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The approach they took is certainly enough to satisfy the video and related markets. It won't help those who need truly staggering amounts of ram for their work

The approach they took is certainly enough to satisfy the video and related markets. It won't help those who need truly staggering amounts of ram for their workloads. It may not be a big use case for the Intel Mac Pro, but it a use case nonetheless. For video editing, color grading, audio editing, 3D animation, etc. this new machine seems really strong. I am not sure if there is anything beyond that, however.

WWLink 3y ago
I think that was deliberate. I am kinda amused at how they keep on narrowing the scope of what the mac pro is intended to be used for lol.
- gumby 3y ago
  They probably have very good data on how their machines are used, and are optimizing for the fat part of the market. This may not be a great machine for training models, which is what I happen care about (I couldn't care less about video). I wonder how big the model generation market actually is though.
  - rodgerd 3y ago
    I do wonder in these conversations how many people are actual users of these things - I'm not, I got a Studio last year to manage my photography addition better, and the Pro is pointless for that - but you'd assume that Apple have talked to major Pro users, and they've said things like "oh, no for training a model I just spin up terabyte instances on AWS, why would I do that on a workstation?", or whatever.
    - gumby 3y ago
      I assume the audience is the Disneys/Pixars of the world, and the people making ads, etc in 8K. They presumably need that I/O. For them the absurdly expensive monitor is a rounding error, and the extra local disk is worth it over running over a SAN. Perhaps also some computationally adjacent applications like CFD or weather prediction. I struggle to think of anyone else with such an application. There are applications that could benefit from the features but it wouldn’t be cost effective (e.g. something more systolic where it’s better to rent cloud service, even if it were nominally slower, because once you’re done you don’t have the hardware lying around).
USB5 3y ago
>3D animation Disagree. All the good GPU-based rendering engines need CUDA, and none of them are optimized for Apple silicon. Octane (the one in the demo) is trash, only good for fancy titles and that sort of thing.
- haldean 3y ago
  Octane, Redshift, and eevee/Cycles all work on Metal, and Renderman and Mantra are CPU-only for now -- RM/Mantra have beta-versions that are GPU enabled, and Karma is nvidia-only and RM XPU doesn't work on macs at all yet, but I don't think many people are using either in production very much yet. I think the only GPU renderer people are using in production pipelines that's really locked to NVIDIA chips is Arnold, right?
  - USB5 3y ago
    I can't speak for cycles, but Redshift is very slow on OpenCL. I've never heard of using it on Metal. I know it was written for CUDA and didn't even support OpenCL for a long time. Do you know how it runs on Metal? I don't think V-Ray GPU will run on anything but Nvidia, and if it will then it's definitely slow.
    - haldean 3y ago
      Ah yeah forgot about V-Ray. I haven't tried Redshift on Metal, nope; all my work has been Renderman and Cycles recently. Curious to hear how well it works, people online seem to say it's pretty fast but hard to tell marketing copy from actual performance when it comes to renderers. FWIW Cycles is definitely slower on my M2 than it was on my 3080 but it's not a huge difference -- maybe 20% slower? I still have to let the render run overnight either way haha.
      - USB5 3y ago
        Interesting. Which M2 machine are you using?

WWLink 3y ago

I think that was deliberate. I am kinda amused at how they keep on narrowing the scope of what the mac pro is intended to be used for lol.

gumby 3y ago
They probably have very good data on how their machines are used, and are optimizing for the fat part of the market. This may not be a great machine for training models, which is what I happen care about (I couldn't care less about video). I wonder how big the model generation market actually is though.
- rodgerd 3y ago
  I do wonder in these conversations how many people are actual users of these things - I'm not, I got a Studio last year to manage my photography addition better, and the Pro is pointless for that - but you'd assume that Apple have talked to major Pro users, and they've said things like "oh, no for training a model I just spin up terabyte instances on AWS, why would I do that on a workstation?", or whatever.
  - gumby 3y ago
    I assume the audience is the Disneys/Pixars of the world, and the people making ads, etc in 8K. They presumably need that I/O. For them the absurdly expensive monitor is a rounding error, and the extra local disk is worth it over running over a SAN. Perhaps also some computationally adjacent applications like CFD or weather prediction. I struggle to think of anyone else with such an application. There are applications that could benefit from the features but it wouldn’t be cost effective (e.g. something more systolic where it’s better to rent cloud service, even if it were nominally slower, because once you’re done you don’t have the hardware lying around).

USB5 3y ago

>3D animation Disagree. All the good GPU-based rendering engines need CUDA, and none of them are optimized for Apple silicon. Octane (the one in the demo) is trash, only good for fancy titles and that sort of thing.

haldean 3y ago
Octane, Redshift, and eevee/Cycles all work on Metal, and Renderman and Mantra are CPU-only for now -- RM/Mantra have beta-versions that are GPU enabled, and Karma is nvidia-only and RM XPU doesn't work on macs at all yet, but I don't think many people are using either in production very much yet. I think the only GPU renderer people are using in production pipelines that's really locked to NVIDIA chips is Arnold, right?
- USB5 3y ago
  I can't speak for cycles, but Redshift is very slow on OpenCL. I've never heard of using it on Metal. I know it was written for CUDA and didn't even support OpenCL for a long time. Do you know how it runs on Metal? I don't think V-Ray GPU will run on anything but Nvidia, and if it will then it's definitely slow.
  - haldean 3y ago
    Ah yeah forgot about V-Ray. I haven't tried Redshift on Metal, nope; all my work has been Renderman and Cycles recently. Curious to hear how well it works, people online seem to say it's pretty fast but hard to tell marketing copy from actual performance when it comes to renderers. FWIW Cycles is definitely slower on my M2 than it was on my 3080 but it's not a huge difference -- maybe 20% slower? I still have to let the render run overnight either way haha.
    - USB5 3y ago
      Interesting. Which M2 machine are you using?