Apple today shared two new “Technical Overview” white papers that take an extensive look into the technology and feature set of the Pro Display XDR and the Mac Pro. Apple posted white papers for both the Mac Pro (PDF) and Pro Display XDR (PDF) that dive deep into the specs for each. The Mac Pro paper doesn’t offer startling revelations, but it does outline the workstation’s capabilities in thorough detail.
The ?Mac Pro? overview highlights the lattice case, Intel Xeon W chip, GPUs, PCIe expansion slots, MPX module, I/O, T2 chip, SSD, and more.
Apple explains the reason for design choices made for the ?Mac Pro?, does a deep dive into performance, and lists technical specifications. Much of this information has previously been shared in product pages and marketing info provided by Apple, but this is the single most comprehensive source for ?Mac Pro? info.
Apple also makes some suggestions as to what to get. You’ll want more than the base 32GB of RAM to make full use of the six memory channels, but you’ll want to avoid maxing out the memory if bandwidth is crucial the higher latency of 128GB LR-DIMMs could hurt performance. Likewise, you may see a negligible benefit from the Afterburner card if you work with 4K, 30FPS ProRes 422 video files on a 28-core system, but it could make all the difference if you’re working with 4K or 8K ProRes RAW footage.
The Pro Display XDR white paper is similar, detailing display panel components, LED backlighting system, timing controller, display accuracy, reference modes, enclosure design mounting, and technical specifications. As before, Apple dishes out advice. Some of it will be obvious to creatives don’t use True Tone if you need absolute color accuracy while others are more specific. You won’t keep the screen at 1,000 nits forever if you work in an office hotter than 77F, for instance.
These are useful resources for those who are interested in learning more about the ?Mac Pro? and the Pro Display XDR ahead of purchase.