So it has been awhile, but we finally have some very exciting news for you dear readers. Apple is close to finally updating the Mac Pro. The previous issues we mentioned will be fixed by major changes that suppliers are introducing. What changes are they? What is the expected timeframe? Read on to find out!
You will remember we covered the Mac Pro story some months previous here, telling you guys the new Mac Pro will use a new processor, but there are issues that were holding it back from fulltime production.
Well, we have some good news, Intel will be moving to its Ivy Bridge platform in April, and this will solve heating issues. How does it do that? Well, with its 22nm (extremely efficient) manufacturing process, it is very efficient in operation in comparison to the previous Sandy Bridge. More importantly, the old transistor types are gone, and replaced by “tri-gate” transistors. According to our sources, those transistors are 30%+ more efficient with heat dissipation.
Ivy Bridge is the first chip to use Intel’s 22nm tri-gate transistors, which will help scale frequency and reduce power consumption
Apple, being one of Intel’s most reliable customers, our sources have told us that the engineering samples for the new processors, with 8 cores and a shocking 20MB of cache have been given out and tested to Apple. Furthermore, the overheating issues, they are gone, and the manufacturing yield is now high enough for Apple to maintain its high profit margin.
Basically, we are going from two high performing 6 cores, to two even higher performing 8 cores. The updated chipset will also help the performance greatly over the previous generation. Excited yet? But there are some other changes as well.
Apple, went with ATI graphics last generation, and got burned. Flickering, artifacts, overheating, no display, the list goes on. The drivers ATI made for the Mac Pro to take the upgrade kit were also notoriously flaky. Even after Apple updated the drivers, many users still had issues, especially in professional tasks. And this cost Apple a significant amount of money they are looking to not repeat this again.
Nvidia Kepler series graphics cards are set to release in April/May time frame
Nvidia has their “Kepler” platform due out around the same time as Intel is making their changes, and our sources within the company indicate that they have chosen to have Nvidia lead the charge so to speak on the graphics front. This is good for all our compatriots who want to use the special graphics engine in Adobe products, as it supports Nvidia only, or for those who wish to do CUDA based programs as well, again only supported by Nvidia.
We hear rumblings that you should see some changes near the end of quarter three, when they have ironed out all the bugs with the newly released hardware. This could be moved up or down slightly, depending on things like number of key parts available, recalls and driver/software issues.
As always, we will keep you posted as we get more information.
