Mini Mac Pro?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The benchmarks are rolling out and the review embargo lifts in a few hours.

I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.

[Med D]

I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.

"Infinity" or "Affinity"? Would be great if the Affinity family was improved as it is a bit sluggish on MacOS.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

"Infinity" or "Affinity"? Would be great if the Affinity family was improved as it is a bit sluggish on MacOS.

Affinity Designer. Not sure what happened when I typed that, probably tired... Yes, I tend to use Affinity Designer more on the iPad Pro as it runs way smoother there than on the iMac and I can draw right on the screen. I just with their iPad version had all the features.... Anyway it is much improved and very snappy. Unfortunately no Wacom drivers yet.

[James Sielaff]

The benchmarks are rolling out and the review embargo lifts in a few hours.

I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.

Very interesting thread here Jeff. How does the RAM translate? Is 16GB equivalent to say 32 or 64 from an intel system?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Very interesting thread here Jeff. How does the RAM translate? Is 16GB equivalent to say 32 or 64 from an intel system?

Pretty much the same, RAM is RAM. Apple has streamlined a lot of Mac OS 11 and it’s more efficient than before on Intel, more so on the M1. That said, if you need to load 8GB worth of data into memory for a large data set or for caching for playback during color grading or whatnot, it’s still 8GB of data. So this still makes the 16GB limit on these new systems a problem for some. Just remember, these are their entry-level models. Other parts are starting to show up in Apple’s order banks, there are now logic boards for the Mac Mini that show 10G Ethernet ports and it looks like two of them indicate an SoC offering 32GB RAM. We were told that the M1 was designed to support 32GB, so it looks like we’ll have a few additional models of the Mini, maybe Mac Pro soon. Apple just added a lower cost MacBook Air with their base M1 with 8GB and 7 GPU cores and only 128GB SSD for institutional (corporate and educational) purchasers. This is going to position MB Air in a very favorable position against the higher end Surface products and Chromebooks.

The capabilities and direction are going to be a lot more clear once Apple realeases their updated 16” MBP and iMac.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I wonder if they can fit 16 high performance cores/16 graphics cores/64GB RAM in a single 5nm process SOC? That could be juicy.

Theoretically, with the low TDP of the ASi SOCs, you could do a self contained render farm in a tower (4RU rack mount perhaps) if Apple is interested.

Cheers - #19

[Mike P.]

I wonder if they can fit 16 high performance cores/16 graphics cores/64GB RAM in a single 5nm process SOC? That could be juicy.

Theoretically, with the low TDP of the ASi SOCs, you could do a self contained render farm in a tower (4RU rack mount perhaps) if Apple is interested.

Cheers - #19

Theoretically, you should be able to attach iPads and iPhones and get another 6~8 cores from each. I mean, presuming they update the connector of those devices to TB3 (or better), rather than... <checks notes>...USB2.0? WTF?

[Brian Timmons]

Actually I was wondering if someone could make an app that turned idle iPads and iPhones into
additional render farm nodes. They certainly have the power to be useful.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

[Antony Newman]

If the design & development costs at 5nm is 300-500 million dollars per SoC - could Apple turn a profit if they created a distinct Mac Pro desktop chip in addition to a new chip for their top of the line laptops?

If the memory bandwidth of the M1 (where 4 Icestorm cores already saturate it) - Perhaps what we see is the Air remaining on the M1 at the end of 2021, but that a newer SoC based on TSMC 5NP (slightly faster and lower power) chip that Apple can assemble like 3D (lego) chiplets (using TSMCs 3D Fabric); a 3d sandwich that could meet the demands of Laptop through to Mac Tower - topped with HBM3?

If you were in Microsofts shoes ... would you licence the ARM version of windows to run on Apple hardware?
Perhaps Apple have already stuck a deal with Microsoft, and Federighi's 'bait' was a hint of things to come?
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/20/windo...apple-silicon/

AJ

[Mike P.]

Just posted this in the other thread, but this video is far less optimistic...

Took 9.5mins to render a 4k timeline of BMD6k & 4.5k MX footage, compared to 30sec for the same timeline on a PC that only cost ~200 pounds more. Uses an 8gb Mac mini, but given that it's the same as what's in the base Air and the 13" Pro, pretty sure the performance differences would be negligible.

The follow-up video is using 4k Prores instead of braw/r3d, and the render times are still horrendous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHRASXc6BsM

Makes me wonder if it's a settings issue... Like maybe if you connect/output a Mac Mini to a 4k/3840x2160 monitor, it completely over encumbers the GPU (whereas the Air and Pro 13" screens are "only" 2560x1600)?