So, I have been sniffing at the new black tower that is the Apple Mac Pro. One frustration I had about the online Apple specifications was the lack of CPU model number (e.g. Intel’s identification) in Apple’s write-up. If anyone else had this complaint, here is the matrix of equivalents:
- 3.7 GHx quad-core with 10MB of L3 cache = Intel E5 1620v2
- 3.5 GHx 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache = Intel E5 1650v2
- 3.0 GHx 8-core with 25MB of L3 cache = Intel E5 1680v2
- 2.7 GHx 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache = Intel E5 2697v2
The two hints I had to figure this out was that the micro architecture was “22-nanometer process technology” which means it has to be new Ivy Bridge line-up. See Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)) or Intel for a full description. Plus, supported memory was “fast 1866MHz ECC” which knocks about half on Intel’s new Ivy Bridge server processor’s off the list, narrowing the field a lot.
Note that the Apple Mac Pro has one CPU slot and two graphic processor unit (GPU) slots. So, the Intel E5 2697v2 could be argued to be a bit of an overkill considering its architected to be part of a CPU pair, but this is not possible in the new Apple Mac Pro.
Another point to consider are the available memory slots. Since Apple has one configuration with three populated memory slots, the slots are not paired in the usual manner. Secondly, in all the other configurations, the slots are fully populated, so that upgrading later means throwing away DIMMS.
Finally, what to do with all this horse power? I’ve read that you can install ESXi 5.1 on the platform, and host OSX virtual machines in a supported configuration. I am very interested in trying this out for myself, because you know that you cannot trust everything you read on the Internet.