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Nytonial t1_itkpaci wrote

Reply to comment by benanderson89 in Apple testing Apple Silicon Mac Pro with 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, 192GB of memory by prehistoric_knight

Because they aren't workstation spec unless you mean "contain software you're trapped into" as a reason they are a workstation

They are average hardware with shocking thermals, untill m1, which isn't compatible with enough yet

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benanderson89 t1_itkqkww wrote

They've always been workstation grade hardware because they've been designed for specialised tasks with certifications from software vendors and optimised for a strict subset of tasks. The previous intel systems had dedicated hardware for video (EG the T2 chip in many models doubled as a transcode processor), ECC Graphics RAM and were highly optimised 2D Image and Audio processing. Current ARM systems are highly optimised for high memory throughput applications and multi-processing (and the genius NUMA implementation in the M1 Max Ultra is a legitimately innovative piece of technology; the interconnect between the two domains being as fast as local node memory is a stunning achievement).

The reason Apple sell so many systems to business is because they're a good buy for business and price and feature competitive with other *nix systems like the Dell Precision, Lenovo ThinkPad or HP Z. Not checked the pricing on the IBM Power systems recently but I imagine those are going to be astronomically priced by comparison.

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Nytonial t1_itku879 wrote

"designed for specialised tasks" is that a fancy way of saying browsing Facebook? Since anything else would cook them down to 1ghz speeds.

While I agree m1 is a big change and actually incredible development, nothing about intel Mac's was workstation class without excessive gatekeeping mentality.

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