MacPro Discontinued in Europe on Mar 1st – Beating the pessimists to the punch!

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Marcus Moore] “but it won’t be a radical new configuration.”

I was hoping for a pterodactyl.

Bummer.

[Craig Seeman]

Pull out the optical bays and the 4x PCIe slots and you’re pretty close to my “pizza box” (obviously a little bit thicker) depending on how they handle cooling. It would get more radical if they removed most of the internal HDD bays as well.

My thinking has been the box could be horizontal for rack mount or vertical on a removable stand. This could allow a more convenient server like use.

[Marcus Moore]

I know we’ve covered this ground before, but how do you see them pulling PCIe from this machine? Thunderbolt expansion isn’t ready for the heavier lifting yet.

[Craig Seeman]

They’re not pulling PCIe. I suspect there will be 16x PCIe slots. At least one if not two. That’s needed for GPUs and a few other cards that are 8 or 16 lance cards.

The current MacPro
https://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html
Three open full-length PCI Express expansion slots6
One PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
Two PCI Express 2.0 x4 slots

The two PCIe 4x slots will be gone. I think they may ADD a 16x slot, which would be a very good improvement for power users. I certainly don’t think they’ll take away the 16x slot.

It’s possible that the config might be something like
2 16x slots
4 Thunderbolt ports each is 4x and can be daisy chained and one can add a chassis for addition slots.
This would make for a smaller case but actually more expandable.

The unknown is how they handle the GPU. Currently it’s on a 16x slot. I think there’s some possibility they can put a GPU on the motherboard especially given what HP managed to do in their $6500 beast laptop noted in another thread. There could be a design with GPU on mobo for Thunderbolt to drive external monitor and additional 16x slots for GPU available for other tasks.

Everything is debatable but here’s some things to ponder.
There hasn’t been a Xeon proc motherboard with Thunderbolt.
To date all Thunderbolt computers have had GPUs on the motherboard.

[Craig Seeman]

Sorry but just an ultra quick and dirty so there’s a bit of slop.
Left is current MacPro
Center and Right MacPro Replacement
Optical drives gone, Handles gone. 4x PCIe slots removed so it’s a bit shorter and thinner. Can be horizontal for rack mount or vertical as a smaller tower.

Not meant to be that graphically accurate but just a general idea.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “Not meant to be that graphically accurate but just a general idea.”

I’m torn about the lack of bays for optical disk drives in your mockup. On the one hand, I rarely use them, on the other hand I just made 15 DVD discs for a client who has a documentary trying to get distribution, so I’d hate to have to go through all those on external devices.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “‘d hate to have to go through all those on external devices.”

I’m curious why. As it is I have an external Blu-ray burner and I move it to whatever computer needs it at the moment.

It’s pretty clear Apple is dumping internal optical drives though.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “I’m curious why. As it is I have an external Blu-ray burner and I move it to whatever computer needs it at the moment.”

Because I have three drives in my workstation now and can burn three copies at once.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “Because I have three drives in my workstation now and can burn three copies at once.”

If one does this frequently there are inexpensive multi disk duplicators.
As the use of optical disk declines that wouldn’t be a factor in my decision to purchase a workstation.
External burners are cheap and can be moved from computer to computer.