Apple has unveiled its new Mac Pro desktop computer, a new design and form factor that could change the way users think about desktop computing.
“When we began work on the next Mac Pro, we considered every element that defines a pro computer — graphics, storage, expansion, processing power, and memory,” the company says about the product. “And we challenged ourselves to find the best, most forward-looking way possible to engineer each one of them.
“When we put it all together, the result was something entirely new. Something radically different from anything before it. Something that provides an extremely powerful argument against the status quo.”
The new PC is centred around a unified thermal core, and stands just 9,9-inches tall with a diameter of just 6,6 inches.
It is engineered around workstation graphics with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2, new-generation Xeon processors, ultrafast memory, and support for 4K video.
Based on the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset, the Mac Pro offers up to 12 cores of processing power, up to 40Gbps of PCI Express gen 3 bandwidth, and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions.
It includes a four-channel DDR3 memory controller running at 1866MHz and delivers up to 60Gbps of memory bandwidth. It also features two AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs.
The new Mac Pro boasts next-generation PCI Express flash storage that’s up to 2,5 times faster than the fastest SATA-based solid-state drive and up to 10 times faster than a 7200-rpm SATA hard drive.
The unified heat core has allowed Apple to build the new PC around a single piece of extruded aluminium designed to maximise airflow as well as thermal capacity. A single, larger fan that pulls air upward through a bottom vent.
Expansion is built in, with Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 1.4 ports.
The device also has three-stream 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0.