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This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. And to those questioning "

by exelius 12y ago

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. And to those questioning "Why would you use such expensive systems when commodity hardware is just as fast at half the price?" I would reply that the Mac Pro isn't all that expensive compared to most rack mount servers. If you're talking about a difference of $2000 per server, even across a full rack you're talking less than $100k depreciated over 5 years. Though Apple is sorely lacking a datacenter-capable rack mount solution. I've always felt they should just partner with system builders like HP or SuperMicro to build a "supported" OS X (e.g. certified hardware / drivers, management backplane, etc.) configuration for the datacenter market. It's kind of against the Apple way, but if this is a market they remotely care about, channel sales is the way to go.

cmurf 12y ago
Unfortunate for many who wish otherwise, it's very clearly a market they do not remotely care about.
- grecy 12y ago
  I think the opposite is true. They made the Rack mountable xServe for almost a decade. The fact they discontinued it shows that it's clearly not a market - customers didn't want it in enough volume to justify the product.
  - exelius 12y ago
    It's not that there wasn't a market, it's that the Xserve wasn't sold in the way that companies that buy lots of rack mount gear handle procurement. If they certified specific configurations of commodity hardware for OS X and sold them through existing reseller channels as a new SKU, it would be much easier. That said, there's probably not much of a market for it anymore since we've gone a few years without an OS X rack mount machine and people have found other solutions.
ansible 12y ago
This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. If they are GPU limited... A full 4U rack of Mac Pros is 8 AMD Fire GPUs (6GB VRAM each), 256GB main RAM, 48 2.7GHz Xeon cores (using the 12-core option), and 4TB of SSD. 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt2. Let's set aside differences in GPU and processor performance; we're just looking at the base stats. All for about $36K USD, not including the rack itself. An alternative is the SuperMicro 4027GR-TR: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/4027/SYS-4027GR-TR.cfm http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/4027/SYS-4027GR... So, maxed out, you've got 8 Nvidia Tesla K80 cards (dual GPU), 1.5TB RAM, 28 2.6GHz Xeon cores, and a lot of storage (24 hot-swap bays). That's in a 4U rack too. Call it about $13K USD for the server, and $5K per GPU. Plus a little storage, call it about $56K USD with 10G Ethernet. The SuperMicro system is designed to be remotely managed. Each GPU has double the VRAM of the AMD Fire ones (12GB vs. 6GB). I don't know the exact performance figures of the AMD Fire vs. the Kepler GK210, but I'm sure the Fire it isn't nearly as good. And you've got twice as many Nvidia chips on top of that. At some point its going to get cheaper to re-write the software...
- exelius 12y ago
  So for $56k USD you get a system that is roughly twice as fast as the 4x Mac Pro solution... but also costs twice as much? The numbers actually don't work out too badly. At least, better than I would have initially assumed. Density is really the only area where the 4x Mac Pro solution loses hands down.
  - ansible 12y ago
    There's also local storage. The SuperMicro box can host a lot more storage locally than the Mac Pros can do easily (you'd need external Thunderbolt2 drives), and it can make sense to run RAID-10 or something to get more speed.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- skuhn 12y ago
  The Tesla K80 didn't exist when I started this project, but to do some quick math: K80 gflop/s: 8740 2x FirePro D500 gflop/s: 3500 K80 runs about $4900 a card, whereas the entire Mac Pro (list price) is $4000. So it's 2.5x the performance at easily 2x the cost if not more. You're right that there is a cost advantage to going with commodity server hardware, but I don't think it's as great as most people think in this particular case. It's also far from free for us to do the necessary engineering work, and not just in terms of money. It would basically mean pressing pause on feature development at a crucial time in the company's life, and that just isn't the right move.

by exelius 12y ago

cmurf 12y ago

Unfortunate for many who wish otherwise, it's very clearly a market they do not remotely care about.

grecy 12y ago
I think the opposite is true. They made the Rack mountable xServe for almost a decade. The fact they discontinued it shows that it's clearly not a market - customers didn't want it in enough volume to justify the product.
- exelius 12y ago
  It's not that there wasn't a market, it's that the Xserve wasn't sold in the way that companies that buy lots of rack mount gear handle procurement. If they certified specific configurations of commodity hardware for OS X and sold them through existing reseller channels as a new SKU, it would be much easier. That said, there's probably not much of a market for it anymore since we've gone a few years without an OS X rack mount machine and people have found other solutions.

ansible 12y ago

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. If they are GPU limited... A full 4U rack of Mac Pros is 8 AMD Fire GPUs (6GB VRAM each), 256GB main RAM, 48 2.7GHz Xeon cores (using the 12-core option), and 4TB of SSD. 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt2. Let's set aside differences in GPU and processor performance; we're just looking at the base stats. All for about $36K USD, not including the rack itself. An alternative is the SuperMicro 4027GR-TR: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/4027/SYS-4027GR-TR.cfm http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/4027/SYS-4027GR... So, maxed out, you've got 8 Nvidia Tesla K80 cards (dual GPU), 1.5TB RAM, 28 2.6GHz Xeon cores, and a lot of storage (24 hot-swap bays). That's in a 4U rack too. Call it about $13K USD for the server, and $5K per GPU. Plus a little storage, call it about $56K USD with 10G Ethernet. The SuperMicro system is designed to be remotely managed. Each GPU has double the VRAM of the AMD Fire ones (12GB vs. 6GB). I don't know the exact performance figures of the AMD Fire vs. the Kepler GK210, but I'm sure the Fire it isn't nearly as good. And you've got twice as many Nvidia chips on top of that. At some point its going to get cheaper to re-write the software...

exelius 12y ago
So for $56k USD you get a system that is roughly twice as fast as the 4x Mac Pro solution... but also costs twice as much? The numbers actually don't work out too badly. At least, better than I would have initially assumed. Density is really the only area where the 4x Mac Pro solution loses hands down.
- ansible 12y ago
  There's also local storage. The SuperMicro box can host a lot more storage locally than the Mac Pros can do easily (you'd need external Thunderbolt2 drives), and it can make sense to run RAID-10 or something to get more speed.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
skuhn 12y ago
The Tesla K80 didn't exist when I started this project, but to do some quick math: K80 gflop/s: 8740 2x FirePro D500 gflop/s: 3500 K80 runs about $4900 a card, whereas the entire Mac Pro (list price) is $4000. So it's 2.5x the performance at easily 2x the cost if not more. You're right that there is a cost advantage to going with commodity server hardware, but I don't think it's as great as most people think in this particular case. It's also far from free for us to do the necessary engineering work, and not just in terms of money. It would basically mean pressing pause on feature development at a crucial time in the company's life, and that just isn't the right move.