IMHO they could have updated the Intel Mac Pro with a newer Xeon chip some year(s) ago, there were even rumors about an XCode beta featuring newer Xeon ids in its code. But I assume from a marketing pov it would simply not have been wise – benchmark comparison of the M chips vs. the Intel Mac Pro would not look so nice anymore…
There were some "Ice Lake Server" identifiers that showed up in XCode. That wasn't as big of a leap as some folks make it out to be. Apple did ship some "Ice Lake" ( Gen10 )
"... 2020 4 Port Thunderbolt model .... 2.0 GHz 4-core
Intel Core i5 (
1038NG7) Ice Lake (10th gen), up to 3.8 GHz, with 6 MB L3 cache ".
en.wikipedia.org
So Apple doing a bit of hacking around with either an Intel Reference board in hacintosh fashion or some board prototype for iMac Pro (that got abandonded early on when real TDP of W-6300 came out) or Mac Pro would
On Intel's road maps back in late 2017 - early 2018 , The "Ice Lake Server" chips would be shipping late 2019 or mid 2020. They didn't. Apple could have done some prep work in 2018-2019 on the slim chance that Intel wouldn't goof and slip up on deliverying in a timely fashion. It would be a decent "Plan C" (back up to a back up plan) if somewhat their own work didn't pan out.
The huge problem though was that W-3300 was pretty bad. Here is a comapre between W-3200 (what Mac Pro 2019 uses) , W=6300 (Ice Lake) , and the newest stuff ( 2400 , 3400 )
Intel® product specifications, features and compatibility quick reference guide and code name decoder. Compare products including processors, desktop boards, server products and networking products.
ark.intel.com
Going to jump around the chart a bit. First, look at the launch dates in the supplementary info section.
W-3200 Q2 '19 (apple shipped in Q4 )
W-3300 Q3 '21 ( i.e. after WWDC 2021 and a year after "about two years later" )
W-2400/3400 Q1 2023 ( in the calendar year after "about two years later" )
If Intel has shipped what is now the W-2400 in Q1-Q2 2021 then maybe.
The W6000 series shipped in Q3 2021. Coincidence? Likely, but probably also were not 100% decoupled either. Pretty good chance that Apple shipped the MPX updates to the 'last gap Intel Mac Pro" even though Intel screwed up.
Second, if look at the TDP ( this is split in the chart. one line TDP and two others "base processor power" and "max processor power". Latter is Intel's new way of talking about it. )
W-3200 205W
W-3300 250W
W-2400 225-270W
W-3400 270-324W
( although some folks have run some max turbo tests and got a 3400 model to not surprsinginly read out much higher than 324W:
" ... At stock the CPU scored 70079 points in Cinebench R23 while all cores reached 2.9 GHz. The CPU package power reached as high as 516W. ..."
https://videocardz.com/newz/stock-i...rapids-cpu-scores-70k-points-in-cinebench-r23
)
The 45-80W jump of 3300 wouldn't be so bad if the W6000 series wasn't also consuming more power.
Third, the bigger problem though was that "Ice Lake Server" worked better as a multiuser server processor than as a single user (sometimes single threaded ) workstation processor. If go to the
Advanced technology section :
"...
| Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 ‡ | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
..."
Ice Lake in general has a base clock speed regression. It was on the first stab at the 10nm process before they fixed power and some other issues with the "SuperFin" enhancements. Although the IPC was up the clocks ere down so unless hit special corner case improvements the performance was more about 'brute force' (more cores , bigger AVX-512 implementation , etc. ) then better 'finesse'. That 'no' for the W-3300 makes it relatively unattracitve as a single user workstation for a fair number of workloads. Dell/HP/Lenovo didn't take W-3300 either. It isn't just an 'Apple' thing. Several large systems vendors looked at it and said 'No , thanks'.
[ It didn't help that it posed little threat to the 2000 Threadripper series and that AMD/Intel got into a battle of shipping the most server packages that used the exact same die(s). Even if the updated Mac Pro proved very popular, Apple may not been able to secure enough dies to fill demand. And probably not going to get discounts (if the packages are relatively scarce) . ]
In an alternative universe where Intel delivered something like the W-2400 before Q4 20200 - Q1 2021 timefame and no pandemic drama , I suspect Apple would have taken another iteration and paired a better underlying system to the W6000 updates they rolled out. The "ice Lake" would have been what the W-2400 largely is.
Likely Apple's primary "Plan B" was to just keep selling the MP2019 with new GPUs as a 'refresh' and skip the follow on generation of "multiple chip package M-series". ( decent chance that is M3 not 'M2' ( as M2 is probably more limited in scope to just the lower 'half' of the line up.)
At this point, there is little signs that there is a W7000 series to pair any new Intel CPU model with so not timely on that side either. There was a window at mid 2021 to do something before the transition was done and after that the options are all 'too late'. macOS on Intel and most of the Intel Macs are firmly on active "vintage/obsolete' strict 5 year countdown counts. When Apple put the 2020 iMac on the countdown clock that became more than most of the Intel Macs on active countdown clocks.
Personally I would still love to see another Intel Mac Pro revision – sooner or later I am sure it will join the Apple Silicon family – but for the time being I would most likely buy another Intel model to be able to run Windows and macOS on the same machine natively, upgrade PCI cards, RAM and disk space.
If you have a Mac Pro 2019 it already does that. If you don't, Apple is simply going to point at the MP 2019 and say it does that.
