APPLE... Here we go.

[KETCH ROSSi]

Well, I'm more of a Reduser myself, don't know much of how Apple works.

I guess we'll continue the waiting game for the new Mac Tower... ;)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Don't expect that new Mac Pro anytime real soon. Intel stockpiled CPUs ahead of launch and they're starting to see supplies dwindle. They have transitioned most of their fab lines to 22nm process and these new Xeons are still based on 32nm. They can't keep up. They can't make the C6xx chipsets fast enough either. That seems to be the biggest hold up at the moment -- motherboards are not that plentiful. HP is the only large mainstream vendor shipping systems based on the new Xeons and they can't meet their own shipping estimates. To top that off, there are memory performance issues with the systems showing under Windows and some Linux configurations. Intel is aware and looking into it. I don't know if it's due to the manufacture shortfalls or other issues, but Dell has missed their target date for pre-orders on the new Precision workstation systems by 21 days now.

To add to all that, the 32nm Xeon E5 is a huge and power-hungry beast. I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit into Apple's paradigm at this point. I've got two up and running here with dual 8-core 3.1GHz E5-2687W CPUs -- one with a SuperMicro motherboard, the other an HP Z820 workstation. I had another SuperMicro motherboard, but sold it last week. Going to stick with what I have for now and wait for the next Xeon iteration before assembling or buying any more Xeon workstations. The 22nm revision of the Xeon based on Ivy Bridge is supposed to arrive before the end of this year, meaning the current offerings will be short lived. I'm pretty sure Apple will wait until then to make their move in the Pro market if they are to continue offering Xeon-based workstations. Around the same time, we will also see the new round of GPU accelerator cards in the form of nVidia's Tesla K20 and Intel's new MIC - Knights Corner.

Of course, I don't work for Apple and don't know what their plans are. I just will be really surprised if Apple releases a new Mac Pro based on this generation of 32nm Xeon E5 CPUs. Not only that, but I think they will release after the launch of OSX Mountain Lion and will deliver the new Pro workstations with the 22nm Ivy Bridge Xeon update. It just seems to make the most sense in terms of offering their users the best product for the money.

[KETCH ROSSi]

He he, Jeff, you truly are always the mother of all information when it comes to PC... ;)


Well, I at list hope for a new MBP line, so that will allow me to replace my Unibody 17" Just sold, and the MBA 11", as it has become a pain to have so many systems, just want one Portable, not as heavy as current MBP, and one Big Powerful MPT, so I can get read of my silly iMAC... ;)

[Frank Weeks]

Don't expect that new Mac Pro anytime real soon. Intel stockpiled CPUs ahead of launch and they're starting to see supplies dwindle. They have transitioned most of their fab lines to 22nm process and these new Xeons are still based on 32nm. They can't keep up. They can't make the C6xx chipsets fast enough either. That seems to be the biggest hold up at the moment -- motherboards are not that plentiful. HP is the only large mainstream vendor shipping systems based on the new Xeons and they can't meet their own shipping estimates. To top that off, there are memory performance issues with the systems showing under Windows and some Linux configurations. Intel is aware and looking into it. I don't know if it's due to the manufacture shortfalls or other issues, but Dell has missed their target date for pre-orders on the new Precision workstation systems by 21 days now.

To add to all that, the 32nm Xeon E5 is a huge and power-hungry beast. I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit into Apple's paradigm at this point. I've got two up and running here with dual 8-core 3.1GHz E5-2687W CPUs -- one with a SuperMicro motherboard, the other an HP Z820 workstation. I had another SuperMicro motherboard, but sold it last week. Going to stick with what I have for now and wait for the next Xeon iteration before assembling or buying any more Xeon workstations. The 22nm revision of the Xeon based on Ivy Bridge is supposed to arrive before the end of this year, meaning the current offerings will be short lived. I'm pretty sure Apple will wait until then to make their move in the Pro market if they are to continue offering Xeon-based workstations. Around the same time, we will also see the new round of GPU accelerator cards in the form of nVidia's Tesla K20 and Intel's new MIC - Knights Corner.

Of course, I don't work for Apple and don't know what their plans are. I just will be really surprised if Apple releases a new Mac Pro based on this generation of 32nm Xeon E5 CPUs. Not only that, but I think they will release after the launch of OSX Mountain Lion and will deliver the new Pro workstations with the 22nm Ivy Bridge Xeon update. It just seems to make the most sense in terms of offering their users the best product for the money.

You do know your stuff Jeff. I will be waiting for the new Mac Pro. Do you believe they will be increasing the number of pci slots and 40 lane limitation that seems to be stuck in the mud? What do you think the advancements will be if and when they occur? I missed not being able to catch up with you and the guys at NAB and I've fallen woefully behind. Any thoughts?

[Mark Toia]

Don't expect that new Mac Pro anytime real soon. Intel stockpiled CPUs ahead of launch and they're starting to see supplies dwindle. They have transitioned most of their fab lines to 22nm process and these new Xeons are still based on 32nm. They can't keep up. They can't make the C6xx chipsets fast enough either. That seems to be the biggest hold up at the moment -- motherboards are not that plentiful. HP is the only large mainstream vendor shipping systems based on the new Xeons and they can't meet their own shipping estimates. To top that off, there are memory performance issues with the systems showing under Windows and some Linux configurations. Intel is aware and looking into it. I don't know if it's due to the manufacture shortfalls or other issues, but Dell has missed their target date for pre-orders on the new Precision workstation systems by 21 days now.

To add to all that, the 32nm Xeon E5 is a huge and power-hungry beast. I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit into Apple's paradigm at this point. I've got two up and running here with dual 8-core 3.1GHz E5-2687W CPUs -- one with a SuperMicro motherboard, the other an HP Z820 workstation. I had another SuperMicro motherboard, but sold it last week. Going to stick with what I have for now and wait for the next Xeon iteration before assembling or buying any more Xeon workstations. The 22nm revision of the Xeon based on Ivy Bridge is supposed to arrive before the end of this year, meaning the current offerings will be short lived. I'm pretty sure Apple will wait until then to make their move in the Pro market if they are to continue offering Xeon-based workstations. Around the same time, we will also see the new round of GPU accelerator cards in the form of nVidia's Tesla K20 and Intel's new MIC - Knights Corner.

Of course, I don't work for Apple and don't know what their plans are. I just will be really surprised if Apple releases a new Mac Pro based on this generation of 32nm Xeon E5 CPUs. Not only that, but I think they will release after the launch of OSX Mountain Lion and will deliver the new Pro workstations with the 22nm Ivy Bridge Xeon update. It just seems to make the most sense in terms of offering their users the best product for the money.

So its safe to say... we can buy a new 12 core and safely say it wont get super seeded at least 12 months.... ????

Thats good enough for me.

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Well, I'm more of a Reduser myself, don't know much of how Apple works.

I guess we'll continue the waiting game for the new Mac Tower... ;)

I meant no offense on my post, Ketch. I happened to be too "matter of fact" in my post, but really didn't mean to offend anyone.

[C.H.Haskell]

New MPB coming soon...in June, i hope the rumors of a 4k display on the 17 inch model are true!

[Patrick Grossien]

So its safe to say... we can buy a new 12 core and safely say it wont get super seeded at least 12 months.... ????

Thats good enough for me.

Jeff's assumption was that the new 22nm revision of the Xeon based on Ivy Bridge should be coming by the end of this year.
This could mean a possible new MacPro Tower based on these processors shortly after that.

To me this sounds as if a new MacPro Tower would be plausible in the next 6-8 months.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

You do know your stuff Jeff. I will be waiting for the new Mac Pro. Do you believe they will be increasing the number of pci slots and 40 lane limitation that seems to be stuck in the mud? What do you think the advancements will be if and when they occur? I missed not being able to catch up with you and the guys at NAB and I've fallen woefully behind. Any thoughts?

Yeah, NAB wasn't the same without you Frank. :) You missed a fun one.

With the new E5 Xeons and the upcoming Ivy Bridge ones, Intel has moved the PCIe controller onto the CPU die. So if you want more lanes, you add more CPUs! Before, we were limited to 40 lanes with the i55xx chipsets and some PC motherboards would add more lanes by using two i5520 chipsets in a cascade arrangement. That would get them to 64 lanes total. But it came with other compromises, usually which were trivial for those who needed the extra slots. I think Apple did fine with their arrangement, but I would have preferred 5 slots making the second X16 into two X8 slots. We really don't need dual X16 slots in a 2010 and earlier Mac Pro since dual GPU support was non-existent. Anyway, water under the bridge at this point.

With the E5-2600 CPUs that are out now, there are enough lanes (if both CPUs are installed) to have 4 X16 3.0 slots, two X8 3.0 slots and one X4 2.0 slot. Give or take a slot or two depending on other configurations. I would love to see a new Mac Pro that gives us 3 X16 (gen3.0) slots, two of them double-spaced. and two X8 gen3.0 slots along with 4 Thunderbolt and 4 USB3.0. I couldn't care less if it had anything else on there. The Intel chipsets now have tons of SATA as well as SAS built in too... It will be interesting to see what Apple might do with those.

So its safe to say... we can buy a new 12 core and safely say it wont get super seeded at least 12 months.... ????

Thats good enough for me.

No guarantees of that.

If I had to bet on when we'll see a new Mac Pro, I will guess it will announce in October or November and be available within 2 weeks of the announcement. OSX MoUntain Lion will launch in September, or so I'm thinking, maybe October -- I doubt it will be earlier. Ivy Bridge Xeons will launch anywhere from October to January... Apple could pull another coup like they did in 2008 and be the first to offer the new Xeons. Intel may be pushing up the Ivy Bridge Xeon release date to the September/October time frame because of poor yields on the massive 32nm Sandy Bridge E5-2600's and few fab lines still at 32nm to make them. Some industry watchers are already speculating that Dell may pull the plug on their E5 based Precision towers and skip to Ivy Bridge seeing as how they're not even taking pre-orders yet when pre-orders were supposed to go live 21 days ago.

Hopefully we'll have a better picture after WWDC, but it's primarily a software event.

We'll see new iMac and Macbook Pro offerings before we see a new Mac Pro. Probably new Macbook Pro within the next month. ....Along with all the new Ivy Bridge and Thunderbolt-equipped PC laptops that are about to flood the market.

To me this sounds as if a new MacPro Tower would be plausible in the next 6-8 months.

That's what I'm thinking... Of course, no one can say for sure.

OTOH, buying a current model Mac Pro isn't such a bad deal. They're still powerful systems and if you need one now, you need it. If you don't need it, then wait. But if you don't want to see it replaced in the next 6 months, which is highly likely, don't buy it. FWIW, a new Ivy Bridge iMac might make for a compelling alternative when they release. The current i7 iMac keeps up with a 2009 Mac Pro, even beats it, for most tasks. The only areas where the '09 Mac Pro wins is in expandability and in brute-force computational work where all cores can be leveraged. But that means rendering, R3D processing, etc.. So the iMac isn't quite there yet for most of our needs.

[David Rasberry]

http://www.edn.com/blog/Brian_s_Brai...ntal_crime.phpSomething to think about when considering Apple's new products.