Re:Apple M1 Ultra
by bee_rider on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @04:55PM
(#30607670)
Could they do a multi-socket board for the Mac Pro?
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I expect this for CPU side. Multiple SoC introduces NUMA but it's already done on Dual Xeon based Mac. I wonder how their GPU work for the configuration.
In a world where latency:storage size tradeoffs need to be made for practical reasons (and will, at some point, be required for fundamental physical reasons), we should just embrace NUMA anyway. Death to the lie of uniform access! NUMA is the future!
Ehrm, anyway.
It actually isn't clear to me whether designing a two socket motherboard is fundamentally an easier task than jamming more of the things into a single package (given that they have already embraced some sort of chiplette paradigm).
I believe designing/manufacturing a 5nm chip only used for Mac Pro can't be profitable. That's why they designed M1 Ultra as MCM of M1 Max.
They would never do that
The Mac Pro (and the high-end Powermacs that preceded it) were always available in a dual socket incarnation, right up to the trashcan Mac.
The trashcan Mac Pro was announced almost 9 years ago. Apple today is a very different company. They've moved onto chiplet designed SoC's with little to no care about upgradability.
They have done this previously for dual socket Xeons. Historical precedence doesn’t necessarily hold here, but in fact, it’s been done on the “cheese graters” previously
They've moved on to chiplet design. Don't disregard their clear direction to SoC's with non-upgradeable RAM, GPU, CPU.