Mac Pro 2013 and GPU Expansion

CUDA is an NVIDIA-owned proprietary solution. Apple is not committing to CUDA exclusively.

What they are committing to is OpenCL (not the same as OpenGL), which should be able to use ANY GPU solution, including CUDA, to do the GPU Computing/Array Processing.

I expect almost all Production software to add support for OpenCL, eventually. Adobe has announced their commitment.

As for gamers ?? who knows what those guys will do ??

A CUDA card in a ThunderBolt box can certainly compute fast enough, but cannot provide 16x PCIE-3 data transfer rate.

Are there any benchmarks for the internal Dual AMD FirePro already?

zachi-

That is a very clever 'taking out of context' to support your position, but since that is less than HALF of the answer they posted, I am taking the "liberty" of posting their entire response, which paints a rather different picture:

I'd like to use Octane Render, but I don't have a Nvidia video card.
Are OpenCL compatible cards (AMD and Intel GPUs) supported?

No, OpenCL is currently not as mature as CUDA. As OpenCL matures, it is planned to be supported which will allow GPUs from AMD and Intel to be used with Octane Render. Currently, Octane Render requires a CUDA enabled Nvidia video card to be installed.

Every new technology introduced will require a certain amount of 'presence in the marketplace' to demonstrate to Vendors that there is money to be made there.

One the first DAY of its US introduction, the demand for the new cylinder Mac Pro moved the ship date about 1+1/2 MONTHS. Even if production is constrained for unusual reasons, The demand for these machines is undeniable.

There IS money to be made here, and Vendors who work toward the OpenCL standard quickly will get to participate. For those who do not, "You snooze, you lose."

As for this being difficult, that is certainly true. The ideal product is the Pet Rock. You pick them up off a beach in Mexico and put them in a cute box and sell them at Store 24. Anything more complex is more difficult and requires WORK.

i think you really overestimate the influence of apple 🙂

Did you ever see the keynote where Steve Jobs held the first Bright-colored iBook in his hands, surfed the Internet, and passed a Hula Hoop ever his head while it continued to surf "wirelessy"? Apple made WiFi on portable computers happen.

Apple made touch-screen phones with mail and full Internet happen, starting from no presence in the phone business to eating everybody else's lunch.

Apple essentially invented touch-screen tablet computing and now owns it.

I think you UNDER-estimate the influence of Apple in the marketplace.

With that big new heatsink in the cylinder Mac Pro, GPUs that would melt on a double-height PCIe card with fans suddenly becomes viable with the flow-through design.

If I ran NVIDIA, I would be working with Apple to develop NVIDIA GPUs that would work with the form factor of the new Mac Pro Heatsink and board, for release as soon as possible to give AMD some competition.

In the back room, I would be getting a head start on developing some OpenCL stuff, but not deploying it until later, after careful competitive analysis.

At this moment, NVDIA's advantage with CUDA is really interesting. But the history of this business is littered with the corpses of companies who said, "My way or the Highway."

I would agree with you on the cooperation thing, but the CODA vs. OpenCL train has long left the station. OpenCL doesn't support function calls and CUDA does. Thus all of the modern 3D animation software has begun specializing on CUDA, some dont even support OpenCL at all. This looks to me like Apple is about to lose a branch of their customer base, because they need CUDA more than OS X.

zachi: "an amd gfx card is no use for almost all gpu renderers for example."

Yep!

As a Blender user who does architectural visualization and animation I am really stuck here, and if Apple doesn't come up with a solution by the time I'm ready for a new workstation (next year or two) my next machine will be a Linux PC. While I love open source I was not planning on having to learn a new OS and change so many aspects of my workflow. Yet, the Cycles render engine requires an NVIDIA card, so the current Mac Pro is not an option. Really unfortunate since us pro users waited years for a Mac Pro update that would support Thunderbolt - only to be slapped with this unexpandable AMD lock-in. It's an indication that Apple is no longer closely in touch with the needs of its pro user base.

To elaborate on the issue:

From wiki.blender.org ...

"OpenCL support for AMD/NVidia GPU rendering is currently on hold. Only a small subset of the entire rendering kernel can currently be compiled, which leaves this mostly at prototype. We will need major driver or hardware improvements to get full Cycles support on AMD hardware."

I heard AMD did not adhere closely enough to standards with its OpenCL implementation. So perhaps there's that aspect at play too. Whether it is true or not I am not of expertise to say.

It's looking like if you want fast and beautiful GPU rendering you must leave OS X behind. And this is not even specific to Blender, but rather "all GPU renderers" as zachi stated. Maybe I should embrace the change sooner rather than later since many industries are gravitating more and more toward Linux. Though I still have an ember of hope that a solution will surface before I must. I didn't think Apple would let this happen - forcing many graphics professionals onto AMD when their GPUs are not equipped to really handle OpenCL.