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Total Speculation: 16 core ryzen (3xxx) announced with a newer mac pro ?

Donnie Fisher

Donnie Fisher

Donnie Fisher

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Just a random thought, what if the reason that a 16 core Ryzen hasn't been formally announced yet is that it'll appear in Apple's WWDC event this week when Apple may announce a new Mac Pro ???

Its not inconceivable that Apple could switch to Ryzen chips ... they have made bigger swaps in the past.
A potentially lower TDP with higher than average core count to be fitted into an unusual Apple type shell ... PCIe 4 ... I could see that.

What about thunderbolt ? Well, as I understand it, whilst Intel have the rights, old articles refer to Apple having unrestricted use of it ... they could potentially drop it in as it uses PCIe lanes.

Would explain why the 16c hasn't been formally put out there yet ...

I'll get me coat ...
 
Not a chance.

The 16 core part is an oddity in hows its been handled.
I imagine it'll get released at some point as the price points of Ryzen 3XXX stuff lower.
 
MaXxBoulton said:
Even on the high end stuff?
Click to expand...
It's all speculation at this point but I'd be surprised if they want to develop their own architecture to cover the Xeon end of the market.
But if they don't they'd have dual concurrent hardware architectures to support on an ongoing basis.
Seems a good reason to bump up the prices of the iMac & Mac Pros. :D
 
lnoton said:
Apple are switching from Intel, but to their own A chip range.
Click to expand...

This assumes their chip hits a higher enough performance level, and that it's ready sooner rather than later. Building a high performance chip that runs at 4Ghz or above is VERY different from building something that runs at 2-2.5Ghz and is designed purely to operate below 15W. They could hit it out of the park at the first try, they can fail very very badly.

Most of the rumours put them more aiming at Macbook replacement, which could leave AMD free to go for threadripper/higher end Ryzen for Mac pros, desktop and maybe highest end laptops. There is nothing stopping them using AMD and with 7nm there will be fundamental power and performance advantages that Intel can't offer.

Particularly when it comes to their pro rigs with 2-3 AMD gpus pci-e 4.0 and a high core chip in a custom build would go down a treat for them.

If Apple manage to make a chip comparable to Ryzen in that it would be at home in 15-25W performance bracket in laptops as well as 95-150W in desktops in their real power computers then I'll be surprised.

Intel also just failed Apple pretty spectacularly when it comes to modems for their mobile devices.
 
Not sure how Apple will go about developing there own high end chip, they cant just copy x86/x64 and they might have trouble expanding low power tech to the higher end that a desktop needs.

Make sense for them to move to AMD chips in the future, no need to do yet another massive software change (or fiddle with emulation) and will likely end up cheaper for them while giving more grunt.
 
These and similar Apple products are primarily marketed towards cash rich universities or animation studios in the US, who frequently have absolutely no clue about either performance or what else is on offer. They just want the thing with the Apple logo, and what ever is most expensive.

Rest of the world generally need not apply.
 
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LOL that is nuts. They absolutely could have done a deal and gone with a zen 2 threadripper setup that would absolutely spank that - they only needed to get past the thunderbolt issue.
 
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