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dglow
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2022-11-09, 15:53

I hope the iMac Pro is not the best analogy. Like the Trash Can, the iMac Pro was a one-and-done design for Apple, never iterated upon. Great machine, but bad follow-through.
I'm sure none here want or expect a similar fate for the Mac Studio.


Back to the forthcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro: I'm very excited to see what direction Apple takes; as discussed above, the areas of greatest interest are RAM, expansion, and the GPU. I'll recap my speculation below, and welcome others' predictions along these lines...


Apple Silicon Mac Pro

RAM:
- user-expandable via standard, off-the-shelf DIMMs
- a separate tier from on-package RAM, enabled via an Apple-designed bridge chip
- macOS will automatically manage this new RAM pool unless an app requests explicit control

Expansion:
- PCIe, either 4.0 or 5.0, via standard slots located inside the primary chassis of the machine
- (Apple will not rely on PCI-over-Thunderbolt, external card cages, etc.)

GPU:
- most apps will use the GPU found on the Mac Pro's SoC – like the Ultra, this will be surfaced as a 'single GPU'
- apps requiring additional GPU horsepower will need to explicitly code for it (as is the case today)
- upon reflection I think it most likely that Apple will lean on AMD for Metal-compatible GPU expansion cards
- if so, these cards will use an evolution of the 2019 Pro's MPX standard
- while I'd love to see it, I think the odds are only 1 in 4 that Apple offers a GPU expansion cards with their own Apple Silicon design
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