The Next Mac Pro
Posted in Articles on Aug 29 2011I have a suspicion that the next Mac Pro is going to be very interesting. Well, I suppose that the very question of whether or not there will be a new Mac Pro is also interesting. Let's assume that there will be.
All recent Mac computers have been moving towards incorporating Thunderbolt connectivity, both for peripherals (of which there are currently only a few) and external monitors. It would be easy to assume that the next Mac Pro would also include Thunderbolt connectivity.
However, stop and think about this for a minute. How exactly would this work? The Mac Pro computers are unique to the Mac line-up in that they allow for discrete video cards. If the Mac Pro is to offer Thunderbolt connectivity, how would the Thunderbolt port interact with the discrete video card, and where would the Thunderbolt port physically be located? Would the port be on the video card?
Placing the Thunderbolt port on the video card might be the simplest solution, but then it would mean that all Thunderbolt data is being routed through the video card. I am by no means an expert on hardware, but I suspect that this would be somewhat problematic. At the very least it would mean that Apple would be depending on third party hardware for their Thunderbolt connectivity, and I don't think Apple in general likes to rely on third parties for anything. On the technical side of things, it would mean additional bandwidth and load on what is already a hard working, hot running part inside your computer. In fact, video cards are usually the loudest part as well because of the fans required to cool them.
OK, so maybe the Thunderbolt port will be on the Mac Pro chassis itself. This would also seem to pose a problem for the discrete video cards, as they normally (based on my limited understanding of hardware) route their video signals out through the ports on the video card itself (i.e. some combination of DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, or VGA ports on the back of the video card). Having the Video Card route the video signal back to the Mac Pro motherboard and then out through the Thunderbolt port would strike me as being problematic. Once again, based on my very limited knowledge of hardware, it would seem like this would be problematic. First, it would be limited by the bus bandwidth, and second, it would require a custom video card, as this is not something that normal video cards do.
So where does this leave us? Perhaps the Mac Pro will not have a Thunderbolt port. I doubt that. Thunderbolt is perfect for external storage, and the typical use case of Mac Pros is for sound and video editing, where users needs tons of storage. Mac Pro users probably want Thunderbolt more than most typical users, who might not ever add external storage.
So that leaves Apple with either adding the Thunderbolt port to the video cards, or adding the Thunderbolt port to the chassis and running video signals back from the video card to the motherboard and out through the Thunderbolt port.
Or does it?
Perhaps there is some third option. What if the next Mac Pro chassis is radically different. What if it doesn't have an internal video card at all. What if instead of an internal video card, the motherboard has Thunderbolt ports that allow for external video cards. This wouldn't be unheard of. In fact there has already been a somewhat limited demo of this. Or, as Robert X. Cringely suggests, perhaps the video card will be in the monitor.
Interesting times ahead for sure.
Published Aug 29 2011 - Permalink
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