We Have to Wait ANOTHER YEAR for Our New Mac Pro?!!!

[Brian Stoppee]

Yes. Earlier this month Tom Boger, senior director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing, told Tech Crunch, “We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community, so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.”

What’s the important part of that statement?

When Tom says, “pro community” he’s not only being transparent about the release time frame, what he’s also saying is, “Are you part of that pro community even if you qualify as a ‘pro’?” There are a limited number of professionals who need that kind of Olympic weight lifting technology muscle.

The top tier Apple and HP laptops are not able to host the RAM needs of many professionals because of RAM limit specification of Intel’s microprocessor. So, those current laptop issues open the door for important desktop computing alternatives. But, at some point Intel will solve the laptop RAM issue. It’s worth mentioning that the microprocessors which go into laptop computers, are traditionally not the same as than those brains which go into desktop computers.

How much technology weight do we need to be pressing over our Macs’ heads to need this kind of power? Here are a few examples of when our MacBook Pros say. “OUCH!”:

Adobe Illustrator: Some AutoCAD users send us huge vector art files. They usually work okay. But, there are times when the projects are so massive that it takes a very long time to scroll around them.

There are some very cool things that we love to do in painting with Illustrator. Once those projects become extremely complex (and we love to make them complex) it’s difficult to paint in realtime. When that happens, we have to stop working.

Adobe Premier Pro: For the most part, non-linear editing (NLE) is not demanding on a fully loaded MacBook Pro. However, we create many graphics which assist people in the learning process. As we build layer upon layer upon layer, the motion graphics cause long projects to lag. Moving up and down or back and forth through a big timeline hurts. Premier Pro’s monitor panels can become slow to respond, as well.

Adobe Photoshop: Oh… where to begin. We go back to Painter 1.0 and our work in pixel art and compositing became something of a signature for us. When Adobe added a paint engine to Photoshop, we could begin to do what we could not accomplish in Painter. However the more layers we add and the great complexity we bring to the table, the more we create a realtime painting issue, similar to what happens in Illustrator. We compound that problem with 3D.

That’s not the whole of it. Animating with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate has its own set of pain points.

Why wait? Why don’t we just buy the current Mac Pro? Have you priced a fully loaded one of those things? There are cars which cost less!

We do not know specifically what Apple is waiting for, with the new Mac Pro, but we can see that new big tower development appears to be on hold at HP, as well. So, that tells us its probably all Intel driven.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

An aftermarket custom rig is by far the way to go. Why HP, why Apple…

Without a doubt, Janet & I saved a bunch of money in our days of building our own towers for Windows.

We would have some compatibility issues from time to time because of a few components we chose. But that was many years ago.

[Cactus_Cowboy]

Got deep pockets or maybe a money market account you can cash in? Check this out:

Intel Xeon Scalable Platinum 8180 SkyLake 28-Core 2.5 GHz (3.8 GHz Turbo) LGA 3647 205W BX806738180 Server Processor. It's on sale at Newegg for (get this) $9999.99 USD. That's just the cpu it's an intel core i9 and the specs are off the chart. 35.6 mb L3 Cache for one.

You think if I'm a good boy Santa will get me one...gee, I hope so.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

Intel Xeon Scalable Platinum 8180 SkyLake 28-Core 2.5 GHz (3.8 GHz Turbo) LGA 3647 205W BX806738180 Server Processor.

I had not been following this Intel stuff and was surprised that HP's top of the line microprocessor was 44 core.

[Kat Gilbert]

So just what can a 44 core do for the user???

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Kat+Gilbert  wrote

So just what can a 44 core do for the user???

It probably does less for the user than it does for HP's street cred.

[Kat Gilbert]

Yep- as I guessed!

[Cactus_Cowboy]

Hey, this cpu is well out of the reach all of us here. But it's not out of the reach of corporations. Maybe Adobe even has a few in use. As for what does 44 cores do for a user, it would be way over-kill for the general user. Cores parse out mathematical equations quicker by multi-threading. The more cores the faster the calculations the less heat to the cpu. Also, it unlocks the RAM restrictions and limitations to higher degree. A very rough general explanation. That's why when folks ask the question "What kind of system do I need to run the latest version of say 'Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects' or the others" Adobe has created a webpage that you helper bees refer them to on practically a daily basis.

I just pasted the ad because I wanted to see what the fastest CPU was on the aftermarket today and this was one of them. There's others with differing price ranges and speeds and core numbers but it seems that the number of cores is symmetrical with the type of software being created by all software manufactures and rightfully so. These chip makers and mobo makers and ram makers and graphics card makers and software creators must collaborate closely as each companies bottom line requires they are able to give their respective customers the most trouble free integrated experience (an incredible feat in light of how well we all get along on these forums barring pay). We all are the judge with our dollars on how good a job they are doing.       

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

As for what does 44 cores do for a user, it would be way over-kill for the general user. Cores parse out mathematical equations quicker by multi-threading. The more cores the faster the calculations the less heat to the cpu. Also, it unlocks the RAM restrictions and limitations to higher degree.

.

Does anyone know if that's an important component for a high activity, big bandwidth server? We know a few streaming media farms who buy these HP towers to feed insane amounts of Internet pounding

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

Hey, this cpu is well out of the reach all of us here. But it's not out of the reach of corporations.    

In all candor, I don't know of any corporations which have these kind of IT budgets. But, I don't know what they would do with such a thing even if they had that kind of money.

To provide a little context, Janet & I are in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. There are huge corporations here many of which are government contractors. Northern Virginia is data center capital. So, our region buys a BUNCH computers, but the vast, vast majority of it is off the shelf computers. From what we see in offices or at WiFi hot spots either has a logo with a piece of fruit or logo with two initials and the first one is "H".

[Cactus_Cowboy]

I agree Brian, I copy you right down to the period. But if your right and others as well then why would chip makers create something like these and slap on prices as high as they do. I think it's because they sell; to who or for what I don't know the answer to that either. Maybe it's gamers or video editors but would you need chips this powerful? Maybe it as simple as geeks wanting the biggest, baddest, newest, shiniest toy out there for simple bragging rights. Could even be a tax write off for the chip companies.

Have you had a look at the newest graphics cards that are available right now; man, they're something else too.

[cmgap]

The requirement for more power is being driven by bitcoin / crypto currency miners... millions of transactions in milliseconds by minor in Iceland and other hubs.

[Brian Stoppee]

cmgap  wrote

The requirement for more power is being driven by bitcoin / crypto currency miners... millions of transactions in milliseconds by minor in Iceland and other hubs.

So we do know that a 44 core microprocessor in a HP tower is what drives massive Internet traffic?

[Cactus_Cowboy]

Yea, I saw the YouTube videos on these Crypto-miners. Brian, everybody this is why the insane increase in mega cores and speed. One guy built a motherboard with two sidy by side 44 core chipset, That's eighty-eight cores and the capacity for 674 mb of memory; eighteen sticks side by side.

Yes, this is the correct answer. 

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

Brian, everybody this is why the insane increase in mega cores and speed. One guy built a motherboard with two sidy by side 44 core chipset, That's eighty-eight cores and the capacity for 674 mb of memory; eighteen sticks side by side.

Yes, this is the correct answer. 

Thank you.

A couple years ago we had to research outfitting a few racks at a data center to the point of being able to communicate with some top tier IT people do more than nod our heads and pretend to understand (never a good idea).

Some of these architects are quite creative in how they go about creating solutions.

In the end, none of it made sense for our need. So, we never delved deeply into how traffic flowed through microprocessors, for those kind of uses vs. what an Adobe team does.

But we began to understand that both engineering endeavors were not something God put us on Earth to do!

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

I agree Brian, I copy you right down to the period. But if your right and others as well then why would chip makers create something like these and slap on prices as high as they do. I think it's because they sell; to who or for what I don't know the answer to that either. Maybe it's gamers or video editors but would you need chips this powerful? Maybe it as simple as geeks wanting the biggest, baddest, newest, shiniest toy out there for simple bragging rights. Could even be a tax write off for the chip companies.

Have you had a look at the newest graphics cards that are available right now; man, they're something else too.

The weird thing about top tier technology is that it costs a ton of money for the R&D and the market can be too small to drive the ROI (return on investment).

However, it is believed that it pays the way for future development and makes the brand what it is.

By way of example Canon, Nikon, and Sony cannot make enough money at high end dSLR cameras and lenses. They lose money at that stuff. But they believe if they dropped out of the high-end pro tools, their brands would fade into history.

Intel and AMD make boat loads (literally) of money selling the circuitry which makes cheap computers work.

That stuff is their version of Canon's, Nikon's, and Sony's point and shoot cameras of days gone by.

[Cactus_Cowboy]

I hear you Brian, my eyes would glaze over and I'd start nodding out when my brother would try to explain C++, Visual Basic, java or any of the various code languages. Whoosh, right over my interest level.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  wrote

I hear you Brian, my eyes would glaze over and I'd start nodding out when my brother would try to explain C++, Visual Basic, java or any of the various code languages. Whoosh, right over my interest level.

You reminded me of a funny thing which happened to Janet & I a few years ago. My sister was dating a guy who taught C++ where we went to high school. We took them out to lunch and the teacher went on and on and on and on about all the cool stuff his students were doing with C++ and after quite a while he came up of air and stopped talking and I injected, "So these kids go on to major in computer science in college?"

He stared at me for a minute or two and then he said, "Oh no. They never go on to do anything with it."

(Our table was quite for a little bit.)

[Ussnorway]

in lay terms more cores = more things at once

it is the Virtual market driving them more than anything else, so a guy running Fusion (vmware on a MAC) has two core cpu thats one to run the host and the other runs whatever virtual software is installed on Fusion... if he upgrades to a 4 core cpu then he could run another V-system (at the same time!) with out slowing anything down and assuming he has the ram.

a 44 core cpu only makes sence in servers running muti-systems and is very inefficient way to mine... most serious mining systems use single core boxes in mutliple stacks but the draw of easy money attracts clueless investers until the market settles down

[Cactus_Cowboy]

It's all about raw speed. Has nothing to do with running software. At that power level software doesn't even factor in. It's the computational power to solve math equations and the ability to post orders faster than your opponents in nano second time increments to garner percentages of cyber currency or bitcoins. Look it up and check out some YouTubes on it. It's even practiced on Wall Street selling and buying stock orders.