Does This Kill The Mac Pro?

[Walter Soyka]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “that’s not the same as a user replaceable GPU, Though that would be fine as long as Abobe lets their Mercury playback engine work on a second GPU. (right now it only works on the Primary GPU)”

True, but the built-in GPU could be made inconsequential. If you plugged your monitor into your own installed card and used the built-in GPU/TB controller for data only, your third-party graphics card would be the primary, wouldn’t it?

Also, you may be interested to know that Adobe is working on MPE with Maximus [link]. That’s still an NVIDIA-only configuration (as it requires a Quadro and a Tesla), but since this is the forum of wild-eyed speculation, it might be a step towards CUDA processing independent of the primary graphics card.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “You can’t change the GPU because the Display Port signal output from the GPU needs to be sent to the Thunderbolt controller. “

Are you sure it works that way? What if there’s no thunderbolt display connected to the computer, do you still have to send display data out of the thunderbolt port? Why?

I’m sure there must be some sort of “handshake”, right?

If there’s no handshake, why does the computer need to talk to the thunderbolt chip at all?

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I realize I kinda contradicted myself later on this point. It’s all up to apple, wether they’ll let you set up the computer such that there’s no display signal in the Thunderbolt connections.

If they’re nice, and any option other then #1 is used, they’ll let us stick in our own GPU and there would be no Display data going to the thunderbolt ports, which wouldn’t be a problem as long as your’re not using a thunderbolt display.

I think it’s more likely that they’ll use a built in GPU and hopefully leave at least 1 slot for us to stick a better GPU in and as long as the software supports this setup, then that wouldn’t be a problem.

My original point was that Thunderbolt forces Apple to change the Mac Pro, so it isn’t a question of if the Mac Pro get’s a redesign, but how much. And given they have to redesign it, I believe that apple will lean toward a more forward leaning of at most 2 PCIe slots.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “It’s all up to apple, wether they’ll let you set up the computer such that there’s no display signal in the Thunderbolt connections.”

But I’m asking, why can’t there be both? If something is plugged straight in to the GPU, then it uses that (DVI/Displayport/whatever). If it plugs in to thunderbolt, then display goes out through thunderbolt as long as the monitor gives the proper handshake (from what I have read, Displayport 1.1 devices must be at the end of the chain). Or does it not work that way? Do you know or are you guessing? I sure as hell am making a lot of guesses at this point. It’s all the information I have. 🙂

Look at the 17″ Thunderbolt MBP. It has both PCIe ExpressCard (1x) and Thunderbolt. Can’t it use both at the same time? Not all data has to run through the thunderbolt port. In a MacPro with dedicated GPU and Thunderbolt, would all display data have to run through Thunderbolt? Maybe, maybe not. I’m thinking not as that would severely hobble a MacPro that can easily handle more than 4x PCIe.

https://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-17inch.html

Another crazy theory. What if a Thunderbolt monitor itself had an integrated GPU in it and it was used for display, leaving the dedicated GPU for computation. That might be getting too crazy!

Jeremy

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

You’re thinking about this the wrong way…

The monitor that you happen to be using has nothing to do with my argument.
My theory also has nothing to do with how you could configure your computer after you buy it.

Here’s my thought, put as simply as I can.

Apple will not release a Thunderbolt equipped computer that doesn’t supply display data through the Thunderbolt connection in it’s stock configuration. There’s two ways they can do that, one is a Custom GPU and the other is a built in GPU. And if they have to custom build it anyway, I think they’re very likely to built it unto the computer.

[Jeremy Garchow] “Another crazy theory. What if a Thunderbolt monitor itself had an integrated GPU in it and it was used for display, leaving the dedicated GPU for computation. That might be getting too crazy!
“

I wouldn’t be surprised… That would be a great way to add displays. However, I won’t be using Apple displays since they’re all over priced and underwhelming so until other display manufacturers do this I’ll stick to the GPU in my computer.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “You’re thinking about this the wrong way…

The monitor that you happen to be using has nothing to do with my argument.
My theory also has nothing to do with how you could configure your computer after you buy it.

Here’s my thought, put as simply as I can.

Apple will not release a Thunderbolt equipped computer that doesn’t supply display data through the Thunderbolt connection in it’s stock configuration. There’s two ways they can do that, one is a Custom GPU and the other is a built in GPU. And if they have to custom build it anyway, I think they’re very likely to built it unto the computer.”

I am thinking about it the wrong way? Then help me understand what you are saying.

It seems to me that you are saying all data has to pass through thunderbolt, bar none. You seem to be saying data can’t go out regular PCIe, and display can’t go out to a dedicated DVI or Displayport. Basically you seem to be saying that Thunderbolt is the data traffic cop in a MacPro. Am I misinterpreting what you are saying?

What I don’t understand from your arguments is why all data/display has to go through the Thunderbolt port? Why can’t it do both? The MacBookPro does this with data already. it DOESNT do this with display data as it would be foolish to run a displayport and a thunderbolt port, when they are really the same, or just similar enough. You get a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter, and bingo, DVI. With non PCIe slot computers, this makes a lot of sense.

But with faster PCIe slot computers, it doesn’t. You don’t have to use the thunderbolt port if you don’t have a thunderbolt device. If you do have a thunderbolt device you attach it, but my fibre card will still run @ 16x or 8x via fibre channel. The only time the data will passthrough @ 4x is if there’s thunderbolt storage on the other end of a thunderbolt cable. In order to get to the fibre storage, I don’t HAVE to go out the thunderbolt cable. Same with display data. In order to get a signal to my DVI monitor, i don’t HAVE to use the thunderbolt port. I can use the GPU. Now, if I had a thunderbolt monitor, I could use the Thunderbolt port.

Am I not explaining this clearly enough?

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “The monitor that you happen to be using has nothing to do with my argument. “

I think the gear that is used is completely relevant to this discussion.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What I don’t understand from your arguments is why all data/display has to go through the Thunderbolt port? Why can’t it do both? “

I never said it had to go through thunderbolt. (At least not intentionally. Now I understand why you couldn’t understand me.. )
I’ve been talking about what apple has to do to get Display data into the thunderbolt connection.

Remember, I’m talking about the Stock computer, and Lest you’ve forgotten, Apple doesn’t make any monitor other then the Thunderbolt one, so there has to be display info in the Thunderbolt connection. I never said it couldn’t go anywhere else as well. It sure can!

Let’s put it this way. The thunderbolt connections have to offer display data or the new Thunderbolt display won’t work, and apple wont built a computer that doesn’t offer the ability to drive their one and only display.

(And before you ask, no, the thunderbolt display won’t work plugged into anything other then a Thunderbolt port)

In the custom GPU setup, you could change out the GPU and lose display data in the Thunderbolt port, but the stock computer would need a custom GPU or a built in one.

Now is this making sense?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “Let’s put it this way. The thunderbolt connections have to offer display data or the new Thunderbolt display won’t work, and apple wont built a computer that doesn’t offer the ability to drive their one and only display.”

The have two. The displayport:

https://store.apple.com/us/product/MC007LL/A

and the thunderbolt:

https://store.apple.com/us/product/MC914

The thunderbolt also turns the monitor into a fw800, ethernet, and USB Hub, facetime camera, and allows two monitors to daisy chain off of a MBP. Crikey, that’s a lot of capability in one cable.

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “In the custom GPU setup, you could change out the GPU and lose display data in the Thunderbolt port, but the stock computer would need a custom GPU or a built in one.
Now is this making sense?”

No. (Sorry). I don’t get it. A MacPro can have a GPU with DVI/Displayport. Thunderbolt IS Displayport+PCIe. You can have a DVI/Displayport monitor and plug straight in to the GPU, or you can use a Thunderbolt monitor and plug right in to Thunderbolt, which will still get the info from the GPU, it’s just sent out of the thunderbolt port. You can have both, you don’t need custom anything (in theory) and you won’t have to buy a thunderbolt monitor with a thunderbolt MacPro.

So what you are saying is, Apple will sell a MacPro to sell more Thunderbolt monitors with a purposely hobbled GPU?

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

You’re right about the Displays…. I thought that they’d EOL’d the Cinema display, but obviously I was wrong.

[Jeremy Garchow] “No. (Sorry). I don’t get it. A MacPro can have a GPU with DVI/Displayport. Thunderbolt IS Displayport+PCIe. You can have a DVI/Displayport monitor and plug straight in to the GPU, or you can use a Thunderbolt monitor and plug right in to Thunderbolt, which will still get the info from the GPU, it’s just sent out of the thunderbolt port. You can have both, you don’t need custom anything (in theory) and you won’t have to buy a thunderbolt monitor with a thunderbolt MacPro.”

Think about what you just said.

“or you can use a Thunderbolt monitor and plug right in to Thunderbolt, which will still get the info from the GPU,”

You need a Custom GPU to do this. There’s no other way.
How do you expect to do this without a GPU of a type that doesn’t currently exist?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “You need a Custom GPU to do this. “

Why?

The thunderbolt chip parses the information from the graphics system and says, “Go here to the thunderbolt display at the other end”.