While Intel hasn't explicitly defined what to expect in its 2019 CPUs, they've provided us with a couple of details that give us a clue how this year's Macs will be updated.
Until Apple perfects its own company-made CPUs, the next generation (possibly generations) of Macs will likely rely on Intel chips. Thanks to MacWorld who outlined Intel's itinerary for 2019, we have an idea as to how 2019 Apple devices will be affected.
With the upcoming processors, the fundamental microarchitecture has been changed for the first time since 2015's Skylake. The new architecture, Sunny Cove, will be employed in the family of processors called Ice Lake coming out this year, and Intel did provide a handful of numerical specs regarding the Skylake successor.
The integrated graphics performance will be improved, offering up to 50 percent more execution units than, "the fastest Intel integrated graphics in Macs today (the Iris Plus 655 GPU)," and up to a teraflop of graphic performance could be offered. The latter is a significant improvement for Intel-specific chips, but it still doesn't compare to what MacBooks are currently equipped with like the Vega Pro 16 and Radeon Pro 560X.
The next family of CPUs will come integrated with Wi-Fi 6 bringing gigabit speeds to users, as well as "lower latency, faster initial connection and improvements to both range and security." Not only will the Wi-Fi, integrated graphics, and overall performance speed up, but also "systems based on Ice Lake are promised to deliver improved battery life."
Because they chips will come in a wide range of performance and power options, "we can probably expect to see them in MacBooks or all stripes, the Mac mini, and iMacs," especially since Apple is not expected to drop Intel in favor of their own processors until 2020 at the earliest.
According to Intel, the Ice Lake processors aren't expected until the end of this year, so anything released over the summer will probably be released without this particular upgrade. Sunny Cove-powered desktop and workstation processors are not expected until 2020.
