I guess the industries that benefit from "the more RAM the better, with no limit" would be 3d rendering, video editing, simulations, and large-format photography. I am doing the latter, joining together thousands or tens of thousands of images into a single seamless photo. for example:
I am aware that in many applications, the GPU has taken over for some of the "heavy lifting", but that is not true in all cases. Given there are basically no real power or thermal considerations limiting the RAM for a computer like this, I would really like to know if this 64GB limit is real, or if it is due to what RAM modules are available on the market now. Is it a limit in the OS? Will the Mac Pro be able to have 256GB RAM in the future, or not?
it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.
You present a few valid examples. But I can't see how that represents "many" tasks; it's a very, very small subset of the fields in which people use computers for work.
If there were no hardware out there that supports the RAM requirements you're talking about, that'd be a great area for development. But if you're suggesting everything -- or even most things -- should support what to most of us is an over-the-top amount of memory, perhaps your niche is not quite as major as you think.
I agree that it's a niche application, but imho it's one of the target demographics of a 4k+ USD workstation. I'd like to know the reason (software/hardware) behind the 64 GB limitation as well.
It's a $4000 workstation. You buy it to run big jobs. Your department buys 10 or 20. In 3 or 4 years, the amount of "big data" grows and now you need more RAM. Do you simply spend another $100k to buy all new machines? You are just thinking about today's needs but a few years out memory needs always grow.
Not disagreeing with the memory point... just pointing out that a 12 core processor would, most likely, not be sufficient to the cause in 3 or 4 years if your memory needs grew that much. So wouldn't you buy new machines anyway every 4 years if your department were doing that sort of work???
The Mac Pro itself is a niche machine and priced as such, though. I mean, it uses a Xeon workstation/server-class CPU - how many computer users need Xeon and wouldn't be just as happy with a much cheaper high-end desktop CPU?
It's not unheard of for Macs to be limited in how much RAM they'll recognize, but it's not common. The maximum is typically limited by the number of RAM slots and the largest modules on the market. The Mac Pro has 4 slots and 16GB modules are the biggest out there at the moment. I would put good odds on it being able to take e.g. 128GB when 32GB modules become available. But there's no guarantee.
Is it an absolute requirement that the machine on your desk is the powerful one? For example, lots of scientists and engineers rely on massive computing power to do their work, but that power is in a server room somewhere. They often have modest laptops on their desk.
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I am aware that in many applications, the GPU has taken over for some of the "heavy lifting", but that is not true in all cases. Given there are basically no real power or thermal considerations limiting the RAM for a computer like this, I would really like to know if this 64GB limit is real, or if it is due to what RAM modules are available on the market now. Is it a limit in the OS? Will the Mac Pro be able to have 256GB RAM in the future, or not?