{"id":39597,"date":"2023-06-05T16:39:39","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T20:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=39597"},"modified":"2023-07-10T15:15:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T19:15:12","slug":"mac-pro-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/05\/mac-pro-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac Pro 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/2023\/06\/apple-unveils-new-mac-studio-and-brings-apple-silicon-to-mac-pro\/\">Apple<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/05\/apple-introduces-new-mac-pro-with-m2-ultra-chip-available-to-order-starting-today\/\">MacRumors<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=36199639\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/2023\/06\/apple-unveils-new-mac-studio-and-brings-apple-silicon-to-mac-pro\/\">\n<p>Mac Pro, now featuring M2 Ultra, combines the unprecedented performance of Apple&rsquo;s most powerful chip with the versatility of PCIe expansion. Mac Pro is up to 3x faster than the previous-generation Intel-based model. Featuring up to 192GB of unified memory, Mac Studio with M2 Ultra and Mac Pro have far more memory than the most advanced workstation graphics cards, taking on demanding workloads other systems can&rsquo;t even process. The new Mac Pro completes the Mac transition to Apple silicon and, together with the rest of Apple&rsquo;s pro systems, gives users the most powerful and capable lineup of pro products Apple has ever offered.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The wide array of connectivity in Mac Pro gets even better with eight built-in Thunderbolt 4 ports &mdash; six on the back and two on the top &mdash; which is twice as many as before. It supports up to six Pro Display XDRs, along with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, which come to the new Mac Pro for fast wireless connectivity. Additionally, Mac Pro includes three USB-A ports, two higher-bandwidth HDMI ports that support up to 8K resolution and up to 240Hz frame rates, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, and a headphone jack that enables the use of high-impedance headphones.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Available in both tower and rack-mounted enclosures, Mac Pro (Tower Enclosure) starts at $6,999 (U.S.) and $6,599 (U.S.) for education. Mac Pro (Rack Enclosure) starts at $7,499 (U.S.) and $6,999 (U.S.) for education.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There&rsquo;s no quad chip, and the RAM and GPU are no longer upgradeable.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/05\/mac-pro-2023-ssd-upgrade-kits\/\">Juli Clover<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/05\/mac-pro-2023-ssd-upgrade-kits\/\">\n<p>Following the introduction of the Apple silicon Mac Pro, Apple today added SSD upgrade kits to its online store. The kits offer 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB of storage space for $1,000, $1,600, and $2,800, respectively.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/05\/apple-m2-ultra\/\">Apple M2 Ultra<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/05\/mac-studio-2023\/\">Mac Studio 2023<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/05\/macbook-air-15-inch-2023\/\">MacBook Air 15-inch 2023<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/14\/apples-2022-deadlines\/\">Apple&rsquo;s 2022 Deadlines<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/03\/mac-pro-2019\/\">Mac Pro 2019<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-06\">Update (2023-06-06): <a href=\"https:\/\/512pixels.net\/2023\/06\/i-have-some-questions-about-the-new-new-mac-pro\/\">Stephen Hackett<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/512pixels.net\/2023\/06\/i-have-some-questions-about-the-new-new-mac-pro\/\"><p>However, it also comes with all the downsides of being an SoC. Gone is the 1.5 TB RAM limit of the 2019 Mac Pro, but more importantly, gone is the ability to add RAM after purchase. The same thing goes for upgrading the GPU.<\/p><p>The truth in 2023 is that Mac Pro you buy today will be the same core machine in five years, and that&rsquo;s just not something we&rsquo;re used to seeing when it comes to this machine.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Several of us who cover Apple have heard that there are those inside the company that did not want this machine to see the light of day, believing the Mac Studio to be enough to hold down the high-end of the Mac line. Seeing the machine that Apple announced this week, I think they may eventually get their way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-07\">Update (2023-06-07): <a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/apple-silicon-mac-pro\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/apple-silicon-mac-pro\/\">\n<p>And, if you do choose to compare this Mac Pro to the Intel model it replaces, there are some changes which are difficult to swallow. It is $1,000 <em>more expensive<\/em> than the one it replaces. The outgoing model was endlessly upgradeable with <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-ca\/HT210748\">dedicated video encoding hardware<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-ca\/HT210408\">graphics processors<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-ca\/HT210103\">up to 1.5 terabytes<\/a> of memory. The M2 Mac Pro appears to support none of those things. Apple has tried to preempt criticism by claiming this version effectively has the power of seven Afterburner video encoding cards built in, but there are no known differences between the M2 Ultra in the Pro and the one in the Studio. Even its PCIe slots are being marketed for comparatively less demanding workflows:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-09\">Update (2023-06-09): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110492739011493220\">Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110492739011493220\">\n<p>The new Mac Pro is hilariously disappointing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@mikepj\/110500191450227446\">Mike Piatek-Jimenez<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@mikepj\/110500191450227446\">\n<p>I&rsquo;m a little surprised the Apple silicon Mac Pro didn&rsquo;t go directly to PCIe 5 support. That&rsquo;s been standard on desktop and server PC hardware for months now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@tolmasky\/110493479646306784\">Francisco Tolmasky<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@tolmasky\/110493479646306784\"><p>The best part about the Mac Pro is that it looks like a &ldquo;platform&rdquo; that can be updated yearly. They can just keep putting the new M-whatever chip in it (&amp; hopefully eventually figure out how to quadruple it vs. just having the Ultra). Ideally they can bump it up to PCIe 5 and Thunderbolt 5 &ldquo;easily&rdquo; too. In other words, the fact that this is so similar to the Mac Studio means it hopefully won&rsquo;t suffer the same fate as the previous &ldquo;one-hit wonder&rdquo; Mac Pros. Looking forward to M3 Mac Pro&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/mac-studio-vs-mac-pro\/\">Hartley Charlton<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/mac-studio-vs-mac-pro\/\"><p>The main reason to buy the  Mac Pro  is to be able to use its seven PCIe expansion slots add the likes of digital signal processing (DSP) cards, serial digital interface (SDI) I\/O cards, additional networking, and built-in storage. This also allows a user to change some of their  Mac Pro&rsquo;s hardware over time, and Apple is offering additional do-it-yourself SSD upgrade kits and wheels for the device.<\/p><p>If you require multiple Ethernet ports, more than six Thunderbolt ports, or more than two USB-A ports to connect a large number of peripherals, only the  Mac Pro  can facilitate this. Otherwise, since the  Mac Studio  can be configured with the same  M2  Ultra chip as the  Mac Pro, there is no reason to buy the more expensive desktop machine, and most users will be better off buying the  Mac Studio  and saving $3,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/atp.fm\/538\">Accidental Tech Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-13\">Update (2023-06-13): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/11\/apple-exec-discusses-mac-pro-lack-of-egpu-support\/\">Joe Rossignol<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=36287177\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/11\/apple-exec-discusses-mac-pro-lack-of-egpu-support\/\"><p>Apple&rsquo;s hardware engineering chief John Ternus briefly touched on the matter in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2023\/06\/10\/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2023\/\">interview with <em>Daring Fireball<\/em>&rsquo;s John Gruber<\/a> last week, explaining that expandable GPU support for Apple silicon is not something that the company has pursued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/mac-pro-is-not-making-windows-workstation-folks-nervous-the-mac-studio-is\">Desire Athow<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/mac-pro-is-not-making-windows-workstation-folks-nervous-the-mac-studio-is\">\n<p>Apple specifically calls out rendering performance in Octane, Redshift and Blender in the keynote and, according to Kelly Shipman, the company&rsquo;s resident hardware expert, the lack of GPU support is very limiting for rendering.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rjonesy\/status\/1667965603225931776\">Ryan Jones<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rjonesy\/status\/1667965603225931776\">\n<p>Mac Pro as-is is certainly dead. The empty tower is SO obviously just cuz Ternus said so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/social.treehouse.systems\/@marcan\/110493886026958843\">Hector Martin<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/social.treehouse.systems\/@marcan\/110493886026958843\">\n<p>Yeah okay so they are totally cheating.<\/p>\n<p>They have two big PCIe switches and are hanging everything off of them.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>So basically 5 of the slots including both x16 ones are bottlenecked into a single x16 gen4 channel. Boo.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110521853812788619\">Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110521853812788619\"><p>Is Apple just intentionally trying to kill the Mac Pro?<\/p>\n<p>This should be a $3000 system. PCIe bandwidth is one of the big reasons to buy a workstation at workstation prices. Along with all the other changes Apple made - there is no reason anyone should buy this thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110521888900604030\">Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110521888900604030\"><p>The PC I just build for a fraction of the cost of the Mac Pro has&#8230;<\/p><ul><li>20 PCIe Gen5 lanes compared to the 16 PCIe Gen 4 lanes on the Mac Pro (and 20 lanes is already pretty minimal.)<\/li><li>A 13900k which beats M2 Ultra in both single threaded and multithreaded workflows.<\/li><li>A GeForce 4090k which is solidly faster than M2 Ultra.<\/li><li>Expandability<\/li><\/ul><p>All this for a fraction of the cost of the Mac Pro.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@bshanks\/110522058821465865\">Brendan Shanks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@bshanks\/110522058821465865\">\n<p>I guess the new one doesn&rsquo;t even have ECC RAM?<\/p>\n<p>Honestly it feels more coherent to think of this as the &ldquo;Mac Studio Pro&rdquo;, and there just isn&rsquo;t an actual Mac Pro anymore. A casualty of the ASi transition.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-15\">Update (2023-06-15): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110540569381874159\">Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@colincornaby\/110540569381874159\">\n<p>When the 2019 Mac Pro was released - Apple implied that the Afterburner card was reprogrammable and could be used for other things. I wonder what happened with that. That seems like something that could have still been useful in the new Mac Pro - even though M2 has ProRes encoding pretty well covered.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2023\/06\/14\/mac-pro-pci-card-slots\/\">Ben Lovejoy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2023\/06\/14\/mac-pro-pci-card-slots\/\"><p>So what can you plug into them? Apple has <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT213661\">listed the main options<\/a>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Some have questioned the limited power availability if you want to make full use of the card slots. That&rsquo;s because each slot is limited to 75W of power. However, Apple says there&rsquo;s a solution to this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-16\">Update (2023-06-16): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@siracusa\/110550569746675660\">John Siracusa<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@siracusa\/110550569746675660\">\n<p>I&rsquo;ve had over a week to digest the new Mac Pro. I try to put it in perspective on the latest episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/atp.fm\/539\">@atpfm<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"mac-pro-2023-update-2023-06-27\">Update (2023-06-27): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23770770\/apple-mac-pro-m2-ultra-2023-review\">Monica Chin<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23770770\/apple-mac-pro-m2-ultra-2023-review\">\n<p>I wanted to know whether Apple&rsquo;s purported target demographic &mdash; people who spend their days animating, making visual effects, and doing various other tasks generally associated with big, powerful computers &mdash; were actually interested in purchasing this machine. So I asked a bunch of them, and the answer, basically across the board, was no. Not because the Mac Pro is bad but because Apple&rsquo;s other computers, namely its laptops, have just gotten too good.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"the-trouble-with-mac-gaming-update-2023-07-10\">Update (2023-07-10): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/atp.fm\/539\">Accidental Tech Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple (MacRumors, Hacker News): Mac Pro, now featuring M2 Ultra, combines the unprecedented performance of Apple&rsquo;s most powerful chip with the versatility of PCIe expansion. Mac Pro is up to 3x faster than the previous-generation Intel-based model. Featuring up to 192GB of unified memory, Mac Studio with M2 Ultra and Mac Pro have far more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-06-05T20:39:42Z","apple_news_api_id":"54ad6c54-a558-4245-afb8-25f7bb64a969","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-07-10T19:15:15Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AVK1sVKVYQkWvuCX3u2SpaQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1750,2307,2395,30,652,2223,183,1221],"class_list":["post-39597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-event","tag-apple-hardware-announcement","tag-apple-m2-ultra","tag-mac","tag-mac-pro","tag-macos-13-ventura","tag-ssd","tag-wwdc"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39597"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40016,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597\/revisions\/40016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}