Mac Pro
Type:	Workstation
Developer:	Apple Inc.
Released:	August 7, 2006
Processor(s):	Intel Xeon, 1 × quad-core 2.8 GHz 64-bit 2 × quad-core 2.8, 3.0, or 3.2 GHz 64-bit
Base Price:	USD$2,299 (standard configuration US$2,799)
Website:	www.apple.com/macpro/

The Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on an Intel 5400 chipset (with PCI Express architecture) and Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities. They are currently the only desktop computers in the Macintosh lineup. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1269x1945, 3413 KB) uploaded to replace Image:moosa. ... Sun SPARCstation 1+, 25 MHz RISC processor from early 1990s A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or engineering workstation, is a high-end desktop or deskside microcomputer designed for technical applications. ... Apple Inc. ... is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... CPU redirects here. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... This article is about the Intel microprocessor. ... This article is about the SI unit of frequency. ... In computing, a 64-bit component is one in which data are processed or stored in 64-bit units (words). ... This article is about the SI unit of frequency. ... In computing, a 64-bit component is one in which data are processed or stored in 64-bit units (words). ... USD redirects here. ... Sun SPARCstation 1+, 25 MHz RISC processor from early 1990s A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or engineering workstation, is a high-end desktop or deskside microcomputer designed for technical applications. ... Apple Inc. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... PCI Express (formerly known as 3GIO for 3rd Generation I/O, not to be mistaken with PCI-X) is an implementation of the PCI computer bus that uses existing PCI programming concepts and communications standards, but bases it on a much faster serial communications system. ... This article is about the Intel microprocessor. ... A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC). ... The Power Mac G5 is Apples marketing name for models of the Power Macintosh which contain the PowerPC 970 CPU. The professional-grade computer was the most powerful in Apples lineup when it was introduced, and was touted by Apple as the fastest personal computer ever built. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...

The Mac Pro was formally announced on August 7, 2006 at WWDC.^[1] Along with the Mac Pro, a new Xeon-based Xserve was also announced, completing Apple's transition from the PowerPC to x86 architecture. On January 8, 2008 Apple unveiled the first 3.2 GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon (Harpertown 45nm) -based Mac Pro.^[2] is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A small Xserve cluster with an Xserve RAID. Xserve is the name of Apple Computers Macintosh 1U rackmount line of server computers. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Intel Pentium 4 (Northwood version), one example out of a huge number of x86 implementations from Intel, AMD, and others. ... is the 8th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ...

Overview

An Intel-based replacement for the Power Mac G5 had long been expected prior to the release of the Mac Pro. The iMac, Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro had moved to an Intel-based architecture starting in January 2006, leaving the Power Mac G5 as the only machine in the Mac lineup still based on the PowerPC. Speculation about the G5's eventual replacement was common. Rumors initially expected the machine to differ physically from the existing G5 and considered a number of different possible internal configurations based on different chipsets. But the coincidence of Intel releasing a new Core 2-based Xeon workstation platform just prior to the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) made it fairly obvious that the resulting machine would be based on it. Even the naming was "obvious"; Apple had dropped the term "Power" from the other machines in their lineup, and started using "Pro" on their higher-end laptop offerings. As such, the name "Mac Pro" was widely used before the machine was announced.^[3] The Power Mac G5 is Apples marketing name for models of the Power Macintosh which contain the PowerPC 970 CPU. The professional-grade computer was the most powerful in Apples lineup when it was introduced, and was touted by Apple as the fastest personal computer ever built. ... The original Bondi Blue iMac G3 was introduced in 1998. ... The Mac mini is the smallest desktop computer made by Apple Inc. ... This article is about the Apple computer called MacBook. For the MacBook family as a whole, see MacBook family. ... The MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers by Apple Inc. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Diagram of a motherboard chipset A chipset is a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together, and are usually marketed as a single product. ... WWDC 2005, at Moscone Center The Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is an annual trade show for Apple developers. ...

The Mac Pro is a high-end computer, similar to higher end Optiplexes and Unix workstations from vendors such as SGI or Sun Microsystems. Although the high-end technical market has not traditionally been an area of strength for Apple, the company has been positioning itself as a leader in non-linear digital editing for high-definition video,^[4] which demands storage and memory far in excess of a general desktop machine. Additionally, the codecs used in these applications are generally processor intensive and highly threadable, speeding up almost linearly with additional processor cores. Apple's previous machine aimed at this market, the Power Mac G5, had up to four processors, but lacked the storage expansion capabilities of the newer design. In order to serve this market, Apple sells a variety of standardized bundles combining a Mac Pro with fairly high-end components; for instance, all available setups can support the 30" Cinema Display. Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®, sometimes also written as or ® with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Silicon Graphics, Inc. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... A non-linear editing system (NLE) is a video editing (NLVE) or audio editing (NLAE) system which can perform random access on the source material. ... This article is about high-definition video technology. ... A codec is a device or program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. ... CPU bound refers to a condition where the time to complete a computation is determined principally by the speed of the central processor and main memory. ... For the form of code consisting entirely of subroutine calls, see Threaded code. ... Dual 30 Apple Cinema HD Displays Previous-generation Apple Studio Display (the Studio Display in an aspect ratio of 4:3 instead of 16:10) The Apple Cinema Display is a product line of widescreen flat panel monitors made by Apple Inc. ...

In general, the Mac Pro has been well received in the press.^[5] The combination of high performance, reasonable expandability, very quiet operation and superb mechanical design makes it routinely appear as the comparison system against which other systems are measured. The Xeon platform is, however, Intel's "high end" system and not aimed at more general purpose use. Nevertheless, current-generation Xeons are priced competitively with their high-end desktop platforms, allowing Apple to sell a very powerful system at price points that are considered quite competitive, even by reviewers that do not normally review Apple systems.^[6]

Original marketing materials for the Mac Pro generally referred to the middle-of-the-line model with 2 × dual-core 2.66 GHz processors. Previously, Apple featured the base model with the words "starting at" or "from" when describing the pricing, but the online Apple Store listed the "Mac Pro at $2499", the price for the mid-range model. The base model could be configured at US$2200, much more comparable with the former base-model dual-core G5 at US$1999, although offering considerably more processing power. Post revision, the default configuration for the Mac Pro includes two quad-core 2.8 GHz Xeon "Harpertown" processors. Apple Online Store This page is about the online store. ...

There is a fairly large performance gap between the Mac Pro and Apple's most powerful consumer machine, the iMac. A particular sore point for many is that the Mac Pro is the only machine in Apple's lineup that allows the end user to change the graphics card or otherwise install internal upgrades beyond RAM. Other machines in the lineup use integrated graphics and higher cost laptop parts, while the Mac Pro uses the industry standard PCIe slots. The iMac series use graphics cards and processors that are technically replaceable by a user, though the case design restricts access. Buying a workstation platform just to allow for upgradable graphics is something many people and reviewers have complained about. This has led to calls for a smaller, mid range machine with more limited expansion capabilities but retaining additional PCIe slots.^[7] The original Bondi Blue iMac G3 was introduced in 1998. ... A graphics/video/display card/board/adapter is a computer component designed to convert the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium. ... GPU redirects here. ...

Description

The specifications below are from Apple's "tech specs" page^[8] or developer notes^[9], except where noted.

Processors

The Mac Pro uses either one or two Xeon 5400 "Harpertown" 64-bit CPUs for a total of four or eight processor cores. Each CPU chip has 12 MB on-chip cache shared among its processor cores.^[10] Each processor slot has its own independent 64-bit 1600 MHz front side bus, offering an aggregate throughput between the CPUs and the "northbridge" of 21.3 GB/s.^[11] This article is about the Intel microprocessor. ... In computing, a 64-bit component is one in which data are processed or stored in 64-bit units (words). ... CPU can stand for: in computing: Central processing unit in journalism: Commonwealth Press Union in law enforcement: Crime prevention unit in software: Critical patch update, a type of software patch distributed by Oracle Corporation in Macleans College is often known as Ash Lim. ... Diagram of an Intel Core 2 dual core processor, with CPU-local Level 1 caches, and a shared, on-die Level 2 cache. ... This article is about a unit of data. ... For other uses, see cache (disambiguation). ... A typical north/southbridge layout In personal computers, the Front Side Bus (FSB) is the data transfer bus that carries information between the CPU and the northbridge of the Motherboard. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate) is the frequency at which bits are passing a given (physical or metaphorical) point. It is quantified using the bit per second (bit/s) unit. ...

The Mac Pro (Early 2008 model, and possibly others) is currently (April 2008) unsuitable for virtualization applications, because Intel Hardware Virtualization is switched off in the bios, with no way of enabling it. A similar bug in the Mac mini was later fixed via a firmware update. Forum. Parallels. The Mac mini is the smallest desktop computer made by Apple Inc. ...

Memory

The original Mac Pro's main memory used 667 MHz FB-DIMMs; its successor uses 800 MHz FB-DIMMs. These modules are installed in pairs, one each on two riser cards. The cards have 4 DIMM slots each, allowing a total of 32 GB of memory (8 x 4 GB) to be installed ^[12]. Notably, due to its FB-DIMM architecture, installing more RAM in the Mac Pro will improve its memory bandwidth, but may also increase its memory latency.^[13] With a simple install of a single FB-DIMM the peak bandwidth is 8 GB/s, but this can increase to 16 GB/s by installing two FB-DIMMs, one on each of the two buses, which is the default configuration from Apple. While electrically the FB-Dimms are standard, Apple requests that users use larger-than-normal heatsinks on the memory modules that they install. Problems have been reported by users who have used third party RAM that had normal sized FB-Dimm heatsinks.^[14](see notes below). Primary storage is a category of computer storage, often called main memory. ... FB-DIMM Architecture Fully Buffered DIMM (or FB-DIMM) is a memory solution which can be used to increase reliability, speed and density of memory systems. ... This article is about the unit of measurement. ... SDRAM latency refers to the delays incurred when a computer tries to access data in SDRAM. SDRAM latency is often measured in memory bus clock cycles. ... This article is about the unit of measurement. ...

Hard drives

The Mac Pro has room for four internal hard drives, each with its own SATA-300 port. The hard drives are mounted on individual trays, provided with the machine, by captive thumbscrews similar to the one used for the PCIe slots. There are no cables to be attached, the SATA and power connectors are firmly attached to the case, and the drive is connected to them simply by pushing it in. The case lock on the back of the machine locks the trays into position. The Mac Pro now offers hardware RAID circuitry^[15]. Two optical drive bays are available, each with a SATA-300 port and an ATA-100 port. Many optical drives still use the older ATA ports, including those currently being shipped with the machines. The Mac Pro also has two internal SATA ports that are not connected to drive bays; these can be put into service through the use of after-market extender cables.^[16] Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... For other uses of SATA or Sata, see SATA (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Raid. ... Full-height, 2 half-height, and 3. ... ATA connector on the left, with two motherboard ATA connectors on the right. ... Optical Storage is made possible by data storage devices such as optical discs and holographic storage systems. ...

Expansion cards

For internal expansion the Mac Pro has two PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 expansion slots and two PCI Express 1.1 slots, providing them with up to 300 W of power in total. The first slot is intended to hold the main video card, and is arranged with an empty area the width of a normal card beside it in order to leave room for the large coolers modern cards often use. In most machines, one slot would be blocked by the cooler. Instead of the tiny screws typically used to fasten the cards to the case, in the Mac Pro a single "bar" holds the cards in place, which is itself held in place by two "captive" thumbscrews that can be loosened by hand without tools and will not fall out of the case. PCI Express (formerly known as 3GIO for 3rd Generation I/O, not to be mistaken with PCI-X) is an implementation of the PCI computer bus that uses existing PCI programming concepts and communications standards, but bases it on a much faster serial communications system. ... For other uses, see Watt (disambiguation). ... A video card, also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms, is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display. ...

The PCIe slots can be configured individually to give more bandwidth to devices that require it, with a total of 40 "lanes", or 13 GB/s total throughput. When running Mac OS X, the Mac Pro currently does not support SLI or CrossFire, limiting its ability to use the latest "high-end gaming" video card products; however, individuals have reported success with SLI installations when running Windows XP.^[17] Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum, and is typically measured in hertz. ... Mac OS X (pronounced ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... For other uses, see SLI. NVIDIA SLI Logo Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two (or more) video cards together to produce a single output. ... A crossfire (also known as interlocking fire) is a military term for the siting of weapons (often automatic weapons such as machine guns) so that their arcs of fire overlap, yay. ... Windows XP is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. ...

The bandwidth allocation of the PCIe slots can be configured via the Expansion Slot Utility included with OS X only on the August 2006 Mac Pro. The Mac Pro (Early 2008) has its slots hardwired as follows.

External connectivity

For external connectivity the system includes five USB 2.0 and four FireWire ports, two of the latter being FireWire 800. Networking is supported with two built-in Gigabit Ethernet ports, while 802.11 a/b/g/draft-n^[18] Wi-Fi is supported via an optional AirPort Extreme card. Bluetooth is now standard. Unlike other recent Mac products, the Mac Pro does not include the infrared receiver needed to use the Apple Remote. However, Front Row is available on all Mac Pros running Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) or later, and is accessible using the normal ⌘-Esc key combination. The system also provides both optical and electrical "headphone jacks" for sound in and out, the latter available on both the front and back of the case. Note: USB may also mean upper sideband in radio. ... The 6-pin and 4-pin FireWire 400 Connectors The alternative ethernet-style cabling used by 1394c FireWire is Apple Inc. ... The 6-pin and 4-pin FireWire Connectors FireWire is a proprietary name of Apple Computer for the IEEE 1394 interface. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the IEEE 802. ... Wi-Fi (IPA: ) is the common name for a popular wireless technology used in home networks, mobile phones, video games and more. ... Airport Extreme is a Wireless Solution used on the Apple Macintosh platorm. ... Bluetooth logo This article is about the electronic protocol named after Harald Bluetooth Gormson. ... For other uses, see Infrared (disambiguation). ... The Apple Remote is a remote control made for use with Apple products with infrared capabilities released after October 2005. ... This article is about the Macintosh computer application. ... This article is about the big cat. ...

Case

The exterior of the aluminum case is similar to that of the Power Mac G5, with the exception of an additional optical drive bay, and a new arrangement of I/O ports on both the front and the back. The case is somewhat larger than a typical PC of the same generation, at 20 × 18½ × 8 inches, compared to a typical desktop PC (the Dell Dimension 9100) at 17½ × 17½ × 6½ inches. Some of the difference in height is due to the "handles" on the top and bottom of the case. The case can be opened by operating a single lever on the back, which unlocks one of the two sides of the machine, as well as the drive bays. All of the expansion slots for memory, PCIe cards and drives can be accessed with the one panel removed, and require no tools for installation. Aluminum is a soft and lightweight metal with a dull silvery appearance, due to a thin layer of oxidation that forms quickly when it is exposed to air. ... Memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) and port I/O (also called port-mapped I/O or PMIO) are two complementary methods of performing input/output between the CPU and I/O devices in a computer. ...

The Xeon processors generate much less heat than the previous dual-core G5s, so the size of the internal cooling devices has been reduced significantly. This allowed the interior to be re-arranged, leaving more room at the top of the case and thereby allowing the drives to double in number. Less heat also means less air to move out of the case for cooling during normal operations; the Mac Pro is very quiet in normal operation, quieter than the already-quiet Power Mac G5^{[19] [20]} , and proved difficult to measure using common decibel meters.^[21] The Xeon is Intels current generation of server-class microprocessors for PCs. ... In computing, the PowerPC 970 and the PowerPC 970FX, also known as PowerPC G5, are 64-bit processors in the PowerPC family from IBM, which was introduced in 2002. ...

Specifications

• Processors: One (2.8 GHz) or two (2.8, 3.0, or 3.2 GHz) Quad-core Xeon 5400 ("Harpertown" Core microarchitecture) processors.
• Memory:^[10] Standard 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC RAM (upgradeable to 32 GB), in eight FB-DIMM slots
• Graphics:^[10] bytes, i.e., 1 gibibyte</ref> ATI Radeon 2600 XT 256 MB, nVidia 8800 GT 512 MB or an nVidia Quadro FX 5600 1.5 GB
• Storage:^[22] Four drive bays for Serial ATA (500 GB, 750 GB, 1 TB) or SAS (300 GB) hard disks: included disks have 16 MB cache (32 MB on the 1 TB hard drive) and run at 7200 RPM (15,000 RPM for the SAS drives.) Maximum Supported: 4 TB SATA, or 1.2 TB SAS). Optional hardware RAID card available with 256 MB of battery-backed cache that allows for RAID levels 0, 1, and 5. SAS drives only available when using the hardware RAID card.
• Optical Drive: 16× SuperDrive (multiple DVD write formats) (Pioneer DVR-111D or Sony DW-D150A), optional second drive. Optical bays support ATA/100 and SATA.^[9]
• Networking: two Gigabit Ethernet ports, Bluetooth 2.0 built-in, optional AirPort Extreme 802.11 a/b/g/n
• I/O: five USB 2.0 (two on front), two FireWire 400 (one on front), two FireWire 800 (one on front), optical audio input and output, 3.5 mm stereo audio input and output (one output on front)
• Software: Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, iLife '08, Comic Life, OmniOutliner, various trial software.

This article is about the Intel microprocessor. ... The Intel Core microarchitecture (previously known as the Intel Next-Generation Micro-Architecture, or NGMA) is a multi-core processor microarchitecture unveiled by Intel in Q1 2006. ... DDR-II SDRAM (Double Data Rate Two Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) is a computer memory technology that is expected to become a mainstream solution at some point late in 2004. ... FB-DIMM Architecture Fully Buffered DIMM (or FB-DIMM) is a memory solution which can be used to increase reliability, speed and density of memory systems. ... For the computer industry magazine, see Byte (magazine). ... A gibibyte is a unit of information or computer storage. ... The graphics processing unit (GPU) codenamed R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies. ... The GeForce 8 Series is the eighth generation of NVIDIAs GeForce graphics cards. ... For a definition of the word quadro, see the Wiktionary entry quadro. ... For other uses of SATA or Sata, see SATA (disambiguation). ... 2. ... 2. ... A SATA power connector. ... 2. ... For other uses, see Raid. ... For other uses, see Raid. ... 2. ... For other uses, see Raid. ... SuperDrive is a term that has been used by Apple Computer to refer to two different storage drives: in the late 1980s to a high-density floppy disk drive; and later to a combined CD/DVD reader/writer. ... DVD (also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc - see Etymology) is a popular optical disc storage media format. ... ATA connector on the left, with two motherboard ATA connectors on the right. ... A SATA power connector. ... Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the IEEE 802. ... Airport Extreme is a Wireless Solution used on the Apple Macintosh platorm. ... The 6-pin and 4-pin FireWire 400 Connectors The alternative ethernet-style cabling used by 1394c FireWire is Apple Inc. ... TOSLINK® is a standardized optical fiber connection system. ... Mac OS X version 10. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... OmniOutliner information can be found at http://www. ...

Operating systems

The Mac Pro comes with the BIOS successor EFI 1.1 and handles booting differently from the conventional BIOS-based PC. For other uses, see Bios. ... The workings of the Extensible Firmware Interface The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. ...

Apple's Boot Camp provides backwards-BIOS-compatibility, and dual and triple boot configurations can be achieved.^[23] These operating systems are easily installable on Intel x86 based Apple computers: For other uses, see boot camp. ...

• Mac OS X 10.5.0 and later (native, OS supports EFI)
• Microsoft Windows XP and Vista 32-bit & 64-bit (hardware drivers are included in Boot Camp) (only supports BIOS)
• Linux (most late 2006 or 2007 distributions) (supports both BIOS and EFI)

Other x86 operating systems such as x86 Solaris, DOS, BeOS, and BSD (which is very closely related to OS X) should also be easily installable. This is made possible by the presence of an x86 Intel architecture as provided by the CPU and the BIOS emulation Apple has provided on top of EFI. Note that installing anything other than Windows is not supported by Apple, and can cause driver problems because the Boot Camp drivers are Windows only. However, it is possible to achieve full or nearly full compatibility on some Linux distributions by using restricted drivers. Mac OS X (pronounced ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... 1. ... Windows XP is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. ... Windows Vista (pronounced ) is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ...

There are a number of challenges that one must face when trying to establish a multi-booting configuration on a single hard drive that uses the new GPT partitioning standard that Mac OS takes advantage of at the same time as MBR, which is commonly used by Windows and Linux (though Linux can use GPT). One must synchronize their GPT and MBR partition tables multiple times during the setup of such configurations. The key challenge being that a maximum of 4 partitions can be made on any such hard drive (including the EFI partition). This is because logical & extended MBR partitions are not possible which means that more than 4 partitions can not be referenced for the MBR component of the configuration. Thus having more partitions would force MBR and GPT to have differing partitioning schemes. The diskutil command-line app in Mac OS X can non-destructively resize a single partitioned HFS+ formatted volume to a scheme usable for dual/triple boot configurations with BIOS/MBR.

Compatibility

Software

• Software (PPC Emulation) - PPC-Native Applications: Note that many high-end PPC-native applications will need to be modified specifically to take advantage of the new Intel-based processor architecture in order to maximize on the Mac Pro's processor strengths, and PPC-native applications (such as Adobe Photoshop CS2 and earlier) may successfully run through translation software called Rosetta, which adds overhead and reduces actual software execution speed for those applications as it translates PPC-native instructions to Intel-native code. Speeds for some of these PPC-native applications may be lower on the Mac Pro than on the G5 models it replaces, and Rosetta does not support G5-processor-specific emulation.

• Software (Classic Emulation) - Classic (Mac OS 9.x and earlier): Intel-based Macs do not support Classic software, although third-party emulators such as SheepShaver may allow these applications to run.

• OS Minimums - The lowest version of the operating system that will support the Mac Pro is Mac OS X version 10.4.7. Earlier versions will not boot the computer.

PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... For other software named Rosetta, see Rosetta (disambiguation). ... For other software named Rosetta, see Rosetta (disambiguation). ... Classic, or Classic Environment, is a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allows applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the OS X operating system. ... SheepShaver is an open source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator originally designed for BeOS and Linux. ...

Hardware

• PCI-Express slots are not backwards compatible with prior versions of PCI hardware, such as PCI/33, PCI/66 or PCI-X. The PCIe 2.0 slots on the January 2008 Mac Pro are backwards compatible with PCIe 1.1 hardware.

• Apple recommends an Apple-specified heat sink on each memory DIMM for cooling, and the required on-chip thermal manager may shut down memory, or increase fan speed, if it starts to overheat.^[14] Several third-party, self-installable memory upgrades that include Apple-specified heat sinks are available.

• The Mac Pro, as with other upgradeable Macintoshes in the past, requires custom video cards to work under OS X. That is to say, an off-the-shelf PCIe video card will not work in EFI or under OS X, however, they may work under other operating systems installed via Boot Camp or other means. There have been several attempts, with varying success, in creating drivers for them (a result of the OSx86 Project).

This article is about the substance or device. ... OSx86 is a collaborative hacking project to run the Mac OS X computer operating system on non-Apple personal computers with x86 architecture processors. ...

References

WWDC 2005, at Moscone Center The Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is an annual trade show for Apple developers. ... is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Mac Pro

• Apple's Mac Pro website
• Close-up pictures of the Mac Pro
• Review of the Mac Pro
• A Mac Pro with two 3.0GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors