14 DAY TRIAL // Since we've already taken a look at the main line of central processing units from Intel, and also examined what was most recently revealed about the HEDT platform, we only have the U-Series left.
HEDT defines the high-end desktop market in case you were wondering. It's a sort of polar opposite for the U-segment, which places energy efficiency above most everything else that defines a CPU.
The information disclosed on this part of Intel's roadmap is far less extensive than for the other two, especially the main line.
Then again, the ultra-low power CPU line has always been the smallest of Intel's collections, and it's not like it has enjoyed that big a following so far anyway. ARM-based SoCs have been keeping a firm hold on the mobile front after all.
Granted. The chips we're looking at here are made for low-power desktops, but that only means there are, or there will be, a lot fewer of them than for the other two segments.
So, according to Intel's roadmap, as relayed by certain people with Internet access, the next generation of sub-25W chips will be marketed as Broadwell BGA units. They will make their debut in a couple of months or so.
In case you're confused, BGA is a type of socket, if it can even be called that. Unlike LGA chips, BGA cannot be removed from whatever mainboard they are soldered to. Ever. Well, not without some special tools that only engineers have. And not without essentially ruining everything, or at the very least voiding the warranty if you're really lucky.
After the Broadwell units, Skylake chips will come out, around the middle of 2015. This is similar to the roadmap on the normal desktop front, where Broadwell LGA 1150 chips will be succeeded by LGA 1151.
The only difference is that normal Broadwell CPUs will only come out in 2015, in January, while the BGA Broadwell are expected to be released in August this year.
Things really do seem to be happening rather backwards these days. NVIDIA introduced the Maxwell GPU architecture in a mid-range, fairly unassuming graphics product, and now Intel is doing the same with its next CPU architecture. We suppose this does, at least, mean that we live in interesting times.
There's another segment of CPUs that we haven't spoken about, the J-Segment, the true entry-level layer as it were. The Atom brand is going bye-bye, replaced by Celeron and Pentium Bay Trail-D until December, when Braswell-D will be unveiled. Sales will probably be postponed until after CES 2015 though (January, again).
