From Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge: Intel Desktop CPU Roadmap Revealed

Intel's plans regarding the rest of 2011 and the first quarter of the upcoming year have been the target of many suppositions in the last couple of months, but all these rumors and speculations can now finally be put to rest as some recently leaked slides detail the company's future roadmap, including the launch of the Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge CPUs.

Furthermore, the slides also seems to confirm the introduction of the LGA 1366 Core i7-995X Extreme Edition CPU as well as that of several other Sandy Bridge processors.

As previously suggested, the 995X is expected launch in the third quarter of 2011 and its place in the extreme performance market will be quickly taken over by Sandy Bridge-E processors.

These will also replace the company's current premium performance solutions and will coexist together with speedier Core i7-2600 CPUs (which will arrive in Q3) for a while, until Intel replaces the 2600-series CPUs with Ivy Bridge-based models.

This is expected to happen sometime in the first half of 2012, and Ivy Bridge will also replace the company's current mainstream chips.

The leaked slides go on to detail some of the key differences between Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E and seem to confirm all what we previously knew about the architecture, including the fact that it will feature an unlocked BCLK, dual x16 PCI Express support and six processing cores.

Less impressive, but just as important, are Intel's plans regarding the entry-level CPU market, as the Santa Clara company will launch quite a few such solutions in the future.

What's important to note here is that Sandy Bridge will continue to live on past the first quarter of 2012, unlike the performance sector where its place will be quickly taken over by Ivy Bridge.

In fact, starting with the forth quarter, Intel will launch quite a few new chips, including faster versions of its current Core i3 and future Sandy Bridge Pentium processors. 

Netbook users will also witness the introduction of the all-new Atom cores built using the Cedarview architecture that are expected to make their entrance sometime in the forth quarter of this year.

Finally, Q3 2011 will mark the introduction of a new series of Sandy Bridge-based Celeron processors that we already covered in a previous article. (via MyDrivers)