Apple's 2022 Mac Pro said to use Ice Lake Xeon W-3300 chips, not Apple silicon

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Pro Display XDR next to a Mac Pro
Pro Display XDR next to a Mac Pro (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple's next Mac Pro will reportedly use Intel's new Ice Lake Xeon W-3300 chips.
  • The new chips offer up to 38 cores for a maximum 76 threads.

Apple's next Mac Pro, thought to be coming at some point next year, won't use Apple silicon. Instead, the new powerhouse will stick to the tried and tested Intel Xeon lineup with a new report suggesting the new Ice Lake Xeon W-3300 chips will be the ones getting the thumbs up from Apple.

According to a tweet by leaker YuuKi_AnS via Twitter, Apple will use the high-end Xeons for a 2022 Mac Pro refresh. WCCFTech believes the leaker to be a trustworthy one, although I can't say I'm familiar with their work.

Apple might be using Intel's next-gen Xeon W-3300 Ice Lake CPUs to power their brand new Mac Pro coming this year. 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.

Intel's new Xeons will offer up to 38 cores and 76 threads, while 8-channel DDR4-3200 memory with up to 4 TB capacity will also be one benefit to sticking with Intel. We hadn't expected Apple to switch the Mac Pro to Apple silicon just yet, although it will surely happen in the future.

While most won't need all of this power, an Intel Mac Pro would still be the best Mac for some workflows and for some people. It'll surely be a costly machine when the refresh does arrive, however, with these Xeons costing huge sums of money before Apple begins to fill that stunning case with anything else.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.