Mac Pro Refresh in Q3 with 8-Core Ivy Bridge CPUs - Report

Apple is preparing to refresh its Mac Pro line of workstations, according to a report from China, but don’t hold your breath just yet, as the sources behind this leak say it’ll happen as late as the end of Q3 2012.

M.I.C. Gadget has been reliable on Apple rumors in the past, so it should be worth noting that the blog has learned that “Apple is close to finally updating the Mac Pro.”

As one of Intel’s most valuable partners, Apple has already received “engineering samples for the new [Ivy Bridge] processors, with 8 cores and a shocking 20MB of cache,” according to the blog’s sources.

The overheating issues plaguing existing machines are gone, the sources added, “and the manufacturing yield is now high enough for Apple to maintain its high profit margin,” they said.

The blog is hearing “rumblings” that Apple plans to ship the updated systems “near the end of quarter three.” More in the full report here.

Apple’s first Mac Pro, formally announced on August 7, 2006 at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), was based on Dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors.

On April 4, 2007, a dual Quad-core Xeon Clovertown model was released.

The current model Mac Pro was announced on July 27, 2010. It features Intel Xeon processors based on the Nehalem microarchitecture.

Apple also sells a Mac Pro Server (launched November 5, 2010) which replaces the Xserve line of Apple servers as of January 2011, alongside the server option for the Mac mini.

In other words, Apple’s Mac Pro is quite overdue for a refresh. Some analysts believe the company plans a complete redesign of the desktop computer.

Posted in: Hardware, News