Mac Pro not powerful enough? HP might have what you need
18 April 2016, 08:35
It’s no secret that Apple’s Mac range of computers are underpowered by modern standards. For example, MacRumor.com’s buyer’s guide pretty much tells you NOT to buy a Mac at the moment. Nowhere is the pain felt as severely as with the Mac Pro line, which hasn’t seen a spec update for 851 days as of this writing. That’s nearly two and a half years. Wowzers!
Perhaps surprisingly, HP has come to the rescue with its new Mac receiver app, part of its larger Remote Graphics Software range that lets you tap in to the power of the company’s new and updated range of HP Z1 powerhouse workstations.
In fact, according to HP, connecting up your Mac to one of the new Z1s is like…
… upgrading your Mac with up to 9x the processing cores, 30x the memory and adding professional NVIDIA Quadro graphics.
Z1 workstations can have up to 44 CPU cores and up to 64GB of error-checking (ECC) RAM. Needless to say, PCIe solid state storage is default.
It’s not clear how the Mac receiver app, apparently available in the coming months, connects to the workstations. HP talks of “worldwide” working, which indicates network/Internet connections, but the bandwidth would be severely constrained in that case – far too much for the likes of effective real-time video editing or rendering, which is a core use of the Mac Pro and indeed the Z1 range. We have to assume that Thunderbolt connections are also possible, although at the present time Macs only offer Thunderbolt 2 and not the Thunderbolt 3 that the new Z1 range comes with.
The new system will also probably require plugins from audio, video and graphics editing software companies such as Avid, Adobe and even Apple itself.
Leave a comment...
◀︎ iPad Pro 12.9in — massive discounts at Best Buy
First sighting of Apple's self-driving, erm, Transit van? ▶︎