Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

0. Background

The 2013 Mac Pro, commonly known as the "trash can", is a graphics workstation that Apple launched to the market at the end of 2013. it is only 1/8 of the size of the 2010 Mac Pro, killing all the workstations on the market in terms of size, but its performance has been improved fourfold. The main mainframe subverts the structural layout of the traditional vertical chassis, which consists of three motherboards vertically surrounded by a triangular ruler to form a 9.9-inch high cylindrical structure workstation.

It is precisely because of the scalability problems caused by this compact design that it is difficult for ordinary users to upgrade other parts in addition to memory, and the interface (USB3.0 and Lightning 2) and the matching graphics card (Fire ProD500) designed by the machine were mainly used to meet the needs of processing 4K video at that time.

1. Host appearance

The appearance of the 2019 mainframe is shown on the right side of the image above, and the most striking here is the front panel similar to the metal wire planer, which provides a large amount of heat dissipation surface area and increases the air intake.

Physical size

In order to solve the problem of heat dissipation of the chassis, Apple uses three axial fans + turbofans at the back of the chassis at the front of the chassis. First, the three large fans on the front of the chassis are used to guide air flow into the chassis, and the hot air is discharged by the turbofan at the lower right through the original parts such as CPU, GPU and SSD. This process is somewhat similar to the outdoor air conditioner or the exhaust fan in the bathroom. However, if the fan runs at high speed, it will emit high-frequency vibration and produce noise. The Mac Pro fan has redesigned blades and can be adjusted according to frequency changes, making the sound smoother and less noticeable to users. This is somewhat similar to the pattern of silent tires used in cars (there is tire noise, which can make users feel smaller).

Details:

The new Mac Pro seems to draw some lessons from the 2010 design in the exterior design, but the amazing thing is that it uses air cooling to reject the heat dissipation problem of 28 cores + 1.5TB memory + 32 GB graphics card.

The motherboard is designed with a double-sided motherboard. There are so many devices connected on both sides of a huge motherboard, but not a single wire can be seen.

Power supply, can meet the full load, long-term, continuous supply of 1.4KW output, this kind of energy output, such as the traditional server early, the cooling fan has long been barking. This kind of air-cooled heat dissipation has to be admired.

two。 System overview

View CPU

View memory expansion slot

Memory: up to 2933MHz DDR4 ECC memory, up to 140GB/s memory bandwidth, six-channel memory system (2010 MacPro is three-channel), the above picture can be very vivid to see the six channels. The maximum memory supports 1.5TB (what should the system swap partition be? )

View storage-SSD

The Raid0, which consists of two SSD of 2TB, can theoretically reach the sequential read speed of 3.4GB/s and the sequential write speed of 3.4GB/s. The storage device is encrypted by the Apple T2 security chip (once encrypted on 2TB's hard drive, which was not completed all day) the rate of Mac Pro is outrageous.

SSD read and write test

After testing, the read and write speed of the original factory-equipped SSD basically reaches 3GB/s, and this is the rate after the data has been encrypted. Note that the unit is GB (gigabyte), much less than the traditional server.

Characteristics of graphics card

 64 computing units, 4096 stream processors

 32GB HBM2 video memory, 1TB/s video memory bandwidth

 can perform up to 14.1 trillion single-precision floating-point operations per second or 28.3 trillion semi-precision floating-point operations per second

 Infinity Fabric Link connections support two Vega II GPUs to connect at speeds up to 84GB/s

There are four Leili 3 ports and one HDMI 2.0 port on the  card.

 two routable DisplayPort connectors to the system, supporting internal Thunder 3 ports

Accelerator card: speed up the operation of ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs in Final Cut Pro X, QuickTime Player X and third-party compatible app

The system supports up to 6 8K ProRes RAW video streams or up to 23 4K ProRes RAW video streams.

Powerful PCI interface

The machine is equipped with eight PCI Express expansion slots, twice as many as the 2010 host. Usually, users will buy PCI-e-to-USB3.0 card insertion, as well as PCI-e SSD and expansion cards to supplement the original interface and capacity deficiencies.

Input / output interface:

The  IZP O card is installed in a half-length x4 PCI Express slot with the following ports:

 two USB 3 ports

 supports USB-A (up to 5Gb/s)

Two Thunder 3 ports of 

 supports Leili 3 (up to 40Gb/s)

 supports USB-C (up to 10Gb/s)

 supports DisplayPort

Two Leili 3 ports, located at the top of the tower chassis

Tips:

The original factory comes with less USB3.1, we will install a separate RocketU 1344A USB3.1 10GB expansion card. Support Leili 3 (up to 40Gb/s) and support USB-C (up to 10Gb/s)

10 Gigabit network card

Dual 10 Gigabit network cards are integrated in the accessories of the power module.

3. Security chip T2

IMac Pro, which was launched at the end of 2017, has already adopted the Mac T2 chip, which can provide better security protection for user data. To take the simplest example, trying a password multiple times is the simplest XXXX. ), but under the protection of the T2 chip, the system will extend the waiting time after more than 15 incorrect passwords, and the waiting time will be 1 hour if 27 input errors are made. Once the number of password attempts is exhausted, the Secure enclave (security quarantine) in the T2 chip will no longer process the user's password request, that is, the machine will be locked. It doesn't help to start the system in time and force it into macOS Recovery mode.

Friends who often use the Mac system will know that there is a software encryption function FileVault in mac OS, which automatically encrypts and decrypts the contents of the home directory, and the FileVault encrypted hard disk cannot be read even if it is connected to another system. Then in the new Mac, the T2 chip (built-in AES hardware encryption engine) can encrypt the entire chip, even if the FileVault function is not turned on, it can protect user data.

Seeing this, users may ask what happens if I unplug the original hard drive of the system and replace it with a third-party hard drive. The answer is that the machine does not work. Because the T2 chip of the system has been firmly bound to the hard disk, the disk has been changed without moving the T2 chip, the system can not be started. This is achieved at the hardware level. So the original match cannot be changed.

In addition, the microphone cameras in the system are also protected by the T2 chip. if someone wants to act as a middleman to get hardware access to the microphone (giving instructions to the machine through Siri), ask the T2 chip for permission.

Therefore, although the T2 chip is inconspicuous, its status in the whole architecture is not lower than that of CPU and GPU, and it is even more important from the perspective of security management.

If the administrator user forgets the password, no one in the data recovery company will catch up with the work (maybe).

T2 application

Mainly encrypt hard disk data

4.XDR 6K display

The display has an aluminum alloy metal body and a 31.6-inch 6K display with a Mini LED backlight design with a resolution of 6016 x 3384. The diagonal measured value is 31.59in, the aspect ratio is the same as iPhone 11 is about 2.17: 1 color: P3 wide color gamut, 10-bit color depth, can achieve 1.073 billion colors.

The display will be more gorgeous than the iMac Pro display, with a full-screen brightness of 1000 nits, a peak of 1600 nits, 20% more pixels than the iMac Pro, and belongs to the ultra-wide version of the 5K display. With this display, this extra horizontal space is convenient for content creators when using Final Cut Pro X with long horizontal timeline applications.

This display has 48% higher pixels than the LG Ultra Wide 5K display and can achieve a true ultra-wide experience without sacrificing vertical resolution.

Take an intuitive look at the apple website opened by XDR monitor on the left and grape 2K monitor on the right.

XDR is not a "patent" of Mac Pro, and it can also be used as an extended screen for notebooks.

The following shows several recording courses, editing videos and debugging programs of several work scenes, you can feel the feeling of this ultra-high resolution to the designer.

5. Postscript-suggestions for professional users

The lowest Mac Pro on the official website is 256GB's SSD, which is awkward for individuals or enterprises, and even beginners feel sorry for it. The lowest configuration of 8-core Zhiqiang is simply X (inscription word) rib, his new energy is similar to iMac Pro, AMD 580X graphics card is actually 480 changed a waistcoat, the launch has been lagging behind, there is no guarantee of use in the next 5 years. If it is mainly used for film editing, then this low configuration is not recommended, if you need to edit 8K video, then you must buy an acceleration card, and if developers do not cut films often, do not have such a powerful GPU.

Related information:

 shows Apple Workstation-2010 MAC PRO https://blog.51cto.com/chenguang/1317923

 2013 Mac Pro "mysterious" host details https://blog.51cto.com/chenguang/1355029 (network-wide launch in January 2014)

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