Apple's iMac 2017 release will more likely have the Kaby Lake-X processors as main engine as the latest supply chain rumors from Asia indicate of an earlier market debut for Intel's Basin Falls platform that will include Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X CPUs. Rollout time is supposedly set end of June 2017.
DigiTimes reported that Basin Falls will be introduced via the Computex 2017 in Taiwan this coming May and at the E3 2017 in the U.S, which slated early June. The enhanced Kaby Lake and Skylake chips will be commercially available by late June, the report said, adding that Intel's release plans for the CPU family have been moved up by two months.
The chief reason for the earlier Basin Falls release is supposedly the rising threat posed by AMD Ryzen CPU. The Ryzen 7 and 5 processors are now available worldwide.
Also to counter the AMD Ryzen chips, Intel will launch the 14-nanometer Coffee Lake processors in August. Rollout of the CPU was originally set December 2017 or January 2018 but the Ryzen challenge obviously disrupted Intel's plan.
The giant chipmaker will also provide the Z370 chipsets around the same time of the Coffee Lake debut, the report said.
But it is the advanced Basin Falls rollout that will impact the most of Apple's iMac and Mac 2017 release date plans. According to MacRumors, with the earlier debut for the next-gen Intel chip the chance is higher that they will end up on the planned 2017 upgrades of the MacOS professional computing machines.
As the iMac 2017 and the Mac Pro are believed to be refreshed in the last quarter of the year, the Apple computers will certainly benefit from the key hardware features packed with the Basin Falls processors. "Intel's Skylake-X series features 140W processors with 6, 8, and 10-core architectures, while Kaby Lake X-series features a 112W quad-core processor," MacRumors reported.
Specifically, the iMac 2017 and new Mac Pro will make use of the Core i5 and i7 variants of the Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X chips, the report said. But rumors also claimed that Apple will provide as iMac 2017 edition will server-grade specs of Intel Xeon CPU as main engine and supported by up to 64GB of EEC RAM.
Release date for the iMac 2017 and new Mac Pro is likely to happen in the last quarter of the year but the premium iMac 2017 with Intel Xeon chip is not seen to come out until December 2017.