Apple says the new, radically overhauled Mac Pro will arrive in December. Designed around an innovative unified thermal core, it features the latest Intel Xeon processors with up to 12 cores, dual workstation-class GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory.

"The new Mac Pro is our vision for the future of the pro desktop, everything about it has been reimagined and there has never been anything like it," says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The new Mac Pro packs up to 12-core Xeon CPUs, dual FirePro GPUs, ultra-fast ECC memory, new PCIe flash storage, Thunderbolt 2 expandability and more into a radical new design that is one-eighth the size of the previous generation Mac Pro."

The unified thermal core that allows the system to efficiently share thermal capacity across all the processors. A fan draws in air purportedly makes the new Mac Pro as quiet as a Mac mini. The result is a pro desktop that's just 9.9-inches tall and one-eighth the volume of the previous Mac Pro.

The new Mac Pro features 4-core, 6-core, 8-core or 12-core Intel Xeon processors running at Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz that deliver double the floating point performance of the previous generation Mac Pro. Two workstation-class AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 12GB of video memory provide up to seven teraflops of compute power and up to eight times the graphics performance of the previous generation Mac Pro. OpenGL and OpenCL are optimized in OS X Mavericks to leverage the full computing power of the Mac Pro CPU and dual GPUs.

The new Mac Pro features PCIe-based flash storage that delivers sequential read speeds up to 1.2GBps and is up to 10 times faster than conventional desktop hard drives. ECC DDR3 running at 1866 MHz, with a four-channel memory controller, gives the new Mac Pro up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth, twice that of the previous generation Mac Pro. The spectacular power and bandwidth of Mac Pro means you can seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video streams and play them in real time, according to Schiller.

The pro desktop packs six Thunderbolt 2 ports, each with up to 20Gbps of bandwidth per device. Thunderbolt 2 ports support up to six daisy-chained devices each, giving pros the ability to connect up to 36 high-performance peripherals -- from external storage devices, to multiple PCI expansion chassis, to audio and video breakout boxes.

Thunderbolt 2 uses existing copper or optical Thunderbolt cables and is completely backward compatible with existing Thunderbolt peripherals and cables, and also supports the latest 4K displays. A new self-configuring IP over Thunderbolt software feature in OS X Mavericks provides a fast link between Thunderbolt-enabled Macs.

Apple says the Mac Pro meets Energy Star 6.0 requirements and achieves an EPEAT Gold rating. It uses up to 70% less energy than the previous generation, is constructed with 79% less aluminum and uses 80% less packaging material than the current Mac Pro. The Mac Pro contains no brominated flame retardants, is PVC-free and uses highly recyclable materials and features material-efficient system and packaging designs.

The all-new Mac Pro will be available in December at Apple Specialists, through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. The Mac Pro is available with a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9GHz, dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of VRAM each, 12GB of memory, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at $2,999; and with a 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of VRAM each, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at $3,999). 

Configure-to-order options include faster 8-core or 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processors, AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of VRAM, up to 64GB of memory, and up to 1TB of PCIe-based flash storage. Additional technical specifications, configure-to-order options and accessories are available online at www.apple.com/mac-pro .