685: The Ability to Be Hotterhttps://atp.fm/685

[eric_neue@indieweb.social]

@atpfm … here’s an idea: an anthropomorphic trashcan Mac Pro standing triumphantly with a sword over a pile of cheesegrater and trypophobic* Mac Pros

* this is my name for the hex ball grid thing that was used with a mere two products, possibly the shortest aesthetic statement in Apple history?

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@Eric_Neue $5 isn’t going to make a dent…

[dschaub@mstdn.social]

@atpfm

While it is a complicated process and going through "Recovery" using a 2nd Mac, all desktop Macs do support "upgradable" storage.

John was even considering doing it for his next Mac, wasn't he?

[dschaub@mstdn.social]

@atpfm

The tradeoff is: a 16-lane PCIe card always has the potential for 4x the bandwidth as ThunderBolt (which has traditionally using only 4-lanes of PCIe).

I'm sure there are lots (a few hundred?) of niche users which Apple is kicking off the platform, who use:
- high end networking;
- high end video / audio;
- high end storage;
- who knows what other shockingly small niches out there.

I'm sure Apple's making the right business choice.

[siracusa@mastodon.social]

@dschaub I was, but now I wonder if third-party prices might end up being worse than Apple’s! Thanks, AI!

[v600@mastodon.au]

@atpfm ʎɐp,פ

@siracusa Australia is girt by sea and is therefore an island....and a country, and a continent. They're not mutually exclusive.

[illustro@mastodon.social]

@atpfm the "mistake", from a Mac Pro perspective, Apple made was going with a monolithic architecture design as opposed to a chiplet architecture design.

AMD has been ruining Intel in the PC chip performance at all levels of the CPU industry in part *because* they chose chiplets as their design paradigm.

They have released in the last two years a couple of white papers that may be of interest:

Chiplet discussion:
https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/solutions/technologies/chiplet-architecture-white-paper.pdf

GPUs using chiplets:
https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/instinct-tech-docs/white-papers/amd-cdna-4-architecture-whitepaper.pdf

[atpfmfanboi@mastodon.social]

@atpfm i’m having trouble getting reliable numbers on what kinds of laptops school districts across the country are buying. My personal experience across three states, 12 districts, and a couple of hundred schools is that very few buildings are still buying Chromebook. And it is entirely because they physically breakdown, not because of device management.

[atpfmfanboi@mastodon.social]

@atpfm so instead of a $200 Chromebook, schools are buying the $500 Lenovo Yoga4. And there is no comparison between that device and the MacBook Neo.

Additionally, school ITs are not encouraging, per se, but they are making it easier for students to bring their own devices. Hot swapping because you left yours at home isn’t an issue: you just get a crappy Lenova for the day. But your MacBook can get into all of the school stuff relatively quickly

[dschaub@mstdn.social]

@illustro @atpfm

Apple's monolithic designs made sense, and scaled up to well to the Max.

With the M5 Pro/Max, Apple is now on heterogenous chiplets, but Apple's not scaling multiples of them (I think it is just a CPU die and a GPU die).

We don't know how they'll scale up to Ultra (or even Quadra... my preferred term), without designing NEW chiplets.

With the M7 and M8 we'll see if Apple gets to multiple CPU dies and multiple GPU dies to allow true efficient scaling.

[dschaub@mstdn.social]

@Eric_Neue @ianRobinson @atpfm

Beyond latency concerns, this doesn't solve the Thunderbolt bandwidth problem (being 1/4 of max PCIe slot bandwidth).

What I think Apple needs to do is:

- Add "bonded multiple cable connections" to the Thunderbolt spec to allow 2-4 Thunderbolt cables between a Mac and a PCIe card slot chassis.

- Then ship such a chassis for $1999

[illustro@mastodon.social]

@dschaub @atpfm oh yes, for the majority of their line, a monolithic design likely makes sense (see the first whitepaper I referenced, early on, for a discussion of the downsides of chiplets). That's why I specifically referenced relating to the Mac Pro.

I do posit they ran into the issues with their monolithic design prior to the Mac Pro: their ultra fusion interconnector meant they got some of the disadvantages of chiplets without the yield & process benefits of true chiplets.

[dschaub@mstdn.social]

@illustro

Anyway, I think Apple's trajectory is good, so the M6, M7, and M8 should be fine.

[illustro@mastodon.social]

@dschaub agreed.

I'll be interested to see if they go down a similar route to amd of having chiplets on "legacy" processes for tasks that wouldn't benefit from miniaturisation (like I/O), while keeping the remaining CPU and GPU functions on the bleeding edge, or if they will stick to monolithic chiplets.

[nicholasmodesto@mastodon.world]

@atpfm

@siracusa@mastodon.socia,

Here is some external storage you may appreciate.

OWC ThunderBay Flex 8

The industry's first Thunderbolt 3 storage, docking, and PCIe expansion media workflow solution. Perfect for digital imaging, VFX, and video editing.

(www.owc.com)

[lukeratta@mastodon.social]

@atpfm
Marco: “They use the term ‘the big island’ because that’s more descriptive”

I’ve always thought that “Long Island” was also fairly descriptive.

[craigb@mstdn.ca]

@atpfm
@siracusa

I’m with you in the spirit of your post-show. However 9 Supreme Court justices over-rule in this case. Which for all visible purposes it would appear Long Island is an island. It has legally been clarified as and deemed a peninsula.

The Reason Long Island Isn't Considered an Island

The peninsula just happens to have a little water between it and the mainland.

Mental Floss (www.mentalfloss.com)

Just a moment...

(supreme.justia.com)