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The real question for me with all these AMD releases, what's Intel gonna release? It's surprising to me that Apple didn't announce an AMD based Mac Pro-- the ch

The real question for me with all these AMD releases, what's Intel gonna release? It's surprising to me that Apple didn't announce an AMD based Mac Pro-- the chip Intel gave them must really be something. Too bad though because there could be a lot more of them (eventual Mac Pros) out there I'm guessing if they were using these Rome chips.

dpedu 7y ago
It's probably not just the chip, Intel provides financial incentives for manufacturers who build products around their chips.
- astrodust 7y ago
  That usually involves advertising, but Apple has turned down those offers. Not even an "Intel inside" sticker. Apple's relationship with Intel is pretty rocky now. Intel fumbled the i9, their Xeon chips aren't keeping up with AMD's workstation offerings, and their efforts to build a cellular modem chip utterly failed, leaving Apple at the mercy of Qualcomm for that part. I'm sure Apple will cut loose on Intel as soon as they can. They're probably tired of the bullshit.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    The financial incentives can cover other chip lines. Apple sells a ton of laptop CPUs and has some preferred partner status with Intel.
- ksec 7y ago
  >Intel provides financial incentives for manufacturers who build products around their chips. Yes, but I think the bigger picture, Apple needed Intel's iPhone modem for another year. May not be worth to damage the relationship, not to mention the design were likely finalise some time ago. I would not be surprised if the Sale of Modem Business to Apple will include agreement to keep Intel CPU on Mac. ( For the time being ) And I am sure AMD should be aiming EPYC at the Datacenter usage of Apple, which is huge in itself, rather then the market of Mac Pro. Although Apple using AMD on Mac would be a pretty big statement to the rest of the market.
uponcoffee 7y ago
There's probably bit of hardware lot it with Intel chips. Since they control the hardware, Apple probably has invested quite a bit into hardware specific optimizations that won't readily port to AMD chipsets. Also, AMD is only recently been a performance front runner - they might not hold on to that for long. In the short term it doesn't make sense to jump ship. For for general computation/ecosystems or for generation/device specific ventures (e.g. Consoles) it makes sense to turn with the tides.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Since they control the hardware, Apple probably has invested quite a bit into hardware specific optimizations that won't readily port to AMD chipsets. It's in Apple's history to be able to move on from hardware. It's also in their history to make the wrong choices, necessitating the move.
  - ufoolme 7y ago
    money is they’ll move in next 5 years to at least partial move to their own ARM chips, they already have to a degree.
    - Narishma 7y ago
      People have been saying that for the last 5 years if not longer.
- zamalek 7y ago
  Intel hasn't manufacturered bespoke chips for some years now, which is why all, but one, mainstream consoles have been AMD.
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    Funnily enough the only "bespoke" Intel chip in recent times was Intel's own i7-8705G & i7-8809G used in the Hades Canyon NUC that replaced Intel's HD graphics with an AMD Vega M.
djsumdog 7y ago
Apple had probably been designing that for a long time. It's difficult to change something that custom once you start going down that path.
33degrees 7y ago
At this point, I think it's a lot more likely for Apple to switch to using their own chips, at least at the low end.
- astrodust 7y ago
  Given the JavaScript performance of the shipping units intended for mobile use, which is eclipsing the best of Intel's offerings, it might be possible that the A14 or A15 iteration actually surpasses Intel's chips at x86-64 code as well when run through a Rosetta-like compatibility layer. What if the high-end chip was ARM? It's not just about raw speed, it's about how much performance you can squeeze out of a particular thermal envelope, or compute per watt. If ARM offers 2x the performance per watt, doesn't matter what Intel's chips do with hypothetically unlimited power.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    What would be awesome if instead of a Rosetta-like (or qemu-user-like) compatibility layer, the chip supported multiple ISAs natively. The only company that has the rights to do both ARMv8 and amd64 is.. AMD :)
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      That would be nice but NVidia got in legal trouble with x86 patents when they tried to do that with their Project Denver. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver
      - mappu 7y ago
        Most of the original x86_32 patents have now expired, that was sufficient to let Microsoft build the emulation layer for WoA. It might be more feasible now, except in the last ~5-10 years there's been a push to make many PC apps x86_64 only (e.g. Ubuntu dropping i386 support), so the benefit isn't quite as wide any more.
shereadsthenews 7y ago
Intel chips are still significantly better than AMD for many common workloads. If you are running SpecCPU or Cinebench in production then AMD might be right for you; in all other cases I urge you to run your own realistic benchmarks before buying. Intel’s “response” to Rome came out in April. It’s a 28-core chip that costs $12k. The reason Intel doesn’t feel price pressure here is they are still way ahead in performance on real high-end workloads like DBMSs etc.
- jannyfer 7y ago
  Sources?
- bitL 7y ago
  That used to be true for original EPYC but might not be true for Rome (outside AVX-512 workloads). IMO it's more due to continuous Apple + Intel collaboration and supply chain, AMD not being able to supply large market (they share TSMC with Apple for their CPUs), and overall unknown situation for AMD (will they stick with what they do now or abort?). If AMD just matches single thread performance of 9900k, there's not much point in switching. And Apple already uses their GPUs anyway, even if NVidia is still much better.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  Rome is Zen 2. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how it performs. It may still have the weaknesses of Zen 1, but it very well might not. AMD made a bunch of changes, including a complete overhaul of the memory system (no more NUMA). We'll know for sure when the product is actually out and we have independent benchmarks, but at this point you're just making things up and stating them as facts. That aside Epyc was already ahead on real high-end workloads like povray or NAMD ( http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/ http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/ ). Epyc also puts up top numbers on compilation performance and OpenSSL. So it already isn't as black & white as you're pretending anyway. MySQL/DMBS is not the only server workload that exists, even though it may be the only workload you specifically care about.
  - shereadsthenews 7y ago
kllrnohj 7y ago
I think it'd really only be surprising if the Mac Pro ignored these chips when they were already available. At this point, though, the Mac Pro is shipping before Rome is available. The timing is just off. Current Xeons are faster than current Epyc's on average, so the choice today makes sense. Particularly if Apple wants to avoid NUMA in these machines. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a Mac Pro refresh in 2 years to switch to Epyc, though, if current trends continue to hold.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  The Mac Pro uses the LGA3647 socket, which I assume will give it some headroom for incremental upgrades in the next few years before a major overhaul is due. Intel already offers 112-thread part for that socket.
  - juergbi 7y ago
    No, the 56C/112T Intel Xeon Platinum 9282 is a BGA part, it's not socketed. You can buy this niche product only as part of a server with liquid cooling. And the successors to Cascade Lake seem to switch to the LGA4189 socket to support 8 memory channels (Cooper Lake and Ice Lake), so I wouldn't expect any upgrades on LGA3647.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      You are right about the socket - ark.intel.com doesn't mention the socket for the two top-end parts. All others use the previous one. The good news is that the next generation Mac Pro will have a ton of extra memory bandwidth.
      - jlawer 7y ago
        The bad news is that the next generation Mac Pro will be released in 5+ years from now
- juergbi 7y ago
  No, Rome is expected to officially launch in early Q3 (it's already shipping to hyperscalers) and the Mac Pro is expected to ship in September. However, Zen 2 Threadripper would likely be a better fit for a workstation such as Mac Pro as it will (most likely) have higher clock speeds. The current Threadripper lineup doesn't support more than 256 GB RAM, though. I don't know whether the new Threadripper will support RDIMM/LRDIMM to compete with Xeon-W on memory capacity.
_ph_ 7y ago
Apple, like all big vendors, is trapped by the mobile processors. There is still no way around Intel there. Until they are willing to get rid of Intel Chips in their whole lineup, they can't offer AMD chips in their desktop machines. For the same reason, AMD didn't gain dominance in the times the Opteron ran circles around the Intel chips.
ucha 7y ago
Apple is very invested in Thunderbolt 3 which AMD chips can't provide.
- StrangeDoctor 7y ago
  Can’t is too strong, individual hackers have mixed the two. I’m sure Apple could make it work.
- hawski 7y ago
  Isn't the newest USB standard just Thunderbolt with different name?
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    Yes, USB 4
- squar1sm 7y ago
  AMD motherboards can do TB3. https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Taichi/#Specification https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Taichi/#Specification Supports an add-in card (connector). It's coming more generally since Intel dropped the licensing fees for TB. But yeah, only a few AMD boards do it (without hacks).
kitchenkarma 7y ago
People use Macs also to produce music and for this task the most important is single core performance. AMD is not great at this and it seems like the new line of CPUs could only get on par with Intel which isn't enough to convince professionals to move.
- bhouston 7y ago
  Ryzen 3 is fast on single core and Intel's various bugs have slowed them down. I believe they are now near parity.
  - kitchenkarma 7y ago
    I have all bug fixes turned off, so I don't suffer from that.
    - bhouston 7y ago
      I believe that represents the 1% or less of the population.

dpedu 7y ago

It's probably not just the chip, Intel provides financial incentives for manufacturers who build products around their chips.

astrodust 7y ago
That usually involves advertising, but Apple has turned down those offers. Not even an "Intel inside" sticker. Apple's relationship with Intel is pretty rocky now. Intel fumbled the i9, their Xeon chips aren't keeping up with AMD's workstation offerings, and their efforts to build a cellular modem chip utterly failed, leaving Apple at the mercy of Qualcomm for that part. I'm sure Apple will cut loose on Intel as soon as they can. They're probably tired of the bullshit.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  The financial incentives can cover other chip lines. Apple sells a ton of laptop CPUs and has some preferred partner status with Intel.
ksec 7y ago
>Intel provides financial incentives for manufacturers who build products around their chips. Yes, but I think the bigger picture, Apple needed Intel's iPhone modem for another year. May not be worth to damage the relationship, not to mention the design were likely finalise some time ago. I would not be surprised if the Sale of Modem Business to Apple will include agreement to keep Intel CPU on Mac. ( For the time being ) And I am sure AMD should be aiming EPYC at the Datacenter usage of Apple, which is huge in itself, rather then the market of Mac Pro. Although Apple using AMD on Mac would be a pretty big statement to the rest of the market.

uponcoffee 7y ago

There's probably bit of hardware lot it with Intel chips. Since they control the hardware, Apple probably has invested quite a bit into hardware specific optimizations that won't readily port to AMD chipsets. Also, AMD is only recently been a performance front runner - they might not hold on to that for long. In the short term it doesn't make sense to jump ship. For for general computation/ecosystems or for generation/device specific ventures (e.g. Consoles) it makes sense to turn with the tides.

stcredzero 7y ago
Since they control the hardware, Apple probably has invested quite a bit into hardware specific optimizations that won't readily port to AMD chipsets. It's in Apple's history to be able to move on from hardware. It's also in their history to make the wrong choices, necessitating the move.
- ufoolme 7y ago
  money is they’ll move in next 5 years to at least partial move to their own ARM chips, they already have to a degree.
  - Narishma 7y ago
    People have been saying that for the last 5 years if not longer.
zamalek 7y ago
Intel hasn't manufacturered bespoke chips for some years now, which is why all, but one, mainstream consoles have been AMD.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  Funnily enough the only "bespoke" Intel chip in recent times was Intel's own i7-8705G & i7-8809G used in the Hades Canyon NUC that replaced Intel's HD graphics with an AMD Vega M.

djsumdog 7y ago

Apple had probably been designing that for a long time. It's difficult to change something that custom once you start going down that path.

33degrees 7y ago

At this point, I think it's a lot more likely for Apple to switch to using their own chips, at least at the low end.

astrodust 7y ago
Given the JavaScript performance of the shipping units intended for mobile use, which is eclipsing the best of Intel's offerings, it might be possible that the A14 or A15 iteration actually surpasses Intel's chips at x86-64 code as well when run through a Rosetta-like compatibility layer. What if the high-end chip was ARM? It's not just about raw speed, it's about how much performance you can squeeze out of a particular thermal envelope, or compute per watt. If ARM offers 2x the performance per watt, doesn't matter what Intel's chips do with hypothetically unlimited power.
- floatboth 7y ago
  What would be awesome if instead of a Rosetta-like (or qemu-user-like) compatibility layer, the chip supported multiple ISAs natively. The only company that has the rights to do both ARMv8 and amd64 is.. AMD :)
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    That would be nice but NVidia got in legal trouble with x86 patents when they tried to do that with their Project Denver. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver
    - mappu 7y ago
      Most of the original x86_32 patents have now expired, that was sufficient to let Microsoft build the emulation layer for WoA. It might be more feasible now, except in the last ~5-10 years there's been a push to make many PC apps x86_64 only (e.g. Ubuntu dropping i386 support), so the benefit isn't quite as wide any more.

shereadsthenews 7y ago

Intel chips are still significantly better than AMD for many common workloads. If you are running SpecCPU or Cinebench in production then AMD might be right for you; in all other cases I urge you to run your own realistic benchmarks before buying. Intel’s “response” to Rome came out in April. It’s a 28-core chip that costs $12k. The reason Intel doesn’t feel price pressure here is they are still way ahead in performance on real high-end workloads like DBMSs etc.

jannyfer 7y ago
Sources?
bitL 7y ago
That used to be true for original EPYC but might not be true for Rome (outside AVX-512 workloads). IMO it's more due to continuous Apple + Intel collaboration and supply chain, AMD not being able to supply large market (they share TSMC with Apple for their CPUs), and overall unknown situation for AMD (will they stick with what they do now or abort?). If AMD just matches single thread performance of 9900k, there's not much point in switching. And Apple already uses their GPUs anyway, even if NVidia is still much better.
kllrnohj 7y ago
Rome is Zen 2. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how it performs. It may still have the weaknesses of Zen 1, but it very well might not. AMD made a bunch of changes, including a complete overhaul of the memory system (no more NUMA). We'll know for sure when the product is actually out and we have independent benchmarks, but at this point you're just making things up and stating them as facts. That aside Epyc was already ahead on real high-end workloads like povray or NAMD ( http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/ http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/ ). Epyc also puts up top numbers on compilation performance and OpenSSL. So it already isn't as black & white as you're pretending anyway. MySQL/DMBS is not the only server workload that exists, even though it may be the only workload you specifically care about.
- shereadsthenews 7y ago

kllrnohj 7y ago

I think it'd really only be surprising if the Mac Pro ignored these chips when they were already available. At this point, though, the Mac Pro is shipping before Rome is available. The timing is just off. Current Xeons are faster than current Epyc's on average, so the choice today makes sense. Particularly if Apple wants to avoid NUMA in these machines. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a Mac Pro refresh in 2 years to switch to Epyc, though, if current trends continue to hold.

rbanffy 7y ago
The Mac Pro uses the LGA3647 socket, which I assume will give it some headroom for incremental upgrades in the next few years before a major overhaul is due. Intel already offers 112-thread part for that socket.
- juergbi 7y ago
  No, the 56C/112T Intel Xeon Platinum 9282 is a BGA part, it's not socketed. You can buy this niche product only as part of a server with liquid cooling. And the successors to Cascade Lake seem to switch to the LGA4189 socket to support 8 memory channels (Cooper Lake and Ice Lake), so I wouldn't expect any upgrades on LGA3647.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    You are right about the socket - ark.intel.com doesn't mention the socket for the two top-end parts. All others use the previous one. The good news is that the next generation Mac Pro will have a ton of extra memory bandwidth.
    - jlawer 7y ago
      The bad news is that the next generation Mac Pro will be released in 5+ years from now
juergbi 7y ago
No, Rome is expected to officially launch in early Q3 (it's already shipping to hyperscalers) and the Mac Pro is expected to ship in September. However, Zen 2 Threadripper would likely be a better fit for a workstation such as Mac Pro as it will (most likely) have higher clock speeds. The current Threadripper lineup doesn't support more than 256 GB RAM, though. I don't know whether the new Threadripper will support RDIMM/LRDIMM to compete with Xeon-W on memory capacity.

_ph_ 7y ago

Apple, like all big vendors, is trapped by the mobile processors. There is still no way around Intel there. Until they are willing to get rid of Intel Chips in their whole lineup, they can't offer AMD chips in their desktop machines. For the same reason, AMD didn't gain dominance in the times the Opteron ran circles around the Intel chips.

ucha 7y ago

Apple is very invested in Thunderbolt 3 which AMD chips can't provide.

StrangeDoctor 7y ago
Can’t is too strong, individual hackers have mixed the two. I’m sure Apple could make it work.
hawski 7y ago
Isn't the newest USB standard just Thunderbolt with different name?
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  Yes, USB 4
squar1sm 7y ago
AMD motherboards can do TB3. https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Taichi/#Specification https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Taichi/#Specification Supports an add-in card (connector). It's coming more generally since Intel dropped the licensing fees for TB. But yeah, only a few AMD boards do it (without hacks).

kitchenkarma 7y ago

People use Macs also to produce music and for this task the most important is single core performance. AMD is not great at this and it seems like the new line of CPUs could only get on par with Intel which isn't enough to convince professionals to move.

bhouston 7y ago
Ryzen 3 is fast on single core and Intel's various bugs have slowed them down. I believe they are now near parity.
- kitchenkarma 7y ago
  I have all bug fixes turned off, so I don't suffer from that.
  - bhouston 7y ago
    I believe that represents the 1% or less of the population.