iMac Pro The most powerful iMac Apple has ever created, coming in December.

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iMac Pro

The most powerful iMac Apple has ever created, coming in December.


FEATURES

  • Xeon processors, up to 18 cores
  • Radeon Pro Vega graphics
  • Up to 4TB SSD
  • Space Gray body
  • New thermal architecture
  • 4 TB3 ports
  • December launch date

    iMac Pro

    CONTENTS

    1. iMac Pro
    2. Design
    3. CPU and GPU
    4. SSD and RAM
    5. Other Features
    6. Release Date
    7. iMac Pro Timeline
    At its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple teased a new desktop computer that's coming this December, the iMac Pro. As the name suggests, the iMac Pro is a workstation class machine that's aimed at pro users with demanding workflows.
    Pricing for the iMac Pro starts at $4,999, and the premium price tag should come as no surprise -- this is the most powerful machine Apple has ever built.
    It features the same design as the standard iMac, but with an all-flash architectureand a new thermal design that supports an Intel Xeon processor with up to 18 cores and a top-of-the-line Radeon Pro Vega graphics.
    The 27-inch iMac Pro is equipped with a high-quality 5K display that supports 1 billion colors and it comes in a unique space gray enclosure with matching (and exclusive) space gray accessories.
    iMac Pro features four Thunderbolt 3 ports powerful enough to drive multiple 5K displays at once, and it supports up to 4TB of solid state storage and 128GB of ECC RAM.
    Apple plans to launch the iMac Pro in December, and it will mark the first step towards a serious effort to meet the needs of the pro Mac user base. Following the iMac Pro, Apple will introduce a high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro machine that will support future upgrades.

    Design

    The iMac Pro looks like a standard iMac, with an ultra-thin slim-bodied design and a minimal footprint, but it is set apart with a unique space gray enclosure and a new thermal design that delivers 80 percent more cooling capacity and 75 percent more airflow to support up to 500 watts of power, which equates to 67 percent more power than the previous iMac.
    Like the regular 27-inch iMac, the iMac Pro features a Retina 5K display that supports a billion colors with a P3 wide color gamut. It has more than 14.7 million pixels and a 500 nit brightness level, which is 43 percent brighter than previous iMac displays.
    To match its new space gray enclosure, the iMac Pro will ship with matching space gray accessories that will be exclusive to the high-end machine and not otherwise available to Apple users. Those accessories include a wireless Magic Keyboard with a numeric keyboard and either a Magic Mouse 2 or a Magic Trackpad 2.

    CPU and GPU

    The iMac Pro uses Intel's Xeon processors with 8, 10, and 18 core chips available as optional configurations with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz and up to 42MB of cache.
    Based on firmware files found in macOS High Sierra, the iMac Pro may use Intel's new server-class LGA3647 socket, meaning the machine could have actual server-grade processors rather than Intel's Core-X series Skylake and Kaby Lake chips that use a LGA2066 socket. Intel announced some Purley chips in July, but not a chip appropriate for the high-end iMac Pro.
    Intel introduced new Xeon-W workstation-class processors in August, and the new chips, which use an LGA2066 socket and Skylake-SP architecture, come in 8, 10, and 18 core configurations with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz, 48 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, and support for up to 512GB of DDR4-2666 ECC memory. That matches up nicely with what Apple has said about the processors being used in the iMac Pro, so the previous information about Apple's Purley processors could potentially be inaccurate.
    With the advanced thermal cooling built into the iMac Pro, it supports AMD's newest Radeon Pro Vega, the most advanced graphics ever used in a Mac. It includes a next-generation compute core and up to 16GB of on-package high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) and 400GB/s memory bandwidth.
    It delivers 11 teraflops of single-precision computing power and up to 22 teraflops of half-precision computation performance, meaning it's powerful enough for real-time 3D rendering and immersive, high frame rate VR. The iMac Pro, like Apple's new iMacs, supports VR hardware.
    Apple says Radeon Pro Vega is more than three times faster than any previous iMac GPU, packing the power of a double-wide graphics card into a single chip.

    SSD and RAM

    The iMac Pro can be configured with up to 4TB of solid state storage and 3GB/s throughput. It also supports up to 128GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory, which minimizes errors in data.

    Other Features

    THUNDERBOLT 3

    There are four Thunderbolt 3 ports built into the iMac Pro, which can power up to two high-performance RAID arrays and two 5K displays at the first time. Thunderbolt 3 supports data transfer speeds of up to 40Gb/s.

    10GB ETHERNET

    The iMac Pro includes 10Gb Ethernet, the first time it's ever been included on a Mac. It also supports Nbase-T industry-standard 1Gb, 2.5Gb, and 5Gb link speeds.

    SPEAKERS

    Enhanced stereo speakers are included in the iMac Pro, which Apple says deliver a broad frequency response, rich bass, and more volume.

    COPROCESSOR

    Files in macOS High Sierra suggest the new iMac Pro will include a Secure Enclave, so it may be equipped with an ARM coprocessor like the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. That means it might include a Touch Bar with Touch ID support, but Apple has not said that's a feature that will be included.

    Release Date

    At its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple said the iMac Pro would be released in December, but a more specific release date has not yet been provided.

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