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Pretty amazing Thunderbolt demo.
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[Craig Seeman] “Dropping a $2500 base system to $2000 is not half the price. I think a bit of nip tuck and case redesign can do it.”
You specified a Xeon 6-core. Today’s 6-core Mac starts at $3700.
[Walter Soyka] “You’ve eliminated a lot of the features (massive memory capacity”
[Craig Seeman] “I didn’t mention that at all. That wouldn’t change.”
You need a pretty large motherboard (and ergo a large case) to fit two CPU sockets, 12 or more RAM slots, and cooling.
Dual-Xeon workstations are big because they have to be, and expensive because the parts don’t come cheap. They are not expensive because they’re big, or big because of poor industrial design.
Seriously shrinking a dual-Xeon workstation would require either new, custom-built parts from Intel (like the itty bitty processors in the original Air) or a Reality Distortion Field generator inside the case.
Making it cheaper would require a massive pricing concession from Intel.
This notion that Apple can violate the laws of physics and economics by releasing a serious SFF dual-Xeon workstation starting at $2,000 is quite a leap from the state of the art today, but I can’t keep arguing this with you. You’ve worn me down. Undoubtedly, we will have smaller, more powerful computers in the future, but there are real physical and economic reasons encouraging the continued development of the tower form factor.
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 -
[Franz Bieberkopf] “While Thunderbolt may not be able to “double your CPU”, I am intrigued by GPU additions (as per my previous post) which may “increase power” (in scare quotes) for certain purposes.”
Sorry I missed this earlier. I agree — I think that GPGPU is one of the most promising trends in computing.
Thunderbolt is very interesting here, as is OpenCL. If Apple and NVIDIA could work together again, the Mac platform could push the state of the art with GPGPU.
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] “or a Reality Distortion Field generator inside the case.”
And, if I remember correctly, those things require a full 32 lanes on the PCIe board and an adjacent empty slot to hold the unicorn.
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[Walter Soyka] “You need a pretty large motherboard (and ergo a large case) to fit two CPU sockets, 12 or more RAM slots, and cooling.”
Funny. All of that fits on my MacPro mostly on a removable tray slot that takes up about a third of the entire MacPro.
*What follows is all conjecture. What follows is all conjecture. What follows is all conjecture.*
I had to say that three times and bold it just to offer that this is just a discussion.
Seriously, though. Look at the inside of this MacPro.
https://blog.macsales.com/6611-taking-a-peek-inside-the-2010-mac-pro
There’s a section of RAM/CPU, a section of PCIe, a hard drive section, then a section of optical drives + power supply, and some big handles around the whole thing.
Losing some of the parts, you don’t think this could get smaller and lighter?
I understand that there’s real implications here (laws of physics you called them), and the bigger processors are definitely more expensive, but I think this can be done and still keep the CPU power, don’t you think?
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s a section of RAM/CPU, a section of PCIe, a hard drive section, then a section of optical drives + power supply, and some big handles around the whole thing. Losing some of the parts, you don’t think this could get smaller and lighter?”
I think the Mac Pro could lose an inch and a half of just the handles to be rack-mountable before even digging into the internals.
Craig’s right that the “empty space” in the Mac Pro case is allocated to the PCIe slots, but remember that he still wants two 16x PCIe slots in his SuperMini for higher throughput than the current generation of Thunderbolt provides.
The rest of space over the motherboard looks empty, but is necessary for the heat sinks, fans and airflow that keep the components cool.
[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s a section of RAM/CPU, a section of PCIe, a hard drive section, then a section of optical drives + power supply, and some big handles around the whole thing. Losing some of the parts, you don’t think this could get smaller and lighter?”
Can it be shrunk down to Mini size? Certainly not. Can it be shrunk down to Shuttle PC size? I doubt it — I’m not sure you could fit the Mac Pro’s power supply and fans in a Shuttle case.
Can it be smaller and lighter? Yes, a little — but at what cost?
Which parts do you want to lose? The processors, RAM, cooling and PSU are all required. An internal hard drive (or two or four) just makes good sense. If you don’t want an optical drive, you could move the HDD up there and make the case an inch shorter.
Besides, with Thunderbolt expansion into external boxes, you immediately add all that volume and weight back as you add peripherals (plus more, because each device will have its own enclosure, cooling, and power supply).
Is it worth giving up memory capacity, PCIe expansion, or internal storage to save a couple cubic inches of case displacement and a couple pounds? Not to me. The changes that could be made would not be transformative enough to get the Mac Pro into spaces it can’t fit now, so I think you’d be giving up an awful lot to save only a little bit of space.
You want transformative change? Just change the existing case’s handle configuration so it can be racked horizontally.
Now I do recognize my sizzle core beast bias, so this is an honest, sincere question: do you think the market for a small machine with loads of compute power but not much else is larger than the market for a larger, more traditional, better balanced workstation system?
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 -
Removing the opticals, extra sata ports, a few hard drives and pcie lanes might knock it down more than an inch and a half, but I know nothing about it really. To my eye, and looking at that case and removing some parts, it could be smaller, I don’t think it’d be much cheaper, though.
[Walter Soyka] “Now I do recognize my sizzle core beast bias, so this is an honest, sincere question: do you think the market for a small machine with loads of compute power but not much else is larger than the market for a larger, more traditional, better balanced workstation system?”
I have no idea. I do think a smaller machine has appeal. No way it will be mini sized.
I’ve been perusing the fcp forum for years now. It is astounding to me the amount of people that use iMacs for their primary editing system, even over MacBook Pros. This is pre-thunderbolt (which actually brings much more professional connectivity/opportunity to iMacs than ever, and now they go up to quad core i7s, and if you stop and appreciate them, a really sweetly engineered machine). People have been making lower power CPUs work for a while, and i bet Apple knows it.
I agree that the bigger processors simply cost much more, so there’s no betterr way to cut the overall cost except to put in cheaper processors. But, fitting in to the “lead by design” aspect of Apple, and the advent of Thunderbolt, I do think that ultimately the MacPro case isnt long for this world, and I think people will like it. There’s not many people who say, “gee, I wish this thing was bigger, heavier, more loud and a little faster”, beyond Walter and the Sizzle Cores. 😉
Plus, if you allow user GPU upgradability, you’ll be able to squeeze more out of the box as CPU speed won’t be as crucial for editorial.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It is astounding to me the amount of people that use iMacs for their primary editing system, even over MacBook Pros… People have been making lower power CPUs work for a while, and i bet Apple knows it… Plus, if you allow user GPU upgradability, you’ll be able to squeeze more out of the box as CPU speed won’t be as crucial for editorial.”
I agree. I’ve been saying for months here that you don’t need a Mac Pro anymore to edit HD video. A small, moderately user-expandable i7-based box would be a great fit for a lot of editors. They are certainly very popular in the PC world.
[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s not many people who say, “gee, I wish this thing was bigger, heavier, more loud and a little faster”, beyond Walter and the Sizzle Cores. ;)”
Great name for a band!
There may not be a lot of people who would say that (compared to the size of the iPhone-buying public), but there are entire disciplines in our industry who gladly trade big, heavy, loud, and expensive for faster renders, because faster renders lead to better client results.
A dual Xeon workstation may be a little faster than a quad-core i7 box for editorial, but it’s a lot faster for compositing, motion graphics, or 3D. Moving from a real workstation down to a SuperMini for AE, C4D, Maya, or Nuke on the i7 SuperMini would be like putting a bird in a cage. I think it would continue pushing people like me away from the Mac platform.
I’m sure Apple could drop Xeon workstations and barely feel the blip in their bottom line, but it would certainly change the landscape in our business quite a bit.
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] “There may not be a lot of people who would say that (compared to the size of the iPhone-buying public), but there are entire disciplines in our industry who gladly trade big, heavy, loud, and expensive for faster renders, because faster renders lead to better client results.”
I guess it depends. When looking around at PPro and certainly FCPX, renders are becoming less and less necessary during the edit. Even FCPx and PPro have GPU accelerated exports.
I know we have had this discussion before, but if pure speed is what you are looking for for renders, the MacPro isn’t the fastest, beefiest machine out there. Apple’s have never been the fastest kids on the block.
[Walter Soyka] “A dual Xeon workstation may be a little faster than a quad-core i7 box for editorial, but it’s a lot faster for compositing, motion graphics, or 3D. Moving from a real workstation down to a SuperMini for AE, C4D, Maya, or Nuke on the i7 SuperMini would be like putting a bird in a cage. I think it would continue pushing people like me away from the Mac platform.”
I hear that. You’d probably be much better off, really, if speed is what you need.
[Walter Soyka] “I’m sure Apple could drop Xeon workstations and barely feel the blip in their bottom line, but it would certainly change the landscape in our business quite a bit.”
The changing of landscape train has already left the station. 🙂
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I guess it depends. When looking around at PPro and certainly FCPX, renders are becoming less and less necessary during the edit. Even FCPx and PPro have GPU accelerated exports.”
Sorry, I wasn’t clear — I was thinking of AE or C4D renders, which can be measured in seconds or minutes per frame, not frames per second. We agree that i7 plus GPU co-processing probably renders editorial fast enough for most.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I know we have had this discussion before, but if pure speed is what you are looking for for renders, the MacPro isn’t the fastest, beefiest machine out there.”
Sure, and that’s why I’m evaluating cross-platform workflows now.
As you’ve pointed out, though, both the Mac and Windows platforms each have some unique advantages. There are reasons I might want to choose Mac, but Apple would take platform choice out of my hands entirely if they dropped performance workstations and introduced a nice i7-based SuperMini in the Mac Pro’s place.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Apple’s have never been the fastest kids on the block.”
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Every Mac Pro has been a decent buy at the time of its release. In 2009, Apple even announced their Nehalem-based Mac Pros in advance of Intel’s formal launch of the new architecture.
Mac Pros are competitive at launch, but because Apple doesn’t refresh the line at all in between Intel’s major architecture releases, they fall behind relative to their competitors in between big updates.
[Walter Soyka] “I’m sure Apple could drop Xeon workstations and barely feel the blip in their bottom line, but it would certainly change the landscape in our business quite a bit.”
[Jeremy Garchow] “The changing of landscape train has already left the station. :)”
That wasn’t quite what I meant. If I move all my non-editorial production work to PCs for better performance, will FCPX be compelling and open enough to keep my editorial on Macs?
What if the high-end post market gets on that train and rides it all the way to Windows?
Bill Davis might argue I’m in the one percent here, give some rousing populist speech about Apple democratizing media production, and tell me that the lost sales to Walter and the Sizzle Cores don’t make a whit of difference to Apple.
He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not looking at it from Apple’s perspective; I’m looking at it from mine, and I’m still wondering if I fit in.
Sorry for the long-winded diversion on Mac Pros, but hey — you brought it up in your initial post!
My reliance on sizzle cores certainly doesn’t change the fact that seeing 4K play in real time on a little MacBook Air is cool.
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
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