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Mac Pro
Type: Workstation
Developer: Apple Inc.
Released: August 7, 2006 (2006-08-07); 676 days ago
Processor(s): Intel Xeon,
1 × quad-core 2. A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or Engineering workstation, is a high-end Microcomputer Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics Events 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel 's x86 Multiprocessing CPUs – for dual-processor (DP and multi-processor (MP configuration 8 GHz 64-bit
2 × quad-core 2. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. 8, 3. 0, or 3. 2 GHz 64-bit
Base Price: USD$2,299 (standard configuration US$2,799)
Website: www.apple.com/macpro/

The Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on an Intel 5400 chipset (former Intel 5000X chipset) and Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. The United States dollar ( sign: $; code: USD) is the unit of Currency of the United States; it has also been A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or Engineering workstation, is a high-end Microcomputer Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics This is a list of Computer Motherboard Chipsets made by Intel. The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel 's x86 Multiprocessing CPUs – for dual-processor (DP and multi-processor (MP configuration A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a Central processing unit (CPU on a single Integrated The Power Mac G5 is Apple 's marketing name for models of the Power Macintosh which contain the PowerPC G5 CPU. They are currently one of three desktop computers in the Macintosh lineup. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc

The Mac Pro was formally announced on August 7, 2006 at WWDC. Events 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. [1] Along with the Mac Pro, a new Xeon-based Xserve was also announced, completing Apple's transition from the PowerPC to x86 architecture. Xserve is the name of Apple Inc 's 1U rackmount line of server computers PowerPC is a RISC Instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance known as AIM See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal On January 8, 2008 Apple unveiled the first 3. Events 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common 2 GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon (Harpertown 45nm) -based Mac Pro. [2]

Contents

Overview

An Intel-based replacement for the Power Mac G5 had long been expected prior to the release of the Mac Pro. The Power Mac G5 is Apple 's marketing name for models of the Power Macintosh which contain the PowerPC G5 CPU. The iMac, Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro had moved to an Intel-based architecture starting in January 2006, leaving the Power Mac G5 as the only machine in the Mac lineup still based on the PowerPC. The iMac is a desktop Macintosh computer designed and built by Apple Inc The Mac Mini (officially capitalized Mac mini) is a desktop computer made by Apple Inc The MacBook is a Macintosh Notebook computer by Apple Inc that replaced the iBook G4 series The MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable Computers by Apple Inc PowerPC is a RISC Instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance known as AIM Speculation about the G5's eventual replacement was common. Rumors initially expected the machine to differ physically from the existing G5 and considered a number of different possible internal configurations based on different chipsets. A chipset is a group of Integrated circuits or chips that are designed to work together and are usually marketed as a single product But the coincidence of Intel releasing a new Core 2-based Xeon workstation platform just prior to the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) made it fairly obvious that the resulting machine would be based on it. Even the naming was "obvious"; Apple had dropped the term "Power" from the other machines in their lineup, and started using "Pro" on their higher-end laptop offerings. As such, the name "Mac Pro" was widely used before the machine was announced. [3]

The Mac Pro is a high-end computer, similar to higher end Optiplexes and Unix workstations from vendors such as SGI or Sun Microsystems. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Silicon Graphics Inc (commonly initialised to SGI, historically sometimes referred to as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) is a company Sun Microsystems Inc ( is a multinational vendor of Computers computer components Computer software, and Information technology services Although the high-end technical market has not traditionally been an area of strength for Apple, the company has been positioning itself as a leader in non-linear digital editing for high-definition video,[4] which demands storage and memory far in excess of a general desktop machine. "NLE" redirects here For the standardized test see National Latin Examination. High-definition (HD video generally refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition (SD video most commonly at display resolutions of 1280×720 Additionally, the codecs used in these applications are generally processor intensive and highly threadable, speeding up almost linearly with additional processor cores. A codec is a device or program capable of encoding and/or decoding a Digital Data stream or signal. In Computer science, CPU bound (or compute bound) is when the time for a computer to complete a task is determined principally by the speed of the central processor A thread in Computer science is short for a thread of execution. Apple's previous machine aimed at this market, the Power Mac G5, had up to four processors, but lacked the storage expansion capabilities of the newer design. In order to serve this market, Apple sells a variety of standardized bundles combining a Mac Pro with fairly high-end components; for instance, all available setups can support the 30" Cinema Display. The Apple Cinema Display is a Product line of widescreen flat panel monitors made by Apple Inc

In general, the Mac Pro has been well received in the press. [5] The combination of high performance, reasonable expandability, very quiet operation and superb mechanical design makes it routinely appear as the comparison system against which other systems are measured. The Xeon platform is, however, Intel's "high end" system and not aimed at more general purpose use. Nevertheless, current-generation Xeons are priced competitively with their high-end desktop platforms, allowing Apple to sell a very powerful system at price points that are considered quite competitive, even by reviewers that do not normally review Apple systems. [6]

Original marketing materials for the Mac Pro generally referred to the middle-of-the-line model with 2 × dual-core 2. 66 GHz processors. Previously, Apple featured the base model with the words "starting at" or "from" when describing the pricing, but the online Apple Store listed the "Mac Pro at $2499", the price for the mid-range model. The Apple Store is the online store of Apple Inc All of Apple's product lines are carried as well as select brands of accessories for its products The base model could be configured at US$2200, much more comparable with the former base-model dual-core G5 at US$1999, although offering considerably more processing power. Post revision, the default configuration for the Mac Pro includes two quad-core 2. 8 GHz Xeon "Harpertown" processors.

There is a fairly large performance gap between the Mac Pro and Apple's most powerful consumer machine, the iMac. The iMac is a desktop Macintosh computer designed and built by Apple Inc A particular sore point for many is that the Mac Pro is the only machine in Apple's lineup that allows the end user to change the graphics card or otherwise install internal upgrades beyond RAM. A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a hardware component whose function is to Other machines in the lineup use integrated graphics and higher cost laptop parts, while the Mac Pro uses the industry standard PCIe slots. The iMac series use graphics cards and processors that are technically replaceable by a user, though the case design restricts access. Buying a workstation platform just to allow for upgradable graphics is something many people and reviewers have complained about. This has led to calls for a smaller, mid range machine with more limited expansion capabilities but retaining additional PCIe slots. [7]

Description

The specifications below are from Apple's "tech specs" page[8] or developer notes[9], except where noted.

Processors

The Mac Pro uses either one or two Xeon 5400 "Harpertown" 64-bit CPUs for a total of four or eight processor cores. The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel 's x86 Multiprocessing CPUs – for dual-processor (DP and multi-processor (MP configuration '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. A multi-core processor (or chip-level multiprocessor, CMP) combines two or more independent cores into a single package composed of a single Integrated Each CPU chip has 12 MB on-chip cache shared among its processor cores. A megabyte is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 106 (1000000 Bytes or 220 (1048576 bytes depending on In Computer science, a cache (kæʃ like "cash") is a collection of data duplicating original [10] Each processor slot has its own independent 64-bit 1600 MHz front side bus, offering an aggregate throughput between the CPUs and the "northbridge" of 21. In Personal computers the Front Side Bus ( FSB) is the bus that carries data between the CPU and the northbridge. The northbridge, also known as the memory controller hub ( MCH) in Intel systems (AMD VIA SiS and others usually use 'northbridge' is traditionally one 3 GB/s. In Telecommunications and Computing, bitrate (sometimes written bit rate, data rate or as a Variable R or f b [11]

As of April 2008, the Mac Pro (Early 2008 model, and possibly others) has been unsuitable for virtualization applications, because Intel Hardware Virtualization is switched off in the EFI, with no way of enabling it. A similar bug in the Mac mini was later fixed via a firmware update. The Mac Mini (officially capitalized Mac mini) is a desktop computer made by Apple Inc Parallels Forum.

VMWare is replying to this on their forum by stating that "I'd want some confirmation of that. Even if it were true, this would only affect 64-bit virtual machines - for 32-bit virtual machines, Fusion doesn't use hardware assist extensions because we've found that the current generation of hardware is slower than our software path. " VMWare Forum.

Is it not possible however to install Windows Server 2008, and run Hyper-V because of the lack of VT-X support.

Memory

The original Mac Pro's main memory used 667 MHz FB-DIMMs; its successor uses 800 MHz FB-DIMMs. Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to Computer components devices and recording media that retain digital Fully Buffered DIMM (or FB-DIMM is a memory technology which can be used to increase reliability speed and density of memory systems These modules are installed in pairs, one each on two riser cards. The cards have 4 DIMM slots each, allowing a total of 32 GB of memory (8 x 4 GB) to be installed [12]. A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix Giga-) is a unit of Information or Computer Notably, due to its FB-DIMM architecture, installing more RAM in the Mac Pro will improve its memory bandwidth, but may also increase its memory latency. SDRAM latency refers to the delays incurred when a Computer tries to access Data in SDRAM. [13] With a simple install of a single FB-DIMM the peak bandwidth is 8 GB/s, but this can increase to 16 GB/s by installing two FB-DIMMs, one on each of the two buses, which is the default configuration from Apple. A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix Giga-) is a unit of Information or Computer While electrically the FB-Dimms are standard, Apple requests that users use larger-than-normal heatsinks on the memory modules that they install. Problems have been reported by users who have used third party RAM that had normal sized FB-Dimm heatsinks. [14](see notes below). The Mac Pro is a Workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc

Hard drives

The Mac Pro has room for four internal hard drives, each with its own SATA-300 port. A hard disk drive ( HDD) commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a Non-volatile storage device The hard drives are mounted on individual trays, provided with the machine, by captive thumbscrews similar to the one used for the PCIe slots. There are no cables to be attached, the SATA and power connectors are firmly attached to the case, and the drive is connected to them simply by pushing it in. The case lock on the back of the machine locks the trays into position. The Mac Pro now offers hardware RAID circuitry[15]. RAID — which stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks,or alternatively Redundant Array of Independent Disks (a less specific name and thus now the Two optical drive bays are available, each with a SATA-300 port and an ATA-100 port. A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer AT Attachment with Packet Interface ( ATA/ATAPI) is a standard interface used to connect storage devices such as Hard disks Solid-state Many optical drives still use the older ATA ports, including those currently being shipped with the machines. In Computing, an optical disc drive ( ODD) is a Disk drive that uses Laser light or electromagnetic waves near the Light spectrum The Mac Pro also has two internal SATA ports that are not connected to drive bays; these can be put into service through the use of after-market extender cables. [16]

Expansion cards

For internal expansion the Mac Pro has two PCI Express (PCIe) 2. Not to be confused with PCI-X, a different bus architecture Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, officially abbreviated as PCI-E 0 expansion slots and two PCI Express 1. 1 slots, providing them with up to 300 W of power in total. The watt (symbol W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one Joule of energy per Second. The first slot is intended to hold the main video card, and is arranged with an empty area the width of a normal card beside it in order to leave room for the large coolers modern cards often use. A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a hardware component whose function is to In most machines, one slot would be blocked by the cooler. Instead of the tiny screws typically used to fasten the cards to the case, in the Mac Pro a single "bar" holds the cards in place, which is itself held in place by two "captive" thumbscrews that can be loosened by hand without tools and will not fall out of the case.

The PCIe slots can be configured individually to give more bandwidth to devices that require it, with a total of 40 "lanes", or 13 GB/s total throughput. When running Mac OS X, the Mac Pro currently does not support SLI or CrossFire, limiting its ability to use the latest "high-end gaming" video card products; however, individuals have reported success with SLI installations when running Windows XP. Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently Scalable Link Interface ( SLI) is a brand name for a multi- GPU solution developed by Nvidia for linking two or more video cards together to produce Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and [17]

The bandwidth allocation of the PCIe slots can be configured via the Expansion Slot Utility included with Mac OS X only on the August 2006 Mac Pro. The Mac Pro (Early 2008) has its slots hardwired as follows.

Default
Slot 4 4x
Slot 3 4x
Slot 2 16x
Slot 1 (Double-Wide) 16x

External connectivity

For external connectivity the system includes five USB 2.0 and four FireWire ports, two of the latter being FireWire 800. The IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus Interface standard for high-speed communications and Isochronous real-time data transfer frequently The IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus Interface standard for high-speed communications and Isochronous real-time data transfer frequently Networking is supported with two built-in Gigabit Ethernet ports, while 802. Computer networking is the Engineering Discipline concerned with communication between Computer systems or devices Networking routers Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the 11 a/b/g/draft-n[18] Wi-Fi is supported via an optional AirPort Extreme card. Wi-Fi (ˈwaɪfaɪ is the trade name for the popular wireless technology used An airport is a location where Aircraft such as airplanes, Helicopters and blimps take off and land Bluetooth is now standard. Bluetooth is a wireless protocol utilizing short-range communications technology facilitating data transmission over short distances from fixed and/or mobile devices creating wireless Unlike other recent Mac products, the Mac Pro does not include the infrared receiver needed to use the Apple Remote. Infrared ( IR) radiation is Electromagnetic radiation whose Wavelength is longer than that of Visible light, but shorter than that of The Apple Remote is a Remote control made for use with Apple products with Infrared capabilities released after October 2005 However, Front Row is available on all Mac Pros running Mac OS 10. 5 (Leopard) or later, and is accessible using the normal ⌘-Esc key combination. The leopard (lɛpɚd Panthera pardus) is an Old World Mammal of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four roaring The system also provides both optical and electrical "headphone jacks" for sound in and out, the latter available on both the front and back of the case.

Case

The exterior of the aluminum case is similar to that of the Power Mac G5, with the exception of an additional optical drive bay, and a new arrangement of I/O ports on both the front and the back. WikipediaNaming Memory-mapped I/O ( MMIO) and port I/O (also called port-mapped I/O or PMIO) are two complementary methods of performing Input/output The case is somewhat larger than a typical PC of the same generation, at 20 × 18½ × 8 inches, compared to a typical desktop PC (the Dell Dimension 9100) at 17½ × 17½ × 6½ inches. Some of the difference in height is due to the "handles" on the top and bottom of the case. The case can be opened by operating a single lever on the back, which unlocks one of the two sides of the machine, as well as the drive bays. All of the expansion slots for memory, PCIe cards and drives can be accessed with the one panel removed, and require no tools for installation.

The Xeon processors generate much less heat than the previous dual-core G5s, so the size of the internal cooling devices has been reduced significantly. The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel 's x86 Multiprocessing CPUs – for dual-processor (DP and multi-processor (MP configuration The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM This allowed the interior to be re-arranged, leaving more room at the top of the case and thereby allowing the drives to double in number. Less heat also means less air to move out of the case for cooling during normal operations; the Mac Pro is very quiet in normal operation, quieter than the already-quiet Power Mac G5[19] [20] , and proved difficult to measure using common decibel meters. [21]

Specifications

Operating systems

The Mac Pro comes with the BIOS successor EFI 1. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs The Extensible Firmware Interface ( EFI) is a specification that defines a software Interface between an Operating system and platform Firmware 1 and handles booting differently from the conventional BIOS-based PC.

Apple's Boot Camp provides backwards-BIOS-compatibility, and dual and triple boot configurations can be achieved. Boot Camp is a utility included with Apple Inc 's Mac OS X v10 [23] These operating systems are easily installable on Intel x86 based Apple computers:

Other x86 operating systems such as x86 Solaris, DOS, BeOS, and BSD (which is very closely related to Mac OS X) should also be easily installable. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and Windows Vista (ˈvɪstə is a line of Operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and business desktops This is made possible by the presence of an x86 Intel architecture as provided by the CPU and the BIOS emulation Apple has provided on top of EFI. Note that installing anything other than Windows is not supported by Apple, and can cause driver problems because the Boot Camp drivers are Windows only. However, it is possible to achieve full or nearly full compatibility on some Linux distributions by using restricted drivers.

There are a number of challenges that one must face when trying to establish a multi-booting configuration on a single hard drive that uses the new GPT partitioning standard that Mac OS takes advantage of at the same time as MBR, which is commonly used by Windows and Linux (though Linux can use GPT). One must synchronize their GPT and MBR partition tables multiple times during the setup of such configurations. The key challenge being that a maximum of 4 partitions can be made on any such hard drive (including the EFI partition). This is because logical & extended MBR partitions are not possible which means that more than 4 partitions can not be referenced for the MBR component of the configuration. Thus having more partitions would force MBR and GPT to have differing partitioning schemes. The diskutil command-line app in Mac OS X can non-destructively resize a single partitioned HFS+ formatted volume to a scheme usable for dual/triple boot configurations with BIOS/MBR.

Compatibility

Software

Hardware

References

  1. ^ Keynote presentation at the Worldwide Developers Conference, August 7, 2006. Events 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.
  2. ^ "Apple adds 8-core option to Mac Pro", MacNN.  
  3. ^ Peering inside the aluminum ball: Woodcrest, Conroe, and the "pro" Macs
  4. ^ "Apple's High Definition Future", Jim Hill Media.  
  5. ^ Mac Pro review, 9 out of 10. Ars Technica.
  6. ^ Mac Pro vs. Dell Precision: A price comparison. Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus.
  7. ^ "Night of the Living xMac", Ars Technica.  
  8. ^ Mac Pro tech specs. Apple, Inc. .
  9. ^ a b Mac Pro Developer Note. Apple, Inc. .
  10. ^ a b c Transistorized memory, such as RAM and cache sizes, are binary values whereby 1 MB = 220 (1,048,576) bytes and 1 GB = 230 (1,073,741,824) bytes.
  11. ^ A bit rate of 1 GB/s equals one billion bytes per second.
  12. ^ Computer memory upgrades for Apple Mac Pro (4-core) Desktop/PC from Crucial.com
  13. ^ Understanding FB-DIMMs. AnandTech.
  14. ^ a b Mac Pro Memory Issues. Ars Technica.
  15. ^ Apple
  16. ^ NewerTech eSATA Extender Cable
  17. ^ Apple - Support - Discussions - SLI works
  18. ^ AirPort Extreme performance page see footnote 2
  19. ^ Mac Pro. Ars Technica.
  20. ^ PowerMac G5 review. Macworld.
  21. ^ Bare Feats' rob-ART Morgan says:. Bare Feats'.
  22. ^ For hard drives, 1 GB equals 1 billion bytes and 1 TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual formatted capacities are less.
  23. ^ Triple Boot via BootCamp

External links

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