Potential Mac Pro customers may now, be starting to look forward to the first update for the redesigned Mac Pro, as Intel appears set to launch new processors appropriate for the Mac Pro next month. Intel's "Grantley" Xeon E5 v3 chips are nearly ready to ship as successors to the current "Romley" Xeon E5 v2 chips used in the Mac Pro.
MacRumors (14 August 2014): Intel's "Grantley" Xeon E5 v3 chips were "nearly ready to ship" as successors to the "Romley" E5 v2 used in the redesigned Mac Pro, with wide availability reportedly set for September[1]
Intel unveiled the Xeon E5-2600 v3 at a San Francisco press event on Sept. 8, 2014, the day before IDF: 22nm Haswell chips with up to 18 cores and DDR4[2][3]
Pricing per 1000 units: E5-2600 v3 from $213 to $2,702 (26 parts), E5-1600 v3 workstation parts from $295 to $1,723 (six parts)[3]
Timing of a Mac Pro update remained unclear; a September upgrade was seen as unlikely given Apple's iPhone focus, with late 2014 or early 2015 possible; AMD had also introduced new FirePro cards including the W7100[1]
Notable features
The Xeon E5-2600/1600 v3 family is based on the Haswell microarchitecture, with 4 to 18 cores (with or without Hyper-Threading), up to 45MB of L3 cache, 55W to 160W thermal design power and quad-channel DDR4 memory controllers, on the C612 "Grantley" platform[3]
The 2.7 GHz 12-core E5-2697 v2 would be succeeded by a 2.6 GHz 14-core E5-2697 v3; the E5-1600 v3 parts and all new chips support DDR4-2133 and have higher thermal ratings[1]
Almost two dozen parts spanning 4 to 18 cores; per-core P-states, AVX2 and an integrated voltage regulator; up to 36 percent better power efficiency[2]
AVX2 doubles the width of vector integer instructions to 256 bits per clock cycle for up to 1.9 times higher performance, and AES-NI accelerates encryption; Intel claims up to three times the performance of the predecessors in select cases[3]
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
eWeek's own headline reports Intel unveiling the Xeon E5 Grantley family for server workloads, matching KitGuru's[3] coverage of the same early-September 2014 unveiling ahead of the pin's stored late-September/early-October date, though the page itself could not be verified directly.
KitGuru reports Intel unveiling the new Xeon E5 v3 "Haswell" processors with up to 18 cores on 9 September 2014, about three weeks ahead of the pin's stored 30 September/1 October date, consistent with the chips reaching the market before an anticipated Mac Pro refresh.
Suggest a correction
Something missing or wrong? Say it in your own words: a link that backs this pin up, a different start or end date and why, or a fact it lacks or gets wrong. The AI checks it against this pin's sources, searches for better ones, and adds any page that backs you up. The pin's own sources still count most.
CONFIRMED80% CONFIDENCE8.2 years agoHappened as dated, per macrumors.com[1]: "…dels, now availa … with any new product launch, there is a wealth of information to sift through, so…"
2018 MacBook Pros feature eighth-generation Intel Core processors. Apple says the 15-inch model is up to 70 percent faster, and the 13-inch model is up to two times faster, than the equivalent 2017 models with seventh-generation Intel Core processors in benchmarks.
15-inch models can now be maxed out with a 2.9GHz six-core Core i9 processor, while the previous generation topped out at a 3.1GHz quad-core Core i7. Quad-core 13-inch models with the Touch Bar are now available, up to 2.7GHz, while 2017 models were dual-core up to 3.5GHz.
CONFIRMED82% CONFIDENCE1 day agoAvailability date from Apple's[1][2][3] own newsroom announcement (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-mac-mini-featuring-the-all-new-m6-and-m5-pro/): pre-orders from August 25, 2026, and it 'will begin arriving to customers, and in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting September 22'. September 22, 2026 is the shipping/on-sale day.
Compact desktop with new Apple silicon promising up to 4x faster AI performance.
CONFIRMED78% CONFIDENCE12.1 years agoHappened as dated, per the pin description: "Report: Haswell-E, X99, DDR4 to Arrive August 29. Expect three CPUs to arrive: The Core i7-5…"
Expect three CPUs to arrive: The Core i7-5820K, the Core i7-5930K, and the Core i7-5960X. Rumored specifications are in the table.
CONFIRMED78% CONFIDENCE9.1 years agoHappened as dated, per macrumors.com[1]: "…ps in August Intel plans to move up the launch of its 14-nanometer Coffee Lake processors, introduci…"
Intel plans to move up the launch of its 14-nanometer Coffee Lake processors, introducing them in August of 2017 instead of January 2018. According to DigiTimes, the launch is being moved up because of "increasing competition from AMD's Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 processors."
ESTIMATED67% CONFIDENCEin 189 daysA leaked roadmap puts the first Nova Lake CPUs in Q1 2027 (28-core between January and March); Intel has only said before the end of 2026 or early 2027.[1]
Intel's Nova Lake desktop chips, branded Core Ultra 400, are reported to launch from Q1 2027 on the new LGA-1954 socket, with a 52-core flagship following later in 2027.
AMD launched its Helios rack-scale AI system, built on MI455X GPUs and Venice EPYC CPUs, with shipments to Microsoft starting in the second half of 2026 and a 2 GW Anthropic deployment from 2027.
CONFIRMED77% CONFIDENCE8.5 years agoHappened as dated, per macrumors.com[1]: "…nes that use the new technology will be released in the first quarter of 2018. Get weekly top MacRum…"
Intel and AMD are joining forces to produce new 8th-Generation H-Series Intel mobile processors paired with stacked second-generation High Bandwidth Memory and custom-built discrete graphics from AMD. For the new H-Series chips, which feature all of the above listed components in a single processor package, Intel says is using its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), a power-sharing framework that reduces the standard silicon footprint to less than half that of standard discrete components on a motherboard. This is the first consumer product that takes advantage of EMIB.
CONFIRMED79% CONFIDENCE1 day agoAvailability date from Apple's[1][2] own newsroom announcement (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/): pre-orders from August 25, 2026, and it 'will begin arriving to customers, and in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting September 22'. September 22, 2026 is the shipping/on-sale day.
High-performance desktop workstation aimed at filmmakers, AI researchers, and data scientists.
CONFIRMED84% CONFIDENCE6.7 years agoHappened as dated, per macrumors.com[1]: "…Develop Modular Mac Pro, Which May Not Ship Until 2019 Apple[3] executives this week made an unusual a…"
Apple executives this week made an unusual and surprising announcement, detailing the company's work on an entirely revamped high-end modular Mac...
CONFIRMED78% CONFIDENCE9.3 years agoHappened as dated, per macrumors.com[1][5]: "…ured Using TSMC's 10nm Process With the launch of the new iPad Pro models at WWDC this year, Apple i…"
With the launch of the new iPad Pro models at WWDC this year, Apple introduced new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch devices that both came with an A10X Fusion Chip, which is said to deliver 30 percent faster CPU performance than previous-generation iPad Pro models and 40 percent faster graphics performance. In comparison, the A9 and A10 were built using a 16-nanometer process, the A8 used a 20-nanometer process, and the A7 used a 28-nanometer process.
CONFIRMED79% CONFIDENCE8.5 years agoHappened as dated, per hexus.net[1]: "…xf Add to My Vault: GLOBALFOUNDRIES has announced that it plans to power straight through to 7nm Fin…"
Tech expected to be ready for chip designers in H2 2017, production in early 2018. It will skip "the marginal performance and power benefits for the high cost of the 10nm process node" to hopefully become a leading differentiated 7nm chip fabricator ahead of major rivals.
