Evidence of a refreshed Apple Mac Pro with Intel Ice Lake processors emerges

Last month, Mark Gurman and Bloomberg stated that Apple is working on a next-generation Mac Pro powered by in-house Apple Silicon SoCs. Apparently, this new model will feature up to 40 processor cores and 128 graphics cores, a huge uplift on what the Apple M1 offers. However, Xcode 13 has provided an insight into what appears to be another Mac Pro, albeit an Intel-based one.

According to Brendan Shanks, Apple has added the string '#define CPUFAMILY_INTEL_ICELAKE_SP' to usr/include/mach/machine.h in Xcode 13 beta 1. 'SP' stands for Scalable Processors in this instance, with Ice Lake Scalable Processors another name for Intel's 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors. Intel-based 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors on its Ice Lake architecture, for reference.

Somewhat confusingly, Intel also markets Cooper Lake processors under its 3rd Generation Xeon SP brand, but you can view all 36 Ice Lake-based ones here. Alternatively, you can filter by Server processors in 'Products formerly Ice Lake' on Intel's ARK database.

Mark Gurman has endorsed Shanks' findings, too. In a tweet, Gurman stated that Apple has been updating the Mac Pro with new Intel processors. Based on Intel's ARK database, we expect Apple to offer this new Mac Pro with between 8 and 40 core 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors. Unfortunately, there is no timeline for when Apple will release this new model. It is also unclear if Apple plans to sell 3rd Generation Xeon SP models as a stop-gap until its in-house SoC ready.

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