14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike the GPU market, where AMD and NVIDIA got slapped with the news that no, TSMC can't provide 20nm chips on time, the CPU industry seems to be advancing in terms of manufacturing technology just fine. You see, Intel has confirmed that Broadwell is coming by year's end.
It wasn't totally certain that the next generation of central processing units from Chipzilla would be available before the end of 2014.
Fortunately, because Broadwell is just Haswell made a bit smaller, the complications associated to transitioning from a chip generation to another are more or less minor.
Specifically, the manufacturing node is changing from 22nm to 14nm, though that's not to say that Intel won't be implementing some advanced features.
For instance, the Broadwell will possess integrated graphics (Iris Pro 5100/5200) with DirectX 11.1 support, OpenGL 4.2 and OpenCL 1.2/2.
In fact, the iGP will have 128 MB of on-package eDRAM (CrystalWell) and allow for 25GB/s + 50GB/s eDRAM bio-directional bandwidth (the memory is located on a separate part of the die from the iGP).
The upcoming chip collection will benefit from an unlocked design too, permitting significant overclocking potential.
A Voltage Regulator and Power Controller will be found on all the chips, while the Extreme Tuning Utility will make the process simple on the U and H series.
Then, there's the Y series, composed of chips with two cores each and a low TDP (thermal design power) of 4.5W. Windows tablets could be seeing a resurgence.
Previously, it was not a surety that the Broadwell line would be ready for the winter holidays, but Intel's CEO spoke on the matter in the recent conference call with financial analysts.
There, he said that most likely, the range of chips wouldn't be out in time for the back to school season, since there were very small odds of Broadwell being completed by the end of summer. However, he did vow that Intel would have it out for the holidays, and not at the last second either.
“I can guarantee for holiday, and not at the last second of holiday,” he told the analysts. “Back to school you have to really have it on-shelf in July, August. That’s going to be tough.”
There is still a small chance that even with this launch window, sales won't actually begin this year, and if they do, retailers will only ship to a few regions. CES 2015 (January next year) might be the real availability time frame even now. Whatever the case, there already are Broadwell-ready mainboards out (9-Series), so there won't be barriers from that front.