Rene Ritchie:
An external GPU (eGPU)-powered Apple Display won’t be among the things announced at WWDC 2016.
There’d been some speculation on Twitter and rumor reports about Apple possibly introducing a display with an integrated eGPU. Theory being, it would take some of the graphical processing overhead off MacBooks and/or facilitate a single-cable connection that could drive 5K. It sounds cool, but I asked around, and it’s not happening at the keynote or any time in the immediate future.
Sounds like no new MacBook Pro announcement, too. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for both.
Hope the no part is WWDC.
my macbook pro applecare extension just expired, which means it is time to get a new one. I hope they get the new macbook pro’s out pronto.
This speculation (I’d hesitate to even call it a rumour) never made sense. Thunderbolt is fast, but Thunderbolt 2 is in no way fast enough to be a replacement for the bus that connects CPU and GPU.
Why would I not be surprised if Apple axed their entire computer lineup in order to just focus on iOS devices? I’m getting bored of this stagnation.
“… and it’s not happening at the keynote or any time in the immediate future.”
Sadly, it sounds like it’s just no. If you go back and check where the rumors actually originated, it was mainly people making stuff up, talking about things that would be cool.
I just want a refresh on a Apple Disply 5 K with USB C connector!
But it is! It requires less bandwidth for a CPU to talk to a GPU at PCIe 3 x8, which is fast enough for most GPUs (x8 is about 16Gbps, well inside TB2’s 20Gbps) than it does to send 5120×2880 24-bit pixels at 60 fps — that raw, uncompressed image data for 5K is 21 Gbps (if my quick calculation is correct).
But the rumor didn’t ever sound credible to me either — it came out of complete left field and just didn’t sound right. It doesn’t surprise me that they’ve move to squash the rumor and calm things down a little. Last year they did the same thing when people started getting silly about holographic projectors in the next iPhone (!). I’d be quite surprised if they don’t announce any new Mac hardware though, as Rene seems to suggest..