Although Apple seems to be somewhat slower than other PC manufacturers in terms of moving new Intel processors to its laptop and desktop lines, it’s always news when we hear word of a new Intel processor line. A leaked presentation photo shows a new high-end Core i9 processor using Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X architectures that may be announced by Intel in June.
The slide appeared on the Anandtech forums, posted by user “Sweepr”. The slide shows four Core i9 chips — two in the i9-7900 range and two in the i9-7800 range — along with a pair of Core i7 chips. Although the speed of the top end i9-7920X chip was not revealed in the slide, the processor is expected to have 12 cores, 24 threads, and 16.5MB of L3 cache.
Will Apple ever use these chips? They’re apparently targeted at desktop machines, and they might be too new to show up in a redesigned high-end iMac. However, Apple could well have time to consider the new processors in a refreshed Mac Pro line. The Thermal Design Power (TDP) limit for the existing Mac Pro was a major sticking point in adding processor power to that machine; it’s thought that the TDP of the Skylake-X chips could have a TDP around 140W, meaning that the design of a future Mac Pro would need to provide extra cooling to avoid thermal issues. A modular design could very well open the door to the Skylake-X processors next year.
