Has anyone gotten kernel panics from an iMac Pro?

[MikeInBoston]

I'm considering buying an iMac Pro, but there's some buzz on the internet about the new T2 chip causing random kernel panics and crashes. Is this true? Or does your iMac Pro run like a champ? Of course, I'll be running DP on the new machine.

Thanks.

Mike in Boston

[mikehalloran]

I have the same concern after reading the same posts.

For those of us who do audio, the culprit may be USB 2 audio interfaces, especially those from UAD and Ableton.

There are links in this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=66092

[MikeInBoston]

Thanks for your input, Mike.

I guess no one here has an iMac Pro that has had chronic random crashes. Does anyone here even have an iMac Pro?

Mike in Boston

[mikehalloran]

Thanks for your input, Mike.

I guess no one here has an iMac Pro that has had chronic random crashes. Does anyone here even have an iMac Pro?

Mike in Boston

Not yet but I hope to soon. Depends on taxes and other budgetary concerns.

Remember that the new Mini and MacBook Pro also have the T2 chip and there are users who have those.

A couple who regularly post on the Facebook users page have iMac Pros. There's been a little discussion of this but no mention of anyone having the issues that have been reported on MacRumors. That seems to be revolving around Ableton and UAD. ProTools may or may not be involved as well.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

A little o/t, and maybe one of the Mike's can address it...

I have stayed away from the "sub pro" Macs and my mindset, to some degree, sees the Mac pros (cheese graters and trash cans for the most part) as being more of a "hub" of computing, whereas the 'all in one solutions' are more 'consumer driven.' Not that all computers don't have their problems, but it just seems to me that a device that is essential designed to do one thing is somehow more efficient in dealing with little nagging connectivity issues as described.

I may be completely misguided in this opinion. I'm also loath to loose my computer if only a monitor goes out. I, like you guys, can ill afford to be "down" for more than a few days if I'm gonna meet my deadlines. That's why I have a redundant system sitting in storage, ready to go at a moments notice.

Which brings me back on/t... and I doubt either of you can answer this: why would a specific model of a Mac have that kind of a problem? That gets me back to being o/t again (sorry... not really).

What is truly the actual difference architecturally between the models in terms of data flow? That would appear, on the surface, to be the underlying issue, no? Is there some little chip in there that just doesn't see what all the other machines see?

[MikeInBoston]

Yes, Mike (Mr. MIDI Life Crisis, yet another Mike), there is a difference: the infamous T2 security and controller chip. It's in the iMac Pros and newer MacBook Pros. It gets the blame by everyone (except by Apple). The genius at the Apple store told me that they have never seen the problem. I didn't believe him.

Mike in Boston

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OMG! Four more posts and I hit 25k. How? HOW???

[cuttime]

The genius at the Apple store told me that they have never seen the problem. I didn't believe him.

Mike in Boston

I have some genius bar horror stories that I should probably save for Halloween.

[bayswater]

The 2018 Mini has the T2 device and I've yet to see a kernal panic. I read up on this before I bought. Posts I saw were vague and poorly written, sometimes a clue about whether a live human wrote it.

I saw a lot of other reports of disaster, but the only issue I've experienced is the graphics is not up to gaming standards. Not an issue for me.

This may or may not be relevant to the iMac, but the T2 chip per se is not an issue here.

[MikeInBoston]

The 2018 Mini has the T2 device and I've yet to see a kernal panic. I read up on this before I bought. Posts I saw were vague and poorly written, sometimes a clue about whether a live human wrote it.

I saw a lot of other reports of disaster, but the only issue I've experienced is the graphics is not up to gaming standards. Not an issue for me.

This may or may not be relevant to the iMac, but the T2 chip per se is not an issue here.

Tell me, Bays, how many monitors are you running with the Mini? Do you feel that, other than playing games, the graphics of other programs (DP especially) are fine?

Mike in Boston

[bayswater]

Tell me, Bays, how many monitors are you running with the Mini? Do you feel that, other than playing games, the graphics of other programs (DP especially) are fine?

Mike in Boston

Only one monitor at the moment. I'll be adding another after I do a RAM upgrade. (I still have the original 8G and it performs surprisingly well with that, but I've got 32G on order). I've seen one running with 2 and 3 monitors and that didn't seem any different, but I don't know how they were linked or exactly what they were.

On graphics with DP, Mixbus, DSP-Q and Logic, it's not spectacular, but it's good enough for my workflow. At 4K its pretty much the same as full res on my older iMac 27". I use a lot of screensets and zoom settings. If you were depend entirely on scrolling and the key commands to zoom in and out in small increments, you might not be happy. In the editing stage where I need to see a lot of text rather than images, I usually run at a lower res. With a 32" 4K monitor, some text in DP is still too small, even with the new scaling feature. The interesting thing is the res level doesn't seem to make any difference to the screen refresh rate with DP, although it does with other apps.

I also do 3D CAD on this Mini and it's fine too, but movie editing at full res can't be done.

You can add an external graphics accelerator to one of the TB3 ports. You get a generic box and put a compatible card in it so presumably get whatever performance you are willing to pay for.

[mikehalloran]

To Michael's question. I have two monitors hanging off my 2010 iMac. Should the main screen go down, I still have 2 monitors that won't. iMacs have had monitor issues —nearly all caused by extremely hot HDDs spinning away in too little space. They can be repaired like anything else. The SSD versions have been remarkably trouble free in that regard. My 2010 and 2011 had their spinning heat pumps replaced in 2015.

Your MP 6.1 has its heat issues. A heavy enough load will throttle the SSD inside and slow it down as it gets too hot (this is by design). If you look at the replacement chips at OWC, you'll notice the big difference between the two series—the Aura Pro X is twice as fast as the Aura Pro. Both will throttle but the faster series is more likely to do so sooner. The heat sinks do help, I am told. BTW, replacing the SSD is a <five minute install on a 6.1 like yours. The Aura Pro X requires High Sierra or later and the only Aura Pro left is the 4TB.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/mac-pro/2013

The iMac Pro has a massive cooling system which is why one cannot add a SATA III SSD inside. There is very fast external storage over TB3 — the Samsung X5 has an NVMe 3x4 chip inside (same as the 2017 iMacs) and can keep up. All 4 ports are TB3/USB-C so connecting externals isn't an issue unless you have one of those USB 2 interfaces that has been causing grief.

The T2 has an interesting feature. You can use it to link other T2 Macs and eGPUs to create a monster machine for AV. There are videos of 10–20 2018 Minis rendering a complex animation file for a film studio, for example. The whole idea of running, say VEP on a slave machine can be re-thought if linking Macs through the T2.

Figure that a 1TB RAM, 8TB SSD Maya Box Rendering Station running Win 10 goes for $150,000. Ten 2018 i7 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD with a high performance monitor and high end GPU plus a couple of side monitors should run about $45,000. From what I have been hearing, either can crunch an animation file in about the same time. Now add ten more Minis for another $41K.

Or take an iMac Pro and one or a slew of Minis and do the same thing. The iMac Pro comes with either the Vega 56 or Vega 64 GPU built in. Apple sells the Blackmagic Vega 56 and Radeon Pro 580 eGPU for the Mini et all.
https://www.apple.com/search/egpu?src=globalnav

The new NEW Mac Pro is expected to put a lot of the above in one box that can be "modular". I expect cores and GPUs — Apple has pretty much confirmed the GPU part. The Tech Crunch article made it clear that the MP 7.1 (or whatever they will call it) is being developed and tested with the film industry. Why bother if 10 linked Minis can do the same thing now? I suspect that Apple will do more in less space. It will not be cheap and I'll be surprised if the base model doesn't begin somewhere between $9,999 and $14,999. This machine is being designed to run new, bleeding edge AV apps but I've no idea if they will be bundled or not.

Remember that AV stands for Audio and Video. Audio does not make nearly the demands on a system that Video does.

My 2010 is old, slow and won't run Mojave. Although still good for DP, it has become inadequate for my day job. Yes, a new 2017 iMac will run circles around it but I'm ready to get back into serious music making again. I want more than 4 cores under the hood and I want expandability. Only the iMac Pro, 2018 Mini (or current MBP but I'm not interested). Thanks to the T2 chip, I can add more cores later if I want by buying another Mini.

The iMac Pro is a better buy right now than a fully loaded Mini with a 5K monitor and eGPU (and has 2 more cores). 2TB onboard storage is not an option for me (I can make 1TB work but it requires more housekeeping). I require 32GB RAM now but may go 64GB because I don't know what the future will being.

There are used iMPs on the market and Apple Refurbs at a good price. Not buying anything without Applecare+ or the ability to add it. I'm not scared off by the reports but I want coverage just in in case…
https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/imac-pro

[mikehalloran]

...
I also do 3D CAD on this Mini and it's fine too, but movie editing at full res can't be done.

You can add an external graphics accelerator to one of the TB3 ports. You get a generic box and put a compatible card in it so presumably get whatever performance you are willing to pay for.

How do some of the eGPU options compare with the Blackmagic Radeon Pro 580 or Vega 56 you can get through Apple?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... magicegpu/

https://www.apple.com/search/egpu?src=globalnav

The Radeon Pro 580 is the upper end GPU available in the 2017 iMac while the Vega 56 is the lower model found in the iMac Pro. Except for the fact one can use them to add higher resolution monitors to a Mini or MacBook Pro, I don't expect eGPU to have much effect on DP, if any.

[michkhol]

I have an iMac Pro since July and haven't seen a single kernel panic. All my interfaces are Firewire and connected through a Thunderbolt dock.

[bayswater]

The Radeon Pro 580 is the upper end GPU available in the 2017 iMac while the Vega 56 is the lower model found in the iMac Pro. Except for the fact one can use them to add higher resolution monitors to a Mini or MacBook Pro, I don't expect eGPU to have much effect on DP, if any.

Correct. I verified this with MOTU support. It makes no difference to DP. I ran Logic on a Mini in the Apple store for a few hours as a proxy of how the graphics would behave with DP (on the basis that they are about the same in graphics performance on two older Macs I have. That assumption panned out when I got the 2018 Mini and installed both apps.) It was good enough with Logic.

If for some reason, DP starts working better with faster GPUs, I always have the option but it's not a priority. Even being able to go to a 5K monitor is not a priority. The amount of space I can get between my monitors makes a 5K monitor a waste of pixels.

The thing you said about linking CPUs with T2 chips: is there a link to read up on that?