The PCH will become part of the system-on-chip as well

Nov 23, 2012 10:10 GMT  ·  By

When we learned that Intel was supposedly going to accelerate development of mobile CPUs and system-on-chip devices, we did not have any details, but that has now changed.

Website cnbeta has acquired some roadmap slides that reveal some information about the Intel Broadwell, the successor to the 2013-bound Haswell.

These are not exactly the sort of short-term details some may be looking for, since Broadwell will only debut in 2014, as far as we can tell.

Broadwell will be designed and manufactured on the 14nm technology, which will improve power consumption efficiency significantly.

More importantly, as a next-generation system-on-chip, it will have the CPU cores, the GPU (graphics processing unit) and the PCH on the same die, all in BGA package.

For those that do not know, BGA is differed from LGA in that the former mounts a device permanently on a motherboard.

That means that Broadwell will ship as part of tables or notebooks, but won't be available as a motherboard-ready chip that can be installed or removed at any time.

Oddly enough, Intel is reportedly thinking of reducing the number of general-purpose processors in its lineup, maybe eliminate them completely at some point.

Intel China President Ian Yan is said to have declared that current-generation Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs are the last, since Haswell will have already adopted full SoC design in Q2 2013.

Fortunately for those who don't want just an ultrabook, smartphone or notebook, Lynx Point-Haswell (LGA) will be around until 2014. In 2015, 14nm Skylake CPUs will appear, but they will use BGA packaging as well.

All in all, it is clear that Intel is taking a stance more partial to mobile devices than desktop systems. It rather fits those murmurs saying that lack of progress on the mobile front is what is causing the CEO to retire early.

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Intel CPU/SoC roadmap
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