Apple finally brings back cheese-grater style Mac Pro, plus new Pro Display

At the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) today, Apple executives released an updated Mac Pro, harkening back to classic “cheese grater” style desktop. The new Mac Pro is based on a 28-core Intel Xeon workstation processor 6 channels of ECC for up to 1TB of system memory, 8 PCIe slots, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, support for dual AMD GPUs and more. Apple also introduced a custom video accelerator card, Afterburner.

Apple also introduced the Pro Display XDR 32-inch HDR display with 6016×3384 resolution, true 10-bit panel, a polarizer for better viewing angles, etched glass and a large array of blue LEDs with lenses and local dimming supporting 1,600 nits peak and 1,000 nits sustained and high contrast. A $999 stand is sold separately.

For your convenience, the press release is reproduced below.

Apple unveils powerful, all-new Mac Pro and groundbreaking Pro Display XDR

San Jose, California — Apple today introduced the all-new Mac Pro, a completely redesigned, breakthrough workstation for pros who push the limits of what a Mac can do, and unveiled Apple Pro Display XDR, the world’s best pro display. Designed for maximum performance, expansion and configurability, the all-new Mac Pro features workstation-class Xeon processors up to 28 cores, a high-performance memory system with a massive 1.5TB capacity, eight PCIe expansion slots and a graphics architecture featuring the world’s most powerful graphics card. It also introduces Apple Afterburner, a game-changing accelerator card that enables playback of three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video simultaneously.

Pro Display XDR features a massive 32-inch Retina 6K display with gorgeous P3 wide and 10-bit color, an extreme 1,600 nits of peak brightness, an incredible 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a superwide viewing angle, all at a breakthrough price point. Together, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are the most powerful tools Apple has ever put in the hands of pro customers and will change pro workflows forever.

“We designed Mac Pro for users who require a modular system with extreme performance, expansion and configurability. With its powerful Xeon processors, massive memory capacity, groundbreaking GPU architecture, PCIe expansion, Afterburner accelerator card and jaw-dropping design, the new Mac Pro is a monster that will enable pros to do their life’s best work,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Pro Display XDR is the world’s best pro display and the perfect companion to the all-new Mac Pro. With Retina 6K resolution, gorgeous color, extreme brightness and contrast ratio, and a highly functional design, Pro Display XDR delivers the most comprehensive set of features ever offered on any display at this price point.”

Tremendous Processor Power and Massive Bandwidth

Enormous Memory Capacity and Expansion

For pros working with the largest projects, analyzing huge data sets or running multiple pro applications, Mac Pro provides enormous memory capacity to meet needs as they grow. Featuring a six-channel memory architecture and 12 physical DIMM slots, the new Mac Pro allows for a massive 1.5TB of memory, the most ever available in a Mac. And with eight PCI Express expansion slots, which is twice that of the previous-generation Mac Pro tower, pros can customize and expand their system in ways never before possible in a single workstation.

World’s Most Powerful Graphics Architecture

For pros animating 3D film assets, compositing 8K scenes and building complex 3D environments, graphics performance is more important than ever. That is why Mac Pro features the world’s most powerful graphics card and up to 56 teraflops of graphics performance in a single system. Its groundbreaking graphics expansion architecture, the Apple MPX Module, features Thunderbolt integration and over 500W of power, both firsts for any graphics card. And for super quiet operation, the MPX Module is cooled by the Mac Pro system thermals.

Mac Pro graphics options start with the Radeon Pro 580X. Mac Pro debuts the Radeon Pro Vega II, featuring up to 14 teraflops of compute performance and 32GB of memory with 1TB/s of memory bandwidth, the highest of any GPU. Mac Pro also introduces Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, which features two Vega II GPUs for an incredible 28 teraflops of graphics performance and 64GB of memory, making it the world’s most powerful graphics card. Mac Pro can accommodate two MPX Modules so customers can use two Vega II Duos for a staggering 56 teraflops of graphics performance and 128GB of video memory.

Introducing Apple Afterburner, a Game-Changing Accelerator Card

The new Mac Pro debuts Afterburner, featuring a programmable ASIC capable of decoding up to 6.3 billion pixels per second. With Afterburner, video editors using high-quality cameras that require the conversion of native file formats into proxies for easy editing can now use native formats right from the camera and decode up to three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video and 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW video in real time,¹ virtually eliminating proxy workflows.

Stunning Modular Enclosure with 360-Degree Access

The design of the new Mac Pro starts with a stainless-steel space frame with an aluminum housing that lifts off for 360-degree access to the entire system. The frame provides a foundation for modularity and flexibility, and incorporates smooth handles for easily moving Mac Pro around the studio. The housing also features a stunning lattice pattern to maximize airflow and quiet operation. For customers who want to rack mount their Mac Pro in edit bays or machine rooms, an optimized version for rack deployment will be available this fall.

Performance to Transform the Pro Workflow

With up to 28 core Xeon processors, 56 teraflops of graphics performance and the groundbreaking Afterburner card, the new Mac Pro delivers performance that will transform pro workflows. A number of pro app developers are seeing amazing results that have never been possible in a single workstation.

• Blackmagic Design brings full CPU and multi-GPU accelerated 8K real-time editing, effects and color correction in ProRes 4444 for the first time on any system.

• Avid can enable support for up to six HDX cards, resulting in more IO, increased voice count and two times the real-time DSP processing than any other system can achieve in Pro Tools.

• Maxon’s Cinema 4D is seeing 20 percent faster GPU render performance when compared to a Windows workstation maxed out with three NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics cards.

For additional performance results for the all-new Mac Pro, see apple.com/mac-pro.

Pro Display XDR Features Largest Retina Display Ever

Featuring a 32-inch LCD panel with a 6016 x 3384 Retina 6K resolution with more than 20 million pixels, Pro Display XDR delivers a super-sharp, high-resolution viewing experience with nearly 40 percent more screen real estate than a Retina 5K display. With a P3 wide color gamut and true 10-bit color for over 1 billion colors, pros will have a more true-to-life viewing experience — critical for video and photo editing, 3D animation or color grading. Pro Display XDR also features the industry’s best polarizer technology, delivering a superwide, color-accurate, off-axis viewing angle, so now multiple people can view more accurate content simultaneously. To manage reflected light, Pro Display XDR has an industry-leading anti-reflective coating and offers an innovative new matte option called nano-texture, with glass etched at the nanometer level for low reflectivity and less glare.