SAN FRANCISCO — Apple previewed its new Mac Pro at the Worldwide Developers Conference, here, which it expects to deliver later this year. The cylindrical shaped MacPro is engineered for graphics, with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage, Thunderbolt 2, new generation Xeon processors and support for 4K video.
Mac Pro will feature the Intel Xeon E5 chipset and can be configured with up to 12 cores, up to 40GB/s of PCI Express gen 3 bandwidth and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions, making it up to 2x faster than existing Mac Pros.
A four-channel DDR3 memory controller running at 1866MHz helps deliver up to 60GB/s of memory bandwidth. Two AMD FirePro workstation class GPUs provides up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM, allowing users to edit 4K video while rendering effects in the background. It also allows for connection to three 4K displays.
PCI Express flash storage is up to 2.5x faster than SATA-based solid state drives and up to 10x faster than a 7200rpm SATA hard drive. Booting up is very fast. Airflow is maximized in the new Mac Pro design. Heat is drawn away from the CPU and GPUs and is distributed uniformly across the core. And a single fan pulls air upward through a bottom vent. The new fan is more efficient, spinning slower and creating less noise.
Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI 1.4 ports are all built in. High speed wireless is possible via three-stream 802.11a Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 4.0 is also included for connecting a keyboard, mouse and other devices.
The Mac Pro's compact footprint (9.9-inches tall by 6.6-inches wide) makes it small enough to fit on a desktop. In addition, it will be manufactured in the US.
Sandy Nasseri of MelroseMac believes Apple established two firsts in the Mac Pro announcement: the inclusion of information about a product that wasn’t yet available, and establishing US-based production facilities.
“Apple is making a point to tell the professional market, ‘We haven’t forgotten about you," says Nasseri. "The Mac Pro isn’t just a rumor, it’s really happening. This is about Apple finally trying to draw back professionals and Final Cut Pro users and regain the trust from the entertainment market.”
Nasseri believes that making products in US will do a great deal to increase Apple’s relationships with regional and national government agencies that are more inclined to use technology manufactured in the States.
The Foundry announced that its Mari 3D paint system will be coming to the Mac later this year. Mari allows artists to paint directly onto 3D models and is capable of handling super high resolution textures and millions of polygons.
"Bringing Mari to the Mac is without a doubt our most requested innovation," notes The Foundry's CEO Bill Collis. "Mari will take full advantage of Apple's current hardware and we can't wait for the next-generation Mac Pro."