Feb 8, 2011 20:01 GMT  ·  By

Just as it was the case with Sandy Bridge, Intel seems all set to demonstrate processors based on the Ivy Bridge architecture during the 2011 Computex fair which is planned to take place this June in Taipei, Taiwan.

Ivy Bridge is the first processor built by the Santa Clara company that uses the 22nm manufacturing process and is a die shrink of Intel's current Sandy Bridge CPU.

As a result, architectural changes were kept to a minimum, similar to the way Intel made the transition from Nehalem to Westmere at the beginning of 2010.

However, this doesn't mean that the two cores will be identical as some minor changes have made their appearance, recent leaks suggesting that Ivy Bridge could be as much as 20% faster than Sandy Bridge, most probably due to the higher operating frequencies enabled by the 22nm fabrication technology.

Graphics performance will also be improved, Intel expecting it to grow by approximately 30% thanks to a greater EU count and gain DirectX 11 compatibility.

Together with the speed increase, the GPU will support up to three independent displays and HDMI 1.4a, as well as improved video encoding, decoding and transcoding capabilities.

In addition, the PCI Express controller integrated inside the chip could be upgraded to feature the new 3.0 version of the PCIe standard.

As far as the operating platform used is concerned, Ivy Bridge uses the same LGA 1155 socket as its 32nm sibling and will be launched together with the Panther Point chipset that brings native support for up to four USB 3.0 ports.

Last year, Intel also took advantage of the Computex fair to present Sandy Bridge to the world, so there is a strong chance that Ivy Bridge will feature a similar fate.

However, this doesn't mean that Intel plans to launch its 22nm chips anytime sooner, as Ivy Bridge will be, most likely, officially released during the 2012 CES as Intel has done for quite some time now with its processors. (via DigiTimes)