It will cause a fair bit of wriggling on the desktop and high-end desktop fronts

Jun 11, 2014 09:09 GMT  ·  By

We've already explored the desktop roadmap for Intel's central processing units, and we have established that things will get kind of awkward in late 2015. Now, we can see more closely why that will happen.

You see, Broadwell chips will only be released in the first quarter of 2015, while Skylake processors won't come out until June.

And even when they do, the collection of processors will not include the high-end desktop, HEDT for short, chips. You know, the ones used for workstations and dual-socket systems that even hardcore gamers would be hard-pressed to use fully.

So, Skylake-E chips will, in theory, be withheld until some point in 2016, possibly in January, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2014).

That means that the Broadwell-E line will have to cover the HEDT segment between June 2015 and then. Historically, this makes sense, as the Ivy Bridge-E is selling alongside Haswell, and Haswell-E will sell on the HEDT market, while Broadwell takes over the normal segment.

However, things get a bit dicey when you look at the sockets. Skylake will bring with it the LGA 1151 socket, while Broadwell will stick to LGA 1150.

So, we'll have Skylake Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, as well as Pentium and Celeron models, selling to consumers, thus prompting sales of LGA 1151 mainboards. And at the same time, Broadwell-E will demand previous-generation chipsets like the X99 in order to work, with LGA 2011 or some other socket.

And since no unlocked Skylake processors will be released in 2015, that means that the most advanced Intel architecture won't be good for overclocking.

It will be interesting to see how many new technologies Skylake introduces that hardcore PC lovers and workstation users will have to do without. Especially since all this means that Haswell-E will have to stick around until Q3 2015.

At least we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the LGA2011-3 package, supported by X99 Express chipset, already has DDR4 compatibility. It would have been weird if we had to wait until 2016 for it.

So, to sum up, here's how it's going to be: Broadwell chips will still use LGA 1150 sockets in 2015, but Skylake will introduce LGA 1151 in summer. Meanwhile, workstation-grade Haswell-E will use LGA 2011-3 socket until 2015, at which point Broadwell-E will take over, with a similar pinout. It's not altogether certain what socket Skylake-E will drag along when it finally makes its debut in 2016.

Intel updated roadmap
Intel updated roadmap

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Intel Core i7 CPUs with LGA 1150 socket
Intel updated roadmap
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