Apple might be using Intel’s next-gen Xeon W-3300 Ice Lake workstation CPUs to power a Mac Pro version said to be coming this year.
Apple’s MacPro 2022 seems to use Intel’s Xeon-W 33xx series processors…
(LGA4189 iceLake-SP)
— 结城安穗-YuuKi_AnS (@yuuki_ans) July 26, 2021
The rumor comes from YuuKi_AnS who has been providing insights on the Intel Xeon families for workstations and servers for a while now and has been quite accurate with his leaks.
The leaker states that Apple’s Mac Pro 2022 seems to be using Intel’s Xeon W-3300 chips which if true would mean that Apple might delay the launch of its own Jade SOC based on its second-generation ARM silicon and also referred to as M2 SOC by some.
MacDailyNews Take: Or Apple could simply be readying two Mac Pro lines – one for those who like their Macs to double as space heaters (and who need x86 for legacy apps) and a new, modern, future-focused Mac Pro for those who like their power with crazy efficiency.
So far, it’s been reported that the Apple Mac Pro based around the Jade SOC will come in two configurations featuring 20 cores (Jade 2C-Die) & 40 cores (Jade 4C-Die). The base configuration will offer 16 high-performance & 4 efficiency cores while the higher-end configuration will offer 32 high-performance & 8 efficiency cores.
The Xeon W-3375 is so far the fastest chip listed here with 38 cores and 76 threads. It is stated that the chip features 57 MB of cache which is 1.5 MB per core and maximum clock speeds are reported at 4.0 GHz. This will be a major upgrade over the existing Intel Xeon W lineup powering the Apple Mac Pro that features up to 28 cores, DDR4-2933 memory support, and up to 1.5 TB capacities.
MacDailyNews Take: It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Apple has more than enough money to do both. BTO, pick your processor, done.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Will current Mac Pro owners be able to just upgrade their current Xeon cpu’s?
It makes sense to keep Mac Pro up to date for its intended market. But I don’t think Apple will have two Mac Pro lines concurrently. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro will arrive when it is undeniably better than the best possible Intel-based Mac Pro for most uses. At that point, Apple may continue to offer the final version of Intel-based Mac Pro for a while longer for customers who need it.
I also think that some of the critical Pro apps (AVID, Adobe) might not be fully M1 compatible yet and might not be as soon as we would like.
Apps that run natively on M1 computers: Adobe Audition, Character Animator, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Adobe XD run natively on Apple M1 computers.
https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-silicon-m1-chip.html
Ugh. I hope they won’t put another INTEL chip in another Mac. I get the BTO option, but that would be radically different firmware and more, right? I can’t imagine there are that many customers who need to run INTEL in a Mac. I thought it was quite cool running Windows on mine, but it wasn’t part of my workflow. I could be wrong, but I can’t see Apple release two different Mac Pros.
I wonder if this is more of the bottleneck that may have delayed the High End, 30″ iMac I really want to replace my old Mac mini with?….
The Mac Pro market is small. Why have two architectures running concurrently? Just because Apple can, does not mean they will do it. At the end of the day, Apple is a business and it will release models that sell. The Mac Pro will go to Apple silicon when it makes financial sense.
Wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Apple silicon powered “iMac pro” and “Mac pro” machines come mid next year. Apple has lots of great Mac hardware to sell already, and the Apple silicon MacBook Pro this fall will sell like crazy. Why not speed bump the Pro now and wait until next year for the desktop Pro story to get more complicated and interesting.
Well that is certainly unexpected. Apple has never gone back on CPUs before. Once a new family has shipped, that was always the end for the old set. It makes Apple silicon look bad if they have to go back to Intel.
During the 68040-to-PowerPC transition there were some upgrade cards, so Macs with both chips did exist. An entire M1 circuit board could fit in the slot of a pro-mac, so I thought that that was possible. But this is just weird. Maybe this is a fake story just to find leakers?