The new Mac Pro is a long-anticipated development for Apple’s high end pro users, but it sure looks as if the company also created the machine for its own strategic benefit —specifically to help make its Metal API become a dominant standard for GPU-intensive software. That could have big implications for Macs, iOS devices, and Apple GPUs going forward, with history providing some insight into why this matters.
Apple’s presentation of Mac Pro focused extensively on its graphics capabilities
Over the last decade, GPU maker Nvidia has established its CUDA platform as the most popular way to build intensive compute workflows in parallel computing, 3D and CGI rendering, and in machine learning–the company has claimed an 80% share of the inference processing market. CUDA is also widely adopted in video game software engines and professional film, music, and image editing software. This strategy has paid off, as using CUDA software requires an Nvidia GPU.
That raises the question of how Apple can expect to launch its new Mac Pro into the professional space without any apparent support for Nvidia’s latest GPUs. It’s like Apple launching the original Macintosh without support for DOS software, or iPod without any way to playback Windows Media Player files, an iPhone without Java, or iPad without Adobe Flash. It’s boldly insane to pundits, but it’s also exactly the kind of high stakes gamble that has regularly worked out well for Apple and its customer base.
Bear with me through a brief history of how we got to the current situation in GPU-accelerated computing tasks, and take a look at where the industry is headed as we begin a new decade of technology in the 2020s.
Read more at AppleInsider.com