14 DAY TRIAL // Intel seems to invest not only in increasing the performance of its upcoming processors, but also in their graphics capabilities, as a recently leaked company document has uncovered that the 2013 Haswell CPU will feature support for the yet-unreleased Direct X 11.1 API.
This information was uncovered by SweClockers, which has somehow managed to come across an Internal Intel slide that is entitled “Processor GFX entry level workstation certification roadmap.”
Besides giving us an insight into Intel's plans regarding the professional application certifications it plans for the on-board Ivy Bridge and Haswell GPUs, the document also mentions that the latter will come with support for DirectX 11.1.
This yet-unreleased API seems to be part of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system and it seems like Intel is determined to support it in its future processors.
Haswell is the code name used by Intel for the new architecture planned to replace Ivy Bridge CPUs in 2013.
Just like its predecessor, Haswell will be built using the Tri-Gate 22nm manufacturing process, but the chip will distance itself even further from traditional CPU designs as mobile models will arrive as system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices.
This should enable Intel to lower the total power consumption of the system, which together with the configurable TDP technology it plans to implement, will most certainly increase battery life considerably.
In addition, both the integrated graphics core and the processing cores will deliver better performance than the current CPU designs, the latter partially thanks to the inclusion of support for the AVX2 instruction set.
More details about the Haswell processor architecture are unknown at this time, but a recently uncovered Intel roadmap suggests that the first Haswell server chips will arrive in the first quarter of 2014.
