News Mac Pro With Apple Silicon Won't Have Upgradeable RAM, Report Claims

[Admin]

A report from Bloomberg suggests Apple's new Mac Pro will appear identical to the 2019 model, and that the RAM won't be upgradeable.

Mac Pro With Apple Silicon Won't Have Upgradeable RAM, Report Claims : Read more

 

[Giroro]

There probably isn't a lot of overlap in the Venn Diagram of "People who think they need a $20k Apple workstation to run Photoshop" and "People who know how to slot RAM into a motherboard".
But I have no idea who would actually need to spend $20k+ on a Mac Pro. I don't think Apple even knows. I assume its "nobody".

 

[Heat_Fan89]

There probably isn't a lot of overlap in the Venn Diagram of "People who think they need a $20k Apple workstation to run Photoshop" and "People who know how to slot RAM into a motherboard".
But I have no idea who would actually need to spend $20k+ on a Mac Pro. I don't think Apple even knows. I assume its "nobody".

Oh they know who will spend $20K on an Mac Pro. There target audience are Apple elitist who hate Microsoft and Windows. What I find really funny are those that hate Windows but wish Parallels was available for Apple silicon.

 

[hotaru.hino]

From the perspective of company logistics, and I'm being an armchair logistics person, the lack of upgradeable RAM isn't a problem per se since the company will probably just get something overkill anyway (I had a work computer that had a high end video card... and none of the work I did required it). The problem is the lack of replaceable line items. Granted I don't think integrated RAM is more prone to failure, but it is still one more thing you can't replace if something goes wrong.

 

[EricC-Clearwater]

Oh they know who will spend $20K on an Mac Pro. There target audience are Apple elitist who hate Microsoft and Windows. What I find really funny are those that hate Windows but wish Parallels was available for Apple silicon.

Parallels is good to have since really extends the usefulness of one device. I make music in Mac, but I develop in windows. I rather never have to enter Windows, but sometimes I have to handle an issue and my work laptop is not around. I also run linux distros on Parallels on my Mac for software development reasons (Mac Server is no longer (thank goodness) and almost all cloud based server offerings are in linux at least - windows for those who want to pay up the nose). Many times if I want to mass update files or do other things, I will open Powershell via Parallels, make my changes and then go back to working on the Mac. Finder is just not as functional, IMO.

 

[bit_user]

I suppose it's possible that somewhere, Apple is writing drivers for AMD or Nvidia's cards.

As mentioned in the article, the 2019 Mac Pro has updated GPU offerings, including the RDNA2 range. AMD will certainly still be under contract to maintain drivers for their GPUs, under OS X. So, the obvious solution would be for AMD to provide dGPUs for the new Mac Pro, also.

What's sort of interesting is that AMD would have to port its drivers to ARM. However, AMD drivers on Linux will work on both ARM, POWER, RISC-V, and other CPU ISAs.

So, I wonder if this will mean that the new Mac actually has less RAM than the max configuration of the 2019 model. Does anyone know? That would seem to be an issue, for some.

Dropping down to the implementation details, it seems almost certain that Apple will have to implement an external PCIe switch, in order to support SSDs + PCIe-based peripherals. I doubt the M2 Ultra would have anywhere near enough lanes, especially if they were planning another version that's 2x as large!

 

[camtasia_kid]

Very disappointing if true. Flexibility and extension of investment are very important to true professionals. I suppose the Tesla/latte/show off m,y Fauci Ouchy crowd might plunk down $25k to run Safari at blazing speeds; however, I could outfit a small office with 5 Mac Studio Ultras, and vastly increase productivity vs one, leviathan, inflexible Mac Pro. Wondering if we are even an Apple shop/customer any longer?

 

[bit_user]

BTW, what's with all these Apple leaks? I guess they've chilled out about leakers, since the Jobs era? Didn't Jobs cancel the GPU contract with Nvidia over leaks, or something like that?

 

[Amdlova]

With today tech shinigamis think will use vram than dram... unify memory something like that, some graphics from amd and nvidia surpass 48gb...

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Oh they know who will spend $20K on an Mac Pro. There target audience are Apple elitist who hate Microsoft and Windows. What I find really funny are those that hate Windows but wish Parallels was available for Apple silicon.

It's been for over a year, same for vmware fusion, and Apple even has their own hypervisor in beta, for free, on M series macs:

https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-m1/

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor

 

[thestryker]

What's sort of interesting is that AMD would have to port its drivers to ARM. However, AMD drivers on Linux will work on both ARM, POWER, RISC-V, and other CPU ISAs.

They did do work with Samsung using RDNA 2 with one of the Exynos CPUs so maybe they've already done some native software work. I too think they would be the most likely third party vendor for Apple with regards to graphics.

 

[bit_user]

They did do work with Samsung using RDNA 2 with one of the Exynos CPUs so maybe they've already done some native software work.

That's going to be their Linux driver stack, I presume (given Samsung makes Android phones, and Android uses the Linux kernel).

It's an open question how much code their MacOS driver shares with their Linux stack, but I wouldn't assume it's much at all. The Linux driver is split into kernel and userspace portions. The kernel portion is probably very specific to the Linux kernel, while the userspace portion will tend to be specific to the APIs it supports: OpenGL and Vulkan on Linux, Metal on MacOS. Then again, I don't even know how much of the userspace portion AMD would maintain, on MacOS. It could be all Apple's, for all I know.

Regardless, it's likely not a big deal... just something I thought was interesting.

 

[palladin9479]

There probably isn't a lot of overlap in the Venn Diagram of "People who think they need a $20k Apple workstation to run Photoshop" and "People who know how to slot RAM into a motherboard".
But I have no idea who would actually need to spend $20k+ on a Mac Pro. I don't think Apple even knows. I assume its "nobody".

Again I am reminding of ONN's video on apple.

"I will buy anything shiny with an apple logo"

Might as well have the article say "Gucci decides to release new bag with non-replaceable handle". Those who would buy a Mac Pro wouldn't be replacing memory anyway, they would hire someone else to do that or just buy a new one.

 

[palladin9479]

That's going to be their Linux driver stack, I presume (given Samsung makes Android phones, and Android uses the Linux kernel).

It's an open question how much code their MacOS driver shares with their Linux stack, but I wouldn't assume it's much at all. The Linux driver is split into kernel and userspace portions. The kernel portion is probably very specific to the Linux kernel, while the userspace portion will tend to be specific to the APIs it supports: OpenGL and Vulkan on Linux, Metal on MacOS. Then again, I don't even know how much of the userspace portion AMD would maintain, on MacOS. It could be all Apple's, for all I know.

Regardless, it's likely not a big deal... just something I thought was interesting.

MacOS is a heavily modified version of FreeBSD and there exists FreeBSD drivers for AMD and Nvidia's products. Apple likely just takes the source code from AMD / NVidia and modifies the existing BSD driver with any exclusive features they want.

 

[bit_user]

"I will buy anything shiny with an apple logo"

For sure there are some people in this camp. However, I think a lot of the Mac Pro users are using these machines for business, and they have specific needs that might not be well-served by the revised spec. One wonders how many will abandon the MacOS ship, if the new Mac Pro lacks the same expandability & max memory configuration as the old one.

Those who would buy a Mac Pro wouldn't be replacing memory anyway, they would hire someone else to do that or just buy a new one.

That's irrelevant if the initial shipping configuration doesn't even have as much RAM as you need.

 

[bit_user]

MacOS is a heavily modified version of FreeBSD

That's sort of what I used to think. But, even decades ago, there were enough differences at the kernel level that you couldn't easily port drivers. From this (archived) page:

"The kernel extension mechanism used by OS X is completely different. The OS X driver layer, the I/O Kit, is an object-oriented driver stack written in C++."​

​

https://developer.apple.com/library...win/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/BSD/BSD.html​

(see: Differences between OS X and BSD; note copyright date)​

I think MacOS probably now has a lot more differences than similarities with BSD. For starters, the kernel itself is fundamentally different, being Mach-based. Also, note how that page starts (emphasis added):

"The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is derived primarily from FreeBSD "​

That's a very different statement than what you said.

there exists FreeBSD drivers for AMD and Nvidia's products.

From what I've heard, support for new AMD GPUs tends to lag, on FreeBSD. The newest that's listed on here is Vega, but I'm pretty sure it's out of date?

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/AMD-GPU-Matrix​

As for Nvidia, it seems they occasionally release closed-source driver packs for FreeBSD.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/187164/en-us/​

Looks like they also have driver packs for MacOS, although if you look at the list of supported hardware the newest is from 2013:

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/159341/​

Anyway, all of this is moot. Apple has enough money to throw at the problem. I'm sure AMD will oblige any requests they receive to extend support on ARM, as long as the price is right.