Apple's Mac Pro, the flagship "personal computing" product designed and built for professionals, enterprises and enthusiast consumers, is close to receiving another major platform upgrade in the form of Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge-EX processor family.

Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge-E ("E" for desktops, "EP / EX" for servers) is the long-awaited successor to 32nm Sandy Bridge-E (launched November 2011) and is the first processor family to feature 3D-stacked transistors on socket LGA 2011. Where Intel's Westmere-EX featured 6 and 8 core processors, we can expect Ivy Bridge-EP/EX to feature 6, 8 and 10 cores, respectively. The company decided to skip Sandy Bridge-EX server chips and will jump straight to the 22nm process node, as this will allow it to cram 10 cores into a single die.



Leaked 22nm Ivy Bridge-EP/EX 10-core screenshot from Coolaler

Nevertheless, sources close to Apple have hinted that the company has already received Ivy Bridge-E engineering sample (ES) chips from Intel and has already begun product testing. By the time Q4 2012 comes around, we can expect Apple's new Mac Pro lineup to feature both 6 and 8-core Ivy Bridge-E chips with significant performance scalability (see: 30-percent faster IPG), lower power consumption and lower TDPs on socket LGA 2011.