What if the next Mac Pro is just another intel Mac with an updated Intel CPU?
Didn't Apple state something when they introduced the AS chips that they still would have some intel Mac's to introduce.
There was a decent chance that in their 2019-era plans that was true. There is also a decent chance that plan was 'blown up' by circumstances outside of Apple's control.
Apple released an updated Intel iMac in July 2020 after they said more Intel Macs coming. If that was by 'unit sold' that is true. If 'Macs' meant multiple products then that hasn't turned out.
Pre-pandemic the Intel Xeon W3300 series ( Ice lake ) was to be released in 2021. That would have made sense. Those are the same base die as the (Xeon SP Gen 3 ( Ice Lake) that appeared as a Xcode parameter). Timing wise Apple released "a quarter" of an update:
Apple today began offering new high-end AMD Radeon Pro W6000 series graphics options for brand new Mac Pro configurations, and now the graphics...
www.macrumors.com
If there were high volume W3300 units available in August 2021 then it would have made lots of sense to release a Mac Pro W3300 system in either July or November ( either side of the macOS Fall major update release ).
Turns out that only the more boutique workstation vendors like Boxx, Pudget Sound , Velocity Micro, etc. have been selling W3000 units when ordered (and "just in time" filled to ship. generally wait for orders). However, the major players ( HP , Dell , Lenovo) have skipped it. Apple is not an "oddball" here among the more well know, high visibility workstation vendors.
Covid-19 contributed to screwing it up. Second, W3300 runs way hotter than probably Apple likes it to. It has a top end model that goes past macOS's 64 thread limit. And unless can really tap into the AVX-512 subsystem ( and AI/ML inference instructions ) there isn't much of a big win CPU performance wise. Its main upsides would be that Intel got rid of the hefty ">1TB RAM tax". Also that the PCI-e lanes are v4 ( so not kneecapping the performance of the W6000 series MPX modules when it comes to long sustained bulk data transfers (e.g., Afterburner decodes). )
Third TSMC N3 slid out of 2022 and into 2023. [ Pretty good chance Apple thought they would have a "Mac Pro" super mega SoC by 2022 and that may not make it now. ]
The other workstation competitive wise is that AMD has held the Threadripper W5000 Pro series back. ( Both Intel and AMD are more busy sending their respective dies into the Xeon SP / Epyc markets at higher margins than the workstation SKUs. )
At this point, doing a W3300 upgrade is more doubtful. It is pretty close to Intel's SP gen 4 ( Sapphire Rapids) and AMD Epyc 7xxx4 (Zen 4 Genoa ) . So the large bulk of the workstation vendors Dell, HP, Lenovo are pretty likely to just skip W3300 altogether. ( AMD has Threadripper Pro and Intel Gen 12 "workstation" chips before the next gen Gen 4 Xeon and Epyc trickle down to workstation models in mid 2023 )
At about half way through a 2 year transition another Intel update would have made sense. So finish last Intel models in early-2021 (on 2019 era plan) and map them all out by end of 2022. [ e.g., MP 2010 -> 2013 3 years. Otherwise, can imitate the MP 2013 ( ending in 2019) Rip van Winkle mode. ]
Doing a W3300 system at this point would be an even bigger "dead ender socket and platform" than the Mac Pro 2019 was in late 2019. Both Intel and AMD are already publicly "sneak peaking" the next generation stuff. A 'new' Intel system 2 years after they said their were going to transition the Mac system over in 2 years would look bad. I suspect even if they have already paid for the W3300 R&D that they'd rather just 'eat it' than have to publicly tap dance around why that wasn't a transition 'fail'.
AMD is about to release some RNDA2 upgrades in May. If Apple threw some MPX module upgrades at the 2019 model in September or so that might be just it. It is cheaper for them to do, but has some symbolism.
At the literal two year mark, it does more for Apple to have a less competitive Intel Mac Pro to compete against the strengthens of a Mac Studio and maybe a "half sized" Mac Pro with a few slots. If the updated Intel Mac Pro could have arrived before the Mac Studio that would have worked better.
