 2.3 Gbit/S. You appears to be confusing gigabits per second (Gbit/s) with gigabytes per second (GB/s) here! Making the due corrections, the total raw bandwidth of the old MacPro falls to 16 GB/s, against 17.5 GB/s of the new MacPro, meaning that even using your rhetorical trick - that would say nothing on the expandability subject anyway - the old MacPro loses by huge 1.5 GBP/s. Sorry again, man. :)

 

All the best!

P.S.: 
 

 

Yessir; that image pretty much says why I don't like the lack of internal expandability!

 

 
Did you take a look at the comments below the image? ;)
 
More interesting news about accessories for the new MacPro:
 
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://prmac.com/release-id-59590.htm -> this company made a Blu-Ray burner that is designed to be placed beneath the new MacPro!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

This is just a rhetorical trick, i'm sorry: you can argue that the sum of the bandwidth of each port offered by the old MacPro is higher, but more than half of it is provided by PCI-e alone, and each ports accommodates only one device, so in the end the old MacPro can handle less devices, so it's less expandable.

 

Your numbers only reinforce my point, and additionally could point to the waste of bandwidth that old technology can be compared to TB-2 - but besides all this, your calculations are wrong: each USB3.0 is 20 times as fast as a USB 2.0 port, so you should have revised your calculations: 4 USB 3.0 ports make up for 20Gbit/S!, while the lousy 5 USB 2.0 makes 2.3 Gbit/S. You appears to be confusing gigabits per second (Gbit/s) with gigabytes per second (GB/s) here! Making the due corrections, the total raw bandwidth of the old MacPro falls to 16 GB/s, against 17.5 GB/s of the new MacPro, meaning that even using your rhetorical trick - that would say nothing on the expandability subject anyway - the old MacPro loses by huge 1.5 GBP/s. Sorry again, man. :)

 

All the best!

P.S.: 
 

 

 

 
Did you take a look at the comments below the image? ;)
 
More interesting news about accessories for the new MacPro:
 
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://prmac.com/release-id-59590.htm -> this company made a Blu-Ray burner that is designed to be placed beneath the new MacPro!

 

 

 

PCIe to PCIe expansion box... just as expandable as the new Mac Pro will be with TB and will cost the same and offer slower bandwidth. 

 

As for the CUDA benchmarks you can see it is faster. In real world Applications and not on benchmarks the new AMD cards do not perform as well as everyone including me would like them to. For real pro users they will be for example rendering a movie that is 2 hours long and using well over 150 plugins and that 1 sec. saved time over OpenCL rending per 5 seconds adds up over a 2 week render (or sometimes longer. I deal with people who work in Hollywood and those are real pro users who need raw un-relenting power. Look up red rocket card and what is involved in color correcting and you will realize that the new pro is for people who "think" they are pro users but are not. At best the new pro will fit the needs of App dev's and thats about it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rampage, as we saw, CUDA is a little bit faster in nVdia GPUs. Since the advantages of AMD OpenCL computing is not as small, but rather huge, I tend to view with kind of skepticism this kind of relate.

 

Do you have some real numbers (that is, real-app, non-sinthetic benchmarks) that support your statements, or all you have is anecdotal evidence and your personal experience to back what you said? Because then we'll be in the land of the subjective, of personal opinion and not factual data.

 

Not that I really doubt you're right: there's currently bias toward nVidia and CUDA by professional rendering software, but since Apple leads the creative multimedia market, an Apple now favors OpenCL, everybody else will follow. Or do you think any big Hollywood company cuts their movies on Windows machines?

 

All the best.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

P.S.: pci-e expansion is great, has in fact even higher bandwidth than TB, but isn't nearly as flexible, compact and, most of all, able to handle daisy-chained devices as TB, besides the fact it doesn't really come out of the box with no professional workstation. Not surprisingly, it's a technology that has been slowly fading as an external expansion option, just like other useful tech (fibre channel and FireWire anyone?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a two week video test one of my users did for his boss he used a AMD W7000 VS GTX 580 3GB card to see which way was more efficient. They used around 40 plugins and the movie was about 2 hours long. The Nvidia render finished 4 days faster. Granted short clips you will see very little different and AMD card will from time to time beat out the CUDA cards. However most professionals do not deal with very short clips and are dealing with clips that are 20 mins or more in length to start.

 

I can not tell you much as I have to sign a Non Discloser Agreement so most of the exact details of what my users report back I can not discuses. Trying to walk a fine line to get you informed. 

 

2 of my users have this exact rack:

 

http://www.amax.com/enterprise/productdetail.asp?product_id=Xr-4801Gk2

 

And this talks and shows how you connect it to your system:

 

http://www.amax.com/enterprise/productdetail.asp?product_id=Xr-4801Gk2

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apple has freaking lost it with the resurgence of the new pro machine. And I see they stuck to the current business model and sales strategy with the rest of their line up: making the machine's internal upgrades incompatible (no room to change any peripherals) and to cheat Apple fanboys out of their money by overpricing their products and building their products with outdated technology compared to Windows and Android. Apple, what a joke, this shiit is looks like a garbage disposal.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well...

 

Here and elsewhere, with a few exceptions, i haven't read any criticism against the new MacPro that doesn't consist primarily of emotional responses and unconcealed bias against Apple, most of the time ignoring the positive improvements of the new design, and attacking it from the wrong reasons (as the unfounded whining about a a supposed loss expandability capabilities, when it's in fact it's more expandable than any previous iteration of it, and all the competition) and bashing Apple for the "cut" of features it never really cared to offer, like expandability and user-serviceability.

 

That was kind of expected in an OSX86 forum, though, but i think people should at least educate themselves about the subject before start giving opinions about it, and that takes me to the exceptions i mentioned before: Instant Idiot, who made wrong calculations that shown the old MacPro had more raw bandwidth in its ports than the new model, when the opposite was true, but had a point about the external peripheral mess that could be the result of a small factory form heavily reliant in external expansion - i disagree with it, and i'm not alone, since many MacPro users pointed the fact the external peripheral mess is already there, and Thunderbolt expansion in fact simplified things. RampageDev has access to ongoing technology development that should take pci-e expansion as versatile as Thunderbolt, with the speed crown, and that will be great when it's out but for now 1) it's vaporware, as the new MacPro also is by the way; 2) we're making the assumption the MacPro will offer no free PCI-e slot, and while that could be fully or partially true (all slots might as well be unavailable from factory, but with no soldering, meaning you can simply take away one of the graphics card or the PCI-e storage), we have no mean to assure this new PCI-e expansion won't be also available with workarounds for the new Mac Pro.

 

See? We can agree to disagree. But it would be wiser to take some time reading about what's being discussed, to debate facts - or opinion about facts - unless this thread is to fall to an irrelevance of anti-Apple rants and fanboy-ish Apple apology. I'm myself am no fanboy - perhaps when Apple switch entirely to AMD CPUs - but, after reading factual information about this new MacPro, i really think Apple is taking a (bold and potentially risky, like with FCPX) step in the right direction.

 

All the best!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its not more expandable then the current one so please stop saying this. Just because you change how it expands does not make it better. IE just because one screw goes in clock wise and the other goes in counter clock wise does not make it better then the other. 

 

BTW go and try daisy chaining a bunch of devices and see how it goes on TB. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't simply said, i showed with links and data that support what i said. It will be more expandable than the current one, both in number of devices (36 in TB2 alone) and in raw bandwidth (thank you, Instant Idiot). Well, unless the super-classified new PCI-e expansion protocol that you can't disclose more info about is out before than the new MacPro launch and doesn't work with the new MacPro itself. Otherwise, i stand by what i said because it's the truth (spec-wise: for now, the new MacPro is vaporware, as i said in the post above yours).

 

About the suggested experiment, as far as it's relevant to the topic, it would only be valid with performed with the devices hooked to a TB2 port. There isn't any yet and, until they arrive, we have to believe the specs.

 

All the best!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't simply said, i showed with links and data that support what i said. It will be more expandable than the current one, both in number of devices (36 in TB2 alone) in in raw bandwidth (thank you, Instant Idiot). Well, unless the super-classified new PCI-e expansion protocol that you can't disclose more info about is out before than the new MacPro launch and doesn't work with the new MacPro itself. Otherwise, i stand by what i said because it's the truth (spec-wise: for now, the new MacPro is vaporware, as i said in the post above yours).

 

About the suggested experiment, as far as it's relevant to the topic, it would only be valid with performed with the devices hooked to a TB2 port. There isn't any yet and, until they arrive, we have to believe the specs.

 

All the best!

 

Mac Pro with 2 of these boxes to start or a SR-2 with 6 of them for example. 

 

http://www.magma.com/expressbox-16-basic

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does the SR-2 will support 6 of them? That's amazing. So the expandability crown goes to a hackintosh - like many other performance records with OSX. Thank you very much for the links, Rampage. 


P.S.: imagine paring one of these with the new MacPro, if possible (might as well be)... expandability like never before paired with unmatched performance. Now that's high-like-stratosphere-end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does the SR-2 will support 6 of them? That's amazing. So the expandability crown goes to a hackintosh - like many other performance records with OSX. Thank you very much for the links, Rampage. 

P.S.: imagine paring one of these with the new MacPro, if possible (might as well be)... expandability like never before paired with unmatched performance. Now that's high-like-stratosphere-end.

 

Yes, I do not think that manufacture's model is the one that is certified but I know that one is. 

By combining the channels together, Thunderbolt 2 enables two 20Gbps bi-direction channels instead of two sets of 10Gbps channels. There's no overall increase in bandwidth, but the solution is now more capable. Since there's 20Gbps of bandwidth per channel, you can now do 4K video over Thunderbolt. You can also expect to see higher max transfer rates for storage. Whereas most Thunderbolt storage devices top out at 800 - 900MB/s, Thunderbolt 2 should raise that to around 1500MB/s (overhead and PCIe limits will stop you from getting anywhere near the max spec).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7049/intel-thunderbolt-2-everything-you-need-to-know

 

And as you will read TB 2 is still only a PCIe x4 lane... Theres a lot of good information out there to be found and read. Also from reading some Intel documents it seems that if you run a 4K screen off the TB 2 you basically kill all the bandwidth in the channel as it needs 15GB/s and the real world max is 18.7 GB/s. Also from how TB 1 works... if you were to connect it to the chain it could possibly put the whole chain down to TB 1 speed as TH 2 uses the cable differently but this has not been tested from what I have found. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

do you guys remember the announcement of the imac back in those years, it was simple had only one cable (kb&mouse) compared to a cluttered pc which had a lot of cables lying around. Well it seems apple is going the pc way today... :-D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

P.S.: pci-e expansion is great, has in fact even higher bandwidth than TB, but isn't nearly as flexible, compact and, most of all, able to handle daisy-chained devices as TB, besides the fact it doesn't really come out of the box with no professional workstation. Not surprisingly, it's a technology that has been slowly fading as an external expansion option, just like other useful tech (fibre channel and FireWire anyone?)

don't forget eSATA with the FW and FiberChannel...

 

Could you please support the supposition that PCIe is, "a technology that has been slowly fading away'? The only option that I have seen for an external expansion option for PCIe is Thunderbolt.  And, correct me if I am wrong - but isn't TB just PCIe run over a cable with DP added into the mix? I'm sure its more complicated than that, but I thought that is what Lightpeak Thunderbolt was basically. And with regards to the underlying tech of PCIe, I have seen upgrades of the spec on a regular basis.

 

So to take a line from Monty Python:

 

If Thunderbolt is PCIe based

and PCIe external expansion is "slowly fading"

 

   then logically:

She's a witch! Thunderbolt is already fading...

 

I'm just a caveman, your Honor...your world frightens and confuses me!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you take my phrase out of context, perhaps the Monty Python line applies as quoted. But considering the whole content of the conversation - when becomes obvious that I was talking about PCI-e external chassi expansion, which is indeed expensive, less flexible than TB and a tech that's indeed slowly fading away - I'm afraid you're refuting a straw man, not the points I presented here. :)

 

Curiously, you cited other moribund tech I already took as example, such as FW and Fiber Channel, meaning that you probably didn't endure all my posts, which is rather excusable, thus your straw man mistake. Nonetheless, they're also not dying without a reason, and even adding FW and Fiber Channel in the mix, the old MacPro still loses to the new one in expandability, both in raw bandwidth (thank you, instant idiot) and sheer number of devices (there's no indication that PCI-e external chassis, good and bad as they are, won't also work with the new MacPro model).

 

All the best.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...