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Apple Reportedly Developing 5K Retina Thunderbolt Display With Integrated GPU (hothardware.com)
MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: If you head over to Apple's website, the Cupertino outfit will happily sell you a 27-inch Thunderbolt display for $999, at least until its inventory runs out. Word on the web is that it's nearly out of stock and Apple doesn't plan to replenish them. Instead, Apple will launch a new version of its Thunderbolt monitor, one that's been upgraded to a 5K resolution and has a discrete GPU stuffed inside. It's an interesting product actually, if you think about it. Depending on the task, it can take some serious graphics muscle to drive a 5K resolution display. It amounts to over 14.7 million pixels (5120x2880), compared to Apple's current generation Thunderbolt display which runs at 2560x1440, or less than 3.7 million pixels. Apple's thinking is likely that if it integrates a GPU capable of driving a 5K resolution into the display itself, it won't have to worry about trying to balance graphics performance with thin and light designs for its future Mac systems.
I've hoped Apple would take this design route for years; their other existing product lines benefit from having a superior display provide independent capabilities. Think of the future where a more universal video connector allows everything from iPhones to MacAir, etc. to connect and display video on it seamlessly. That is the crucial issue with modern multi-device households - no single visual interface, even when all the devices are in the same room. That will change now.
Now give us the 17" retina Macbook Pro.
Some of us do real work and need a portable workstation. not everyone is an internet blogger that can live on a low power paper thin 13" stack of paper.
Integrated GPU just means that you'll be looking to upgrade your 5k monitor in a year or two.
Nope, no thank you apple.
Integrated GPU just means that you'll be looking to upgrade your 5k monitor in a year or two.
That's what most people do anyway. The only people who upgrade piecemeal are geeks like us and even then most of us don't bother. Most people just buy a whole new system when they buy a new computer. Apple knows this better than anyone. What you are saying isn't silly but the numbers don't lie. Most people just go the simple route and upgrade everything.
Honestly I've wondered for a long time why nobody made an external graphics system - either integrated into a monitor or a separate box or in a docking station. I would be SUPER useful for a laptop or other portable device - maybe even for a tablet. Then you can have your industrial strength graphics at your permanent desk but when you are traveling or doing light duty work and don't need it you don't have to lug the extra hardware and have the attendant power drain. It makes a lot of sense if you have a fast enough interconnect. Apple sells a ton of laptops so external graphics processing actually makes a ton of sense for a certain segment.
Thunderbolt can, among other things, encapsulate PCIe. You effectively end up with a discrete GPU that has slightly higher latency than the attached one, but all of the rendering is done on the GPU and the final image is output directly to the display. You'll upload textures, geometry, and shaders to the external GPU via Thunderbolt, but you won't be streaming rendered images over the connection.
This isn't a very surprising development. At least one third-party has been providing external GPUs for Macs since shortly after they started shipping with Thunderbolt (you can also buy a simple PCIe enclosure that plugs into Thunderbolt and lets you plug in other cards). Moving the GPU into the display (which, in an Apple monitor, already uses the PCIe parts of Thunderbolt to provide USB, Firewire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, audio, and a camera) is a pretty logical step and one that several people had predicted.
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Don't sent pixels.
You're sending the instructions that go into the GPU, not the pixel data that comes out of the GPU. So you're sending polygon vertices and textures and so on. Worst case is video, and then you are sending an mpeg stream, which is a lot less bandwidth than number of pixels times number of frames.
If you think about how a blu ray player works, for example, turning the video into raw pixels then sending over HDMI is actually quite stupid. Rather, if your display can decompress h264 in hardware, you can just stream the raw h264. With a few decent royalty free standards things could work so much better, albeit against a number of entrenched proprietary interests (which is why I don't hold my breath).
John_Chalisque
Thunderbolt isn't only Display Port.
Thunderbolt is also PCIe.
The idea is that to drive a 5k monitor, you need a 5k-capable source.
i.e.: a quite big GPU.
But instead of putting the big discreet CPU inside the laptop and have a regular 5k picture over the display port
(which would have negative impact on battery life, weight and thickness - which doesn't seem to align with Apple's current goals which seem to boil down to "Make a laptop thin enough that you can cut cheese with it")
You put a huge honking GPU inside the screen (say a Nvidia Pascal or AMD Polaris), and have the PCIe link to the laptop.
Thus when you the laptop is connected to the screen, on its PCIe bus, it has access to a big enough GPU, but when you disconnect it, the etra weight and power consumption stays inside the monitor and the marketing department can continue touting the Mac Air being so thin you can almost see-through.
Plus it has the nice advantage to lock you even further into Apple's hardware:
you need to buy Apple's Monitor+GPU combo in order to use it with Apple's Mac Airs.
You won't get 5k out of a regular 5k monitor with vanilla DisplayPort or HDMI inputs.
But this also raises a big security problem:
as the GPU is inside the monitor, the texture uploads happen to RAM located *on the graphic card inside the monitor*.
If the monitor isn't powered down between uses, a hostile could plug the monitor and instead of uploading new texture/windows to it dump its memory content and get a good idea of what was displayed latest.
And remember that nowadays games aren't the only things uploading textures to a GPU. Desktop Composers (including like Apple's Quartz Extreme) do use it to composite the desktop too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I was under the impression that on your computer monitor, there is this thing called the operating system that is capable of providing genuine 5k content to your heart's desire. To wit, and by geeky standards: more open windows with more (typographically, at least) legible code on one and the same monitor.
Putting the GPU in a separate box sitting between the computer and monitor and connected via a high-bandwidth cable like Thunderbolt, has already been done. This is just that idea, but combining the box and monitor. The only advantages I can think of over a separate GPU box are: You don't need a separate power cable because you can mooch off the monitor's power supply. And you could conceivably bypass any cable speed limits by running a direct channel from the GPU to the monitor (thinking ahead to when resolutions are higher than even Thunderbolt can support).
I can think of a lot of disadvantages though. Can't be repaired/upgraded separately. Destroys the thin profile of modern monitors. Overly complicated purchase choices (thinking ahead to a future when x different monitors and y different GPUs are available, you have to pick from x*y monitor/GPU combos, instead of just picking them separately for x+y choices). Hotspot created by GPU could damage the portion of the monitor it's adjacent to. Fan to cool the GPU is stuck in the monitor, so you can't shove it and the computer into a closet with only KVM cables leading to your desk, for some peace and quiet,
It could be made modular(though Apple probably wouldn't be the vendor to do it); but I suspect that it would be in serious danger of falling into the same sort of niche that 'MXM' GPU modules for laptops have. Those are theoretically standardized and swappable; but relatively rare and often thermally or mechanically limited such that only a few specific upgrades can be made.
5k is too high a resolution for DP 1.2 to drive at 60Hz, so you would be limited to DP 1.3 or 1.4 parts, or nonstandard hacks of 1.2 parts(which is what the 'retina' iMac uses); and unless the plan is to actually have a little displayport dongle sticking out of the back of the monitor to plug into the GPU, you couldn't just use an ordinary PCIe expansion card, it would have to be something with an embedded DP connector and probably a mechanical design better suited to a monitor than to an ATX case.
Worse, since DP 1.3 or 1.4 can drive 5k monitors normally, without any putting the GPU in the monitor and using a PCIe link, there is going to be a relatively narrow window of opportunity before people who care enough to buy fancy monitors all have GPUs capable of driving them anyway; which means that selling upgrades for the oddball embedded GPU monitors will be of interest only to niche vendors like OWC(who are often your best option for upgrading freaky mac parts; but generally aren't inexpensive).
It would certainly be doable technically; but would be at serious risk of being orphaned in practice(much like the GPU cards in the 'cylinder' Mac Pro: architecturally those are normal PCIe parts; but board layout and connector are totally different and nobody seems to have taken much of an interest in offering upgrade modules).
Sure. I was only saying that because the OP claimed "5K is pointless one-upping until there is an application for it.". It sure is when it comes to raw, full-screen video content - but that does not mean an Apple 5K screen intended to display OS X content is pointless.
But then you have to upgrade your display every time a new codec comes out, or have a player capable of real-time transcoding.
Anchoring the GPU to the desk may be entirely the wrong choice now: there will likely be a lot of demand for portable high performance GPUs from VR headsets.
Except for modularity, it would be a worse product.
Maybe but maybe not. That's a bit like arguing that a PC with a discrete graphics card is a worse product than one with integrated graphics. Worse in what way? You have to consider the entire product and the equation isn't just as simple as More Complicated = Worse.
The video card would need to sit on a riser (or be perpendicular to the display).
A discrete card could be mounted into a gap in the board flush with the board for the monitor itself. It wouldn't necessarily have to have a riser though that is possible. Even if it did, is that really a problem? I don't see it as one. If my monitor is 4 inches deep vs 6 inches deep is that really a big concern?
It would be bulkier, physically less robust, harder to cool, harder to manage compatibility, and probably more expensive due to the extra components and cooling.
Probably a bit bulkier but not much and not enough to really matter in most cases. Physical robustness isn't likely to be a challenge unless you plan on moving it a lot which kind of defeats the entire purpose of a device like this. Plus it would be roughly as robust as a desktop PC which is demonstrably fine. Cooling is a concern but a well understood and manageable one. We're not talking bleeding edge water cooling here. It definitely would be more expensive than a regular monitor but that doesn't prevent it from being good value for money.
There is probably a market for a 5K monitor with user-replaceable video card, but I think a fixed GPU makes more sense for almost all of Apple's target market.
I think there is almost no chance it will be a user replaceable GPU. Would be nice but it would be pretty contrary to Apple's standard MO. If Apple can make it catch on however it wouldn't surprise me to see something in the PC enthusiast market for user replaceable cards. Unclear how much of a market there is for that but I could see it happening.
T3 has only 4 x lanes (x4) of PCIe gen 3.0 ( and 2 slower lanes ), given that most discrete GPU adapters want to be in a x16 slot, it suggests to me that external GPUs will be crippled in PCIe connection bandwidth. However, I assume the beautiful monitor will accept the 4K DP over T3 to give you great performance for on-system GPUs.
Correct.
I would rather see a separate box that you just attach to the monitor. However this is only useful for laptops.
Dear Apple your anorexic design language is played out. iMacs, MacBook Pros, and MacPros do not have to be the smallest and thinnest devices.
Give your customers a MacBook Pro that uses M.2 for SSDs and allows them to upgrade the ram! Give your desktop customers a line with at least one PCI-e slot and that uses desktop CPUs. Give your MacPro customers a tower with M.2, SATA, bays for drives, and slots for GPU cards.
Thunderbolt is not becoming a new standard it is becoming Fireware. Good for a some small markets but not a mass market interface.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well, there are a number of cameras coming out, that are getting into decent price ranges, that shoot 4K+ video....and with my photo editing, that high resolution really allows me to truly see my high rez images while editing them.
I can also fit a LOT of open windows on a 5K monitor which is nice too....
But there are applications for a 4K or 5K computer monitor.
I had thought recently to get one of the iMac 5K's....but was worried that the GPU on it would be so busy with the display that it might now have quite enough power to run Davinci Resolve as speeds I wanted and needed for editing and color grading video.
With a monitor like this with GPU internal, I might could get that, and a new CPU unit (macbook pro, mac pro, etc)...and let the GPU in the computer unit do all the hard work for the application and the GPU in the monitor would do the display work....that sounds pretty sweet!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It could be as easy as updated GPU firmware to support a new codec (but not for your GPL Codec of the Week). In the worst case, it's still over a link that is already designed to run a 4K monitor, so unless you had a full 5K source, you could send the raw decoded video and the GPU in the monitor would upscale to full screen resolution.
This isn't some kind of crappy USB3 here, Thunderbolt is set up to be basically a PCI-e x2 or x4 port. The question is, what's it's future? Apple has had some pretty cool technologies that died when the rest of the world finally caught up with a different technology, in particular Firewire. Intel has accepted it, I don't see any other technology leap-frogging it yet, and it is possible that Thunderbolt over USB-C could actually catch on. (which could make the mini-DisplayPort version fall to the curse, ha ha)
I hate this a lot less than cramming the whole computer (something you want to upgrade more often than the screen) into a nice screen like current iMacs. Making a KVM switch for it could be tricky, though.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The news cycle on /. is so slow sometimes. If you follow Apple news, you were hearing about this a few days ago, and YESTERDAY we already heard from Rene Ritchie claiming that this isn't happening.
So don't expect anything. And for those of you already mad at Apple for a product that hasn't been officially announced and is probably imaginary, calm thine tits. At least be mad at Apple for the stuff they ACTUALLY do, not the made up stuff that hasn't happened.
Why are you connecting a work laptop over WiFi? Especially overnight! How cheap are they that you don't have a gigabit wired Ethernet connection?
And why are they such drooling morons that they don't require you to use wired Ethernet, but force you to run antivirus crap on OS X? Yeah, all those overnight updates to everybody's computers via WiFi? No wonder it's flaking out all the time.
Protip: go to the wireless icon in the menu bar, Turn Wi-Fi Off, Turn Wi-Fi On. Much faster than rebooting.
Gonna agree with you about click-less trackpads, though. (using a 2011-2012 era MBP right now) The haptic feedback is important, and I've never found a trackpad that reliably worked with soft-clicking. It drives me nuts that the trackpads on old PC laptops default to soft-click mode with no driver (when they have real buttons!), and you have to install a driver just to turn that bullshit off. Also, I turn off all trackpad options except for 2-finger scroll (which I just noticed I can't disable anyhow), they're more trouble than they're worth.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Thunderbolt is set up to be basically a PCI-e x2 or x4 port.
Ugh. A graphics card on a PCIe x4.
That's going to be fast.
This entire discussion may be moot, as it appears there won't be a 5K monitor coming from Apple at all; at least, not in the near future.
Way to be up-to-date on the Mac rumors, Slashdot.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.