Apple is getting ready to start selling in stores the most powerful and most expensive Mac ever made, the iMac Pro, first of its kind. But the powerful iMac Pros aren’t going to be enough for hardcore Mac users who prefer laptops over desktops.
The good news is that Intel’s next-gen i9 chips have been discovered in the real world, and they’ll probably equip some of Apple’s best 2018 MacBooks. However, we have no idea when the next MacBook Pro refresh is coming.
According to FossBytes, the Core i9 chips were spotted in Aida64 benchmarking tools.
First seen in Intel’s release of the X Series processors earlier this year, the Core i9 chips may power early next year workstation laptops. Naturally, these chips will be used by Windows device vendors as well, although we have no idea what will be the first Core i9 laptops to ship next year.
The Core i9 processors are supposed to offer 6-core/12-thread configurations, 45W TDP, and 12MB of L3 cache.
In addition to the Core i9-8950HK chips, the are plenty of new i3, i5, and i7 Intel chips that were just leaked, based on the Coffee Lake-H and Coffee Lake-S architectures. On top of 8th-gen Intel silicon that will launch in the first half of 2018, AnandTech also obtained some information about 9th-gen products, although there are still many unknowns about them.
It’s safe to say that MacBooks and Windows 10 laptops based on Intel’s 8th-gen processors will arrive throughout 2018, while 9th-gen devices should only arrive much later down the road.
