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Mac Pro – The Roadmap
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[Walter Soyka] “I get that for the iMac, since it has an integrated monitor, but why should retina display affect the Mac Pro release?”
retina thunderbolt display doesn’t exist yet, open cl/OS upgrades and fitting for a graphics card powerful enough to drive it need developed. why put the cart before the horse to release a redesigned macpro that won’t drive their next gen of display?
[Walter Soyka] “The G5 became the Mac Pro, running with Intel processors. Pretty significant upgrade if you ask me.”
Exactly. A pretty significant upgrade is what you should be expecting. retina capable, thuderbolt, usb3, faster processor, smaller more compact, no optical. a major overhaul… Think retina macpro version of retina macbook pro.
What I’m trying to point out is that dev and release hasn’t been in tandem on multiple product lines with them in the past. Why expect it to be different this time?
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
[Paul Dickin] “Maybe because next generation x16+ Thunderbolt is part of what Jobs/Ives envisioned for a replacement top end Mac? To allow unimpeded reworking of the ‘workstation’ meme – multiple retina TB displays…”
Certainly a reasonable hypothesis — but Intel’s Thunderbolt roadmap is still PCIe 2.0 4x in 2013 [link], and only indicated DP1.2 pass-through. Seems it will still be DP1.1a. Doesn’t that mean no resolution increase?
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 -
Keith:
“The retina display is what will really drive an imac or macpro upgrade.”In that light, a Retina iMac or Mac Pro, with a 27″ screen, would be 5,120×2880 pixels. There may not be an existing single card from NVIDIA that can drive such a screen! Which means Apple might be waiting on NVIDIA to develop one as well as solving the Thunderbolt iintegration ssues related to discrete graphics cards. That screen at 220 dpi (double current resolution) would be mire than 14 megapixels.
Don’t remind me about my Power Mac G5 purchase. At least I’m still using the 23″ Apple Cinema Display (ADC) connected to my iMac but the G5 just died after 5 years.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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[Keith Koby] “Exactly. A pretty significant upgrade is what you should be expecting. retina capable, thuderbolt, usb3, faster processor, smaller more compact, no optical. a major overhaul… Think retina macpro version of retina macbook pro. “
Intel is doing the heavy lifting here. I’d argue that continuing to support Intel’s reference designs is nowhere near as complex as transitioning from the PowerPC architecture to the Intel architecture.
Why assume that smaller, more compact, and no optical are good fits for the workstation crowd? I’d rather have the same size (with more performance per dollar) and more expansion options.
Smaller is a feature on a laptop, but it’s a liability on workstation. If they want a smaller desktop, let them shrink the Mini.
[Keith Koby] “What I’m trying to point out is that dev and release hasn’t been in tandem on multiple product lines with them in the past. Why expect it to be different this time?”
I’d argue that development has already advanced. Sandy Bridge Xeon shipped a month ago, Thunderbolt shipped a year and a quarter ago, and USB3 shipped two and a half years ago. CUDA and OpenCL are important, but Apple is still offering ATI cards that are three generations old.
The current “new” Mac Pro would have been a tolerable update last year, but by now, it’s utterly irrelevant.
Why wait another 6-18 months for hypothetical retina displays? People who buy workstations need computation power and expansion capability — and there have been many developments in those areas since August 2010.
The Mac Pro should have been updated now, and then should have been updated again when Thunderbolt advanced enough to support higher-res displays and when higher-res panels became available.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “The Mac Pro should have been updated now, and then should have been updated again when Thunderbolt advanced enough to support higher-res displays and when higher-res panels became available.”
Can’t argue with you there… I would have loved to have seen it happen.
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[Keith Koby] “The retina display is what will really drive an imac or macpro upgrade. “
Why – I use broadcast monitors for anything of visual significance, why would I give a sh*t about retina displays – so the fonts in my file browser would be sharper?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
whatever man… just giving some speculation as to why you didn’t see a major overhaul yesterday. It looks to me like retina is a goal for them and one driver in holding off until they got it nailed down. a fatter thunderbolt is probably necessary along with a slew of other parts.
The other folks (the majority?) that might use mac pros (graphics) probably do give a sh*t, about such a feature. I know that the huge advertising agency next door to my office has an entire fleet of macpros…
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