7 ms·

Intel's 12-Core Xeon With 30 MB Of L3: The New Mac Pro's CPU?

30 points by yapcguy 13y ago

yapcguy 13y ago
What I get from this is that the new Mac Pro is going to be expensive - the older generation Sandy Bridge Intel Xeon E5-2687W still costs > $1900.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  That's the retail price. Apple would probably get a relatively good discount.
  - loser777 13y ago
    Consider a current generation Mac Pro matched spec-for-spec with BYOC prices. Which costs more for YOU (not Apple)?
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      I recently bought a PC, rediscovered the joys of being paralysed by the possibility that every bloody program I could download probably contained some sort of malware, nagware, searchware, spyware or crapware, and then sold my PC and paid the goddamn markup like I should have done in the first place. The two or three occasions on which I played computer games did not cover the time lost to trying to do work on a platform which doesn't have the tools I needed.
      - yuhong 13y ago
        What would stop vendors creating such programs for Mac too?
        jacques_chester 13y ago
        I don't really give a hot damn why. The difference is that with a Mac it's a hypothetical and with Windows it happened to me twice in the first week.
        rednukleus 13y ago
        So put linux on there. Then again, if you are so bad with computers that you are "paralysed by the possibility of nagware" then maybe you should be on ChromeOS or something.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        OS X works fine thanks. Leave Windows and Linux to people who want to worry about their computer.
        noir_lord 13y ago
        Nice FUD attempt there. I run all my computers on Linux (servers and desktops), I don't worry about them.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Do you ever have to break out a shell to maintain them?
        vertex-four 13y ago
        Personally, I run a Debian Wheezy desktop, and after the first week I haven't needed to touch a shell. (And most "regular users" wouldn't need to touch the shell that first week.) Updates happen near-automatically, I get a dialog pop up when they happen that asks me to enter the root password and confirm that I'd like packages X, Y and Z to be updated. Those updates have never broken my system. When I upgrade my system from Wheezy to... I think it's Jessie, next, I probably will have to drop down to the shell, however the instructions are listed quite cleanly on the Debian website and elsewhere. Ubuntu, otoh, goes the whole way and provides a GUI tool for upgrading the system.
      - thejosh 13y ago
        shrug. I got a new work PC on Friday and was up and running within 30 minutes, although I did need to upgrade the kernel via deb (which took around 2 minutes) as I'm running a Haswell CPU. I run Ubuntu with LXDE, simple case of copying over my old home directory (at impressive speeds), then resuming work. If you're afraid of the choice that Windows offers you, maybe you should just stick with Mac, as they have their own store which has a good selection of garden-wall-approved apps. Windows is a great operating system, and there is a reason why it has sold as many copies as it has.
        jacques_chester 13y ago
        A substantial fraction of the work is at a terminal, actually. My original plan was to run Linux. After 6 different distros I gave up and used Windows, after 2 months of that hell I threw it in and did what I ought to have done in the first place and paid OS X tax.
        yapcguy 13y ago
        Xubuntu works quite well. I recommend you try XFCE for the desktop.
    - rsynnott 13y ago
      A _current_ Mac Pro, today? You'd be significantly cheaper to build your own, as the Xeons it uses are now two generations out of date (there was never a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro; the current one is Nehalem/Westmere). However, when it came out, it was a different story; unless you went for the lowest end model (which pretty much nobody did, because why bother), a very substantial part of what you were paying was for Xeons.
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        It's faster than my old computer and a seamless upgrade. In retrospect I realised that's what I wanted. I charge enough per hour that I can quantify the value of the time I spent pissfarting around with Linux and Windows in order to "save" money. It came out as a loss. If I was playing brand-new computer games, or doing heavy duty simulations, or running complex renders etc -- sure. I'd bite the bullet and buy a current PC, the hardware is much better. But that's not my work. I don't like paying more for older stuff, but frankly it's not enough of a bother to waste so much time on in future.
        rsynnott 13y ago
        Oh, sure, not saying people shouldn't buy them. Just commenting on the pricing from the point of view of cost added by Xeon.
- DonGateley 13y ago
  Of course it's going to be expensive but it will be the last computer you ever need to buy, right? :-)
gilgoomesh 13y ago
No, this is not the new Mac Pro's CPU. This is an Ivy Bridge part. The new Mac Pro will be using a Haswell CPU. Apple have already mentioned that the new Mac Pro will ship with Thunderbolt 2. Intel have stated that the Falcon Ridge controllers that drive Thunderbolt 2 will be part of Haswell. Additionally, Apple have never used the "E" series for their CPUs and there's no indication to think they'll start with the new Mac Pro.
- yuhong 13y ago
  I think the new Mac Pro is going to ship in late 2013.
- reitzensteinm 13y ago
  The Xeon Haswell refresh isn't due for another year, and is expected to feature DDR4. The Ivy Bridge refresh in this article isn't even out yet. You could be right, but it would involve one hell of a bold move on Apple's part. They'd be getting Haswell Xeons a year before everyone else, to mildly improve a product they didn't even bother to upgrade to Sandy Bridge. In which case, why isn't it the 15 core version? More than likely, they've instead figured out some way of supporting Thunderbolt 2 in the Ivy refresh. By the way, this CPU is an EP, not an E (there is no 12 core E), which seems in line with the current specs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Confirmed_new_features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Con...
  - batgaijin 13y ago
    What the fuck is up with the desktop wait by the way?
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > Apple have already mentioned that the new Mac Pro will ship with Thunderbolt 2. Intel have stated that the Falcon Ridge controllers that drive Thunderbolt 2 will be part of Haswell. However, Thunderbolt 2 controllers will presumably be available as a separate part, too; Thunderbolt 1 controllers were, and that's what the first Thunderbolt Macs used. It seems unlikely that the Mac Pro will use a Haswell Xeon, as that would delay its release until at _least_ early next year; the Xeon is typically an architecture behind the consumer stuff.
miga 13y ago
30MB would fit in nice for scientific computing. Does it mean that Haswell Xeons will have 60MB?

30 points by yapcguy 13y ago

What I get from this is that the new Mac Pro is going to be expensive - the older generation Sandy Bridge Intel Xeon E5-2687W still costs > $1900.

jacques_chester 13y ago
That's the retail price. Apple would probably get a relatively good discount.
- loser777 13y ago
  Consider a current generation Mac Pro matched spec-for-spec with BYOC prices. Which costs more for YOU (not Apple)?
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I recently bought a PC, rediscovered the joys of being paralysed by the possibility that every bloody program I could download probably contained some sort of malware, nagware, searchware, spyware or crapware, and then sold my PC and paid the goddamn markup like I should have done in the first place. The two or three occasions on which I played computer games did not cover the time lost to trying to do work on a platform which doesn't have the tools I needed.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      What would stop vendors creating such programs for Mac too?
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        I don't really give a hot damn why. The difference is that with a Mac it's a hypothetical and with Windows it happened to me twice in the first week.
        rednukleus 13y ago
        So put linux on there. Then again, if you are so bad with computers that you are "paralysed by the possibility of nagware" then maybe you should be on ChromeOS or something.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        OS X works fine thanks. Leave Windows and Linux to people who want to worry about their computer.
        noir_lord 13y ago
        Nice FUD attempt there. I run all my computers on Linux (servers and desktops), I don't worry about them.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Do you ever have to break out a shell to maintain them?
        vertex-four 13y ago
        Personally, I run a Debian Wheezy desktop, and after the first week I haven't needed to touch a shell. (And most "regular users" wouldn't need to touch the shell that first week.) Updates happen near-automatically, I get a dialog pop up when they happen that asks me to enter the root password and confirm that I'd like packages X, Y and Z to be updated. Those updates have never broken my system. When I upgrade my system from Wheezy to... I think it's Jessie, next, I probably will have to drop down to the shell, however the instructions are listed quite cleanly on the Debian website and elsewhere. Ubuntu, otoh, goes the whole way and provides a GUI tool for upgrading the system.
    - thejosh 13y ago
      shrug. I got a new work PC on Friday and was up and running within 30 minutes, although I did need to upgrade the kernel via deb (which took around 2 minutes) as I'm running a Haswell CPU. I run Ubuntu with LXDE, simple case of copying over my old home directory (at impressive speeds), then resuming work. If you're afraid of the choice that Windows offers you, maybe you should just stick with Mac, as they have their own store which has a good selection of garden-wall-approved apps. Windows is a great operating system, and there is a reason why it has sold as many copies as it has.
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        A substantial fraction of the work is at a terminal, actually. My original plan was to run Linux. After 6 different distros I gave up and used Windows, after 2 months of that hell I threw it in and did what I ought to have done in the first place and paid OS X tax.
        yapcguy 13y ago
        Xubuntu works quite well. I recommend you try XFCE for the desktop.
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    A _current_ Mac Pro, today? You'd be significantly cheaper to build your own, as the Xeons it uses are now two generations out of date (there was never a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro; the current one is Nehalem/Westmere). However, when it came out, it was a different story; unless you went for the lowest end model (which pretty much nobody did, because why bother), a very substantial part of what you were paying was for Xeons.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      It's faster than my old computer and a seamless upgrade. In retrospect I realised that's what I wanted. I charge enough per hour that I can quantify the value of the time I spent pissfarting around with Linux and Windows in order to "save" money. It came out as a loss. If I was playing brand-new computer games, or doing heavy duty simulations, or running complex renders etc -- sure. I'd bite the bullet and buy a current PC, the hardware is much better. But that's not my work. I don't like paying more for older stuff, but frankly it's not enough of a bother to waste so much time on in future.
      - rsynnott 13y ago
        Oh, sure, not saying people shouldn't buy them. Just commenting on the pricing from the point of view of cost added by Xeon.
DonGateley 13y ago
Of course it's going to be expensive but it will be the last computer you ever need to buy, right? :-)

gilgoomesh 13y ago

No, this is not the new Mac Pro's CPU. This is an Ivy Bridge part. The new Mac Pro will be using a Haswell CPU. Apple have already mentioned that the new Mac Pro will ship with Thunderbolt 2. Intel have stated that the Falcon Ridge controllers that drive Thunderbolt 2 will be part of Haswell. Additionally, Apple have never used the "E" series for their CPUs and there's no indication to think they'll start with the new Mac Pro.

yuhong 13y ago
I think the new Mac Pro is going to ship in late 2013.
reitzensteinm 13y ago
The Xeon Haswell refresh isn't due for another year, and is expected to feature DDR4. The Ivy Bridge refresh in this article isn't even out yet. You could be right, but it would involve one hell of a bold move on Apple's part. They'd be getting Haswell Xeons a year before everyone else, to mildly improve a product they didn't even bother to upgrade to Sandy Bridge. In which case, why isn't it the 15 core version? More than likely, they've instead figured out some way of supporting Thunderbolt 2 in the Ivy refresh. By the way, this CPU is an EP, not an E (there is no 12 core E), which seems in line with the current specs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Confirmed_new_features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Con...
- batgaijin 13y ago
  What the fuck is up with the desktop wait by the way?
rsynnott 13y ago
> Apple have already mentioned that the new Mac Pro will ship with Thunderbolt 2. Intel have stated that the Falcon Ridge controllers that drive Thunderbolt 2 will be part of Haswell. However, Thunderbolt 2 controllers will presumably be available as a separate part, too; Thunderbolt 1 controllers were, and that's what the first Thunderbolt Macs used. It seems unlikely that the Mac Pro will use a Haswell Xeon, as that would delay its release until at _least_ early next year; the Xeon is typically an architecture behind the consumer stuff.

miga 13y ago

30MB would fit in nice for scientific computing. Does it mean that Haswell Xeons will have 60MB?