Broadwell has missed its internally-imposed deadline numerous times now – at least twice publicly, three counting today – and has previously had its tardiness addressed. Back in May, we wrote that Intel promised Broadwell “in time for the holidays,” a period that has come and gone.
With the holidays towering over our shoulders, we must look to 2015 for Intel's updated processor lineup. The most recently updated roadmap (November) plants 5th-generation Core processors in Spring of 2015, with Skylake (6th-generation) landing in 2H15. It appears that Intel is making significant changes to Skylake's architecture when compared to its preceding Haswell chips. The company hopes to drop its fully-integrated voltage regulator (FIVR) and revert back to relying almost entirely on the board for the VRM. This move should drastically reduce heat and could potentially offer more overclocking headroom, depending on how the company builds its SKUs going forward.
We recently wrote about the mass adoption of DDR4 to market, noting that Skylake would play a large role in DDR4 pick-up. This is because the 6th-gen platform is capable of supporting both DDR3 and DDR4, though we're yet unsure as to whether this will be SKU-designated or if the processors can just be mounted to different boards (we'd imagine it's SKU-based).
As for Broadwell, we expect it'll make a showing at CES in early January. We'll be speaking with Intel a few times at the impending tradeshow, so be sure to stay tuned to our twitter, facebook, and YouTube pages for info as it rolls out.
- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.