Mac Pro Afterburner gets and Update before release

[hishnash]

So it seems in amonge the other news about the new 16” MacBookPro apple let slip that the afterburner card (an optional add-in card for the to-be-released Mac Pro) will support 6 8k ProRes Raw video streams rather than the originally advertised 3 ProRes Raw video streams. 
 

Quote

Apple is also touting a new hardware acceleration card it calls Afterburner. It's the magic behind the Mac Pro's ability to handle those six simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes RAW footage, 

source: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-mac-pro-2019

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

damn... that's nice. 

[LeSheen]

3 hours ago, yaboistar said:

if it isn't at least partly made by MSI i'm gonna be disappointed

Does msi have it trademarked?

[minibois]

4 minutes ago, LeSheen said:

Does msi have it trademarked?

Perhaps, but I doubt they could do something with it..

Afterburner isn't a name only used by MSI, as there is an 'Afterburner Inc.' a business consulting firm. 

Also another Afterburner, who has a trademark in the soap and soap-related stuff industries.

 

If MSI had a trademark for Afterburner (I couldn't find if they do), it wouldn't have much to do with this card from Apple.

That is what a trademark is mainly about; granting you exclusive right to use a certain name in a certain industry. 

A piece of software for fan/temp monitoring and fan control (that is not available on MacOS?) doesn't get infringed by a video-acceleration card for a Macbook/Mac Pro. People couldn't confuse one for the other really... (although that is not up to me to decide, but rather the judge if one invites the other to court).

 

So I doubt - if MSI even has 'Afterburner' trademarked - they could do anything about this.

 

I am not a lawyer, don't take legal advice from me.

[yolosnail]

17 minutes ago, minibois said:

Perhaps, but I doubt they could do something with it..

Afterburner isn't a name only used by MSI, as there is an 'Afterburner Inc.' a business consulting firm. 

Also another Afterburner, who has a trademark in the soap and soap-related stuff industries.

 

If MSI had a trademark for Afterburner (I couldn't find if they do), it wouldn't have much to do with this card from Apple.

That is what a trademark is mainly about; granting you exclusive right to use a certain name in a certain industry. 

A piece of software for fan/temp monitoring and fan control (that is not available on MacOS?) doesn't get infringed by a video-acceleration card for a Macbook/Mac Pro. People couldn't confuse one for the other really... (although that is not up to me to decide, but rather the judge if one invites the other to court).

 

So I doubt - if MSI even has 'Afterburner' trademarked - they could do anything about this.

 

I am not a lawyer, don't take legal advice from me.

Afterburner is MSI's graphics card software.

Afterburner is Apple's 'graphics' accelerator card. (Not technically graphics, but the average Apple user probably won't know the difference)

 

I can see how there might be confusion between even if they're not exactly the same thing

[minibois]

7 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

Afterburner is MSI's graphics card software.

Afterburner is Apple's 'graphics' accelerator card. (Not technically graphics, but the average Apple user probably won't know the difference)

 

I can see how there might be confusion between even if they're not exactly the same thing

MSI Afterburner is barely GPU software. It's temp/fan monitoring + fan control.

There are very little circumstances I can think off where you can say "Afterburner" and mean both (or be confused about which one is needed).

 

Apple's Afterburner is barely a GPU too. I mean.. I can see people call it a 'videocard', but I don't see MSI using that term on their Afterburner page.

 

But we shall see if either ones takes any legal action.

[williamcll]

Hold do you put the afterburner card into the laptop? An external enclosure?

[hishnash]

30 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Hold do you put the afterburner card into the laptop? An external enclosure?

New MacPro is a tower case with a lot of expansion slots.

[yolosnail]

1 hour ago, minibois said:

MSI Afterburner is barely GPU software. It's temp/fan monitoring + fan control.

There are very little circumstances I can think off where you can say "Afterburner" and mean both (or be confused about which one is needed).

 

Apple's Afterburner is barely a GPU too. I mean.. I can see people call it a 'videocard', but I don't see MSI using that term on their Afterburner page.

 

But we shall see if either ones takes any legal action.

It's also used for GPU overclocking, so I'd say it's very much GPU software

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

can't wait for LTT to review this for THIS X COSTS HOW MUCH?! series

 

also if someone would manage to make it work on a windows machine 

Given the ProRes kernel for this is part of macOS not part of the card (apple have already said that the card is re-programmable) it is possible someone might find out how to dump some other kernal onto it but not the ProRes one.

also why would you bother, if your working with this type of video you want your system to be rock solid stable, using a hacked custom solution will realy not be and therefore your not going to want that. (don't get me wrong it would make an epic video and be realy cool to see a 3U Epic Server with 8 of these) but no-one will buy them for that.

What im most interested is if apple release a framework so that I as a dev can compile my own kernels and run them on there (then we might see 6 8k Red Raw but also a load of DataSci workloads could be massively sped up with this type stream processing of hardware). 

For me im hoping apple have a Data-Sci angle for the macPro so fare they have realy talked up the Video, Audio... users and that is a valid user group but the DataSci, community could also do with some apple magic. With all the work google is putting in to make Swift the Default High Performance TensorFlow language apple could realy ship some units if they did the right things.

[Master Disaster]

Given the $1000 monitor stand I'm guessing this thing will cost north of a mortgage.

[hishnash]

11 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Given the $1000 monitor stand I'm guessing this thing will cost north of a mortgage.

For the Companies that need this will still be cheaper than the equivalent 12 GPUs it replaces! (Just in power costs alone)

[The1Dickens]

So will you need that accelerator to run that monitor? Or will that monitor run on any PC?

[hishnash]

12 minutes ago, The1Dickens said:

So will you need that accelerator to run that monitor? Or will that monitor run on any PC?

No this accelerator has nothing to do with the monitor. You will be able to use the screen on and device with good (duel display port over single connection) TB3 support (mostly just macs). The card is just for real-time decoding/encoding of raw 8k pro-res you will still need a gpu

[PlayStation 2]

Is it me or does this remind me of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 accelerator cards of the 1990s? I don't mean it in a mocking way, either, because if it makes multiple ProRes streams being able to be edited easily in real-time, that's a hell of a big deal.

[Orangeator]

I am disjointed, when I saw the title I thought it meant that MSI's afterburner software was coming with the Mac Pro lol.

[Kisai]

11 hours ago, handymanshandle said:

Is it me or does this remind me of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 accelerator cards of the 1990s? I don't mean it in a mocking way, either, because if it makes multiple ProRes streams being able to be edited easily in real-time, that's a hell of a big deal.

It's probably a FPGA card. If there's suddenly a way to double the performance they likely switched the FPGA chip used.

[hishnash]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

It's probably a FPGA card. If there's suddenly a way to double the performance they likely switched the FPGA chip used.

It is an FPGA card apple said this back at WWDC.