Apple Inc. showed a first look at the next generation Mac Pro.
According to Apple market positioning, the 9.9-inch tall Mac Pro introduces a completely new pro desktop architecture and design that is optimized for performance inside and out. The product has been designed around a unified thermal core with next generation Xeon processors from Intel, dual workstation-class GPUs, Thunderbolt 2, PCIe-based flash storage, and ECC memory.
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said with the latest Xeon processors, dual FirePro GPUs, ECC memory, PCIe-based flash and Thunderbolt 2, all built around a revolutionary thermal core, the next generation Mac Pro is the most radical Mac yet. All this performance and expandability is packed into a dramatic new design that’s one-eighth the volume, and best of all, it will be assembled here in the U.S.
The unified thermal core allows the desktop to share its entire thermal capacity across all the processors. The result is a professional desktop that is one-eighth the volume of the current Mac Pro. Next generation Intel Xeon E5 processors with up to 12 core configurations deliver double the floating point performance. With two AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs, the Mac Pro delivers up to seven teraflops of compute power. The new Mac Pro also features PCIe-based flash storage and includes four-channel ECC DDR3 memory running at 1866 MHz to deliver up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth.
Apple cliams that the Mac Pro is the most expandable Mac ever built. With six Thunderbolt 2 ports that can deliver up to 20Gbps of bandwidth to each external device, Mac Pro can connect to external storage, multiple PCI expansion chassis, audio and video breakout boxes, and external displays, including 4K desktop displays. Each of the six Thunderbolt 2 ports supports up to six daisy-chained devices, giving you the ability to connect up to 36 high-performance peripherals. Thunderbolt 2 is completely backwards compatible with existing Thunderbolt peripherals, and allows you to transfer data between Macs.
The next generation Mac Pro will be available later this year.
