Saaihead t1_itkgm5e wrote
Reply to comment by cheekybeakykiwi in Apple testing Apple Silicon Mac Pro with 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, 192GB of memory by prehistoric_knight
Yeah, this is exactly what I thought. The big pro of the Pro is the option to expand your Mac, I'm really curious how (or if) they are going to support PCI-E expansions. And if the huge amount of GPU cores will bring the same performance as a high end AMD GPU. Cause to me this sounds like a Mac Pro becoming less Pro.
yabaitanidehyousu t1_itktew4 wrote
Non-pro here.
I think they would have to be daft to force customers to move away from (end support for) their existing GPU dependencies (and investments), but then again, Apple is more focused on partner solutions, and they are in a position to support all major software vendors to switching their Metal implementations to any Apple Silicon based implementation.
Apple aims to make a workstation for high-brand software workflows and that is what they will do.
However, I think they have a long way to go to make a compelling ecosystem for high-end development. It’s already very restrictive with only one (edit: non-Apple) choice (AMD), and making that completely closed to Apple’s fledgling ecosystem is not attractive to me as a potential investment.
ShutterBun t1_itldgxq wrote
Fledgling ecosystem? Seriously?
yabaitanidehyousu t1_itngl9g wrote
We’re talking about removing support for PCIe expansion and depending on Apple Silicon. The whole transition to AS isn’t even complete yet. So, yes, fledgeling.
They have no discrete GPU, only SoC implementation.
Their ANE (APU) is the same and you need to convert into Core ML format.
Edit: I do not think they will actually drop support for PCIe because ARM-based SoCs can already implement PCIe.
But how support will look for existing devices is up to Apple and the vendors.
Putting expandability back into the pro was one of the major returns to form (as well as rack-mount), so I don’t see them going anywhere.
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