. Thank you. This is getting interesting. Is Apple getting some Westmere server chips that no one knows about?
Sandy Bridge for iMacs is coming out at the end of the year. Is Apple going to bring out a new iMac now and another new iMac at the end of the year?
Rumor has it and I'll bet it's true that Apple pushed Intel to develope Light Peak. Light Peak will be much faster than USB 3.0. Light Peak may be the downfall of USB 3.0. But Light Peak won't be out until next year. I can't picture Apple having USB 3.0 in their next computers. Maybe the only way to get USB 3.0 in a Mac Pro is with a third party PCI express card. As a matter of fact, Intel motherboards don't even support US 3.0.
My main question is yes, Apple may bring out new iMacs and Mac Pros but will they really be a substantial update?
We'll see what Apple offers.
p.s. I am really slipping. I thought I had replied to your post yesterday. .
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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
My main question is yes, Apple may bring out new iMacs and Mac Pros but will they really be a substantial update?
Other than 68040 to PPC, G4 to G5 case, then PPC to Intel, what other substantial updates have there ever been in the last 10+ years, except the cheese grater case, which isn't performance.
USB 3? I'd be surprised.
I personally love what the tower case design has evolved into. It is all so neat and clean and accessible.
My main question is yes, Apple may bring out new iMacs and Mac Pros but will they really be a substantial update?
What I would love for them to do: open up the ceiling. I think with the architecture now they can do it. If I need to buy a 32 or 64 core box they should cut the motherboard to fit. Biotechnology is getting a boost with new sequencing engines. The things that make the data. One store bought machine can make more data in 5 days than is in the entire NIH database. So computationally we need a bigger boat. A much bigger boat and much faster.
Through the 80s 90s and oughts the hard drive, the memory, and the CPU kept up. Right now the CPU is not cutting it. So do I go buy a 250K turnkey system to do the job? No way. No granting agency for academia funds stuff like that.
So an Apple with more 32 cores, 96 GB of memory for $17,000 would fit the bill. I'm buying Dells right now to do this and it depresses me.
. I hear you, Paul, but how can Dell do it? I am guessing that you have to stack up 8 Dell Precision R5400 Rack Workstation computers?
Can't you link Mac Pros together to make a 32-core supercomputer similar to what Virginia Tech did with their 324 8-core Mac Pros? It would only take 4 Mac Pros. But I know I am missing something. I am going to guess that the cost of the Mac Pros makes it prohibitive. .
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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
It's terrible but I don't know what I bought. I just know it has a pant load of processors and it cost me 17K. I had so little interest since it was a Dell I didn't walk downstairs to the rack room to take a look. Pretty sure it was a single box. At least it was one line item on a PO. I'll look it up.
From a Mac it is just a large depository with a terminal window to fire scripts up that slice and dice, filter, align, and sort. They are sort of like spreadsheets with 40 million lines and only two columns. Hard to open. I think we are assigning two processors per file so we can do 10-15 files at a time. It still takes a few hours, sometimes 21 hours to digest each. It would suck big time to have to do them one at a time.
Update: Daring Fireball's John Gruber hints that Apple will announce the upgrades tomorrow, alongside a 27-inch 16:9 widescreen Cinema Display.
I think if they want to hit the Back to School Sales they better hit the street soon !! Students are very impulsive and impatient these days ! Unlike the rest of us Mac users !
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