Intel to Launch Socketed "Broadwell" Processors in mid-2015

[btarunr]

Along the sidelines of GDC 2015, Intel offered a few details on how the year could look for its desktop processor lineup. The company is preparing to launch socketed Core "Broadwell" processors in mid-2015 (late Q2 or early Q3), likely in the sidelines of Computex 2015. Broadwell is an optical shrink of "Haswell" to the new 14-nanometer silicon fab process, with a minor feature-set update, much in the same way as "Ivy Bridge" was an optical shrink of "Sandy Bridge" to the 22 nm process.

The socketed Core "Broadwell" chips could come in the LGA1150 package, running on existing 8-series and 9-series chipset motherboards, with BIOS updates. The optical shrink seems to be working wonders for the silicon. Quad-core chips based on "Broadwell" could come with TDP rated as low as 65W (and we're not talking about the energy-efficient "S" or "T" brand extensions here). Some dual-core variants in the series may even be based on the smaller Core M "Broadwell" silicon, which physically features just 2 cores (and isn't a bigger quad-core silicon with two cores disabled in what's a colossal waste of rare-earth metals on a production scale). Some of those dual-core parts could come with TDP rated as low as 28W.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[DBGT]

Working with 8-series motherboard ... this is good

 

[Diagrafeas]

If they are going to give BIOS Updates to Z87 motherboards, why not give NVME support too?

 

[Chaitanya]

Really nice to see support for 8 series motherboards, this mean a lot to me as I have 3 Z87+i7-4770k based pc in my office. I can upgrade the cpu if the performance and power consumption has improved enough over the i7-4770k.

 

[Jetster]

I wouldn't hold your breath on the Z87 boards. At least not all of them

 

[qubit]

It looks like Skylake is going to be launched around August, so I would wait for that instead.

www.techpowerup.com/210106/intel-delays-14-nm-skylake-desktop-cpu-launch.html

 

[Parn]

Intel backtracked again with the chipset support. Last year they claimed Devons Canyon would only work on 9-series chipset, but it turned out every mid-to-high Z87 boards would be able to support that processor with a simple BIOS update. Now it is Broadwell for both 8 and 9 series. Good news for Z87 owners.

Anyway I have both Z87 and Z97 based systems here, so even if Intel change their mind again at least one of my box can be upgraded.

 

[Octopuss]

I'm afraid to even think about any upgrades these days because they keep changing the sockets with every generation, or so it seems. I don't sh.. money... Broadwell would be nice, but my Z77 board is perfectly fine (except for being made by Gigabyte) and I see no reason to change that.

 

[Athlon2K15]

I'm afraid to even think about any upgrades these days because they keep changing the sockets with every generation, or so it seems. I don't shit money... Broadwell would be nice, but my Z77 board is perfectly fine (except for being made by Gigabyte) and I see no reason to change that.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[radrok]

Maybe we'll get a small IPC gain like it was for Ivy? We'll see!

 

[Tatty_Two]

My only caution on the chipset compatibility would be that it actually says "could" so my Jury is still out on that one!

 

[rtwjunkie]

I hate that these improvements have been so incremental. I've got two 3 year old chipset/cpu's running Ivies, and one Haswell (first gen), and honestly, unless the performance increase is through he roof, I have zero incentive to upgrade.

 

[Brusfantomet]

What part of the CPU is a Rare earth mineral? the silicone is absolutely not.

Wondering when the S2011-3 cpus will be launched, 18 months?

 

[qubit]

I hate that these improvements have been so incremental. I've got two 3 year old chipset/cpu's running Ivies, and one Haswell (first gen), and honestly, unless the performance increase is through he roof, I have zero incentive to upgrade.

I reckon Skylake will give a good enough boost to be worth upgrading.

My ideal 4K system upgrade would consist of a g-sync / adaptive sync / strobing 4K monitor, Skylake CPU and a "Big Maxwell" GPU, which I reckon will be a lot faster than my current 2700K + 780 Ti system. Whether I can afford to buy this lot when they're out is another matter.

 

[64K]

Late Q2 or early Q3 bothers me a bit. I wanted to do a Skylake build this year assuming it's worth the $$$ and I'm wondering if this means Intel will push Skylake back to early 2016. Why release Broadwell if people could buy the presumed superior Skylake architecture a couple of months later?

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

What part of the CPU is a Rare earth mineral? the silicone is absolutely not.

Wondering when the S2011-3 cpus will be launched, 18 months?

You're right, the silicon is not rare at all but what typically is are the materials in the doping process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_(semiconductor)

 

[rtwjunkie]

What part of the CPU is a Rare earth mineral? the silicone is absolutely not.

Wondering when the S2011-3 cpus will be launched, 18 months?

According to this: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/push-...ntel-at-odds-with-moore-foundation-2012-06-01 it appears that Tantalum is one of them. I've also heard that Hafnium is used (a by-product of zirconium processing) is used, although Hafnium lies just outside the rare earth metal category.

 

[lemonadesoda]

My PC is the biggest single electricity user in the house. Looking forward to retiring these dual Xeon E5472's and FBDIMMs and replacing with something faster, quieter, cooler, cheaper to run.

 

[peche]

is going to happend the same crap like Sandy and Ivybridge here...

 

[BorisDG]

Working with 8-series motherboard ... this is good

It should be. Z97 is same as Z87, but just some extras like M.2 and Sata Xpress. Can't wait for 65W - 5770K + Iris to change my Pentium K in the HTPC!

 

[Brusfantomet]

You're right, the silicon is not rare at all but what typically is are the materials in the doping process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_(semiconductor)

QUOTE="rtwjunkie, post: 3249014, member: 56774"]According to this: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/push-...ntel-at-odds-with-moore-foundation-2012-06-01 it appears that Tantalum is one of them. I've also heard that Hafnium is used (a by-product of zirconium processing) is used, although Hafnium lies just outside the rare earth metal category.[/QUOTE]

Tantalum is used for the capacitors, not the core. And for doping silicone they use materials with 3 electrons in the other shell (mostly aluminum and Gallium) for the P substrate and materials with 5 electrons ( mostly Phosphorus and Arsenic) for the N substrate, out of them Gallium is a bit rare, but for doping you don't need a lot.

 

[GhostRyder]

I look forward to seeing them in action, though I am not holding my breath on Z87 support.

I hate that these improvements have been so incremental. I've got two 3 year old chipset/cpu's running Ivies, and one Haswell (first gen), and honestly, unless the performance increase is through he roof, I have zero incentive to upgrade.

Part of the reason I finally just bought a 5930K and X99 board for myself and my needs, I feel that if you have anything sandy-Bridge+ you are set to go for a very long time with the way things are going. In fact the only real reason people might consider going up from Sandy-Bridge would be the PCIE 3.0 though that won't make a real difference in performance either at least yet. If you have Ivy-Bridge+, your set for a very long time the way things are going.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I look forward to seeing them in action, though I am not holding my breath on Z87 support.

Part of the reason I finally just bought a 5930K and X99 board for myself and my needs, I feel that if you have anything sandy-Bridge+ you are set to go for a very long time with the way things are going. In fact the only real reason people might consider going up from Sandy-Bridge would be the PCIE 3.0 though that won't make a real difference in performance either at least yet. If you have Ivy-Bridge+, your set for a very long time the way things are going.

I agree. Don't get me wrong, the enthusiast in me loves to upgrade, but the limited real advancements can't justify the expense. I'll probably be satisfied with IVB long enough that members on here will want pics of my "relic" for the Nostalgic Hardware club if advancements at Intel keep moving so slowly on the CPU front.

 

[newtekie1]

It looks like Skylake is going to be launched around August, so I would wait for that instead.

www.techpowerup.com/210106/intel-delays-14-nm-skylake-desktop-cpu-launch.html

Yeah, but that is going to require a whole new motherboard. Broadwell will be the upgrade for people that don't want to move to a whole new platform.

I hate that these improvements have been so incremental. I've got two 3 year old chipset/cpu's running Ivies, and one Haswell (first gen), and honestly, unless the performance increase is through he roof, I have zero incentive to upgrade.

I'm just looking into it for the power consumption improvement. Honestly, the performance improvement increments have been so small I'd still be running my i7 875k if it wasn't for the smoking good deal I got on the 4970k and board thanks to a misprint in a Microcenter ad.

 

[15th Warlock]

Yes, I also don't concur in the "colossal waste of rare earth metals" statement, these processors use micrograms or even nanograms of material for each chip manufactured, on a wafer not even a gram of these materials is used, so on an industrial scale may a few hundred kilograms are used.

The automotive industry uses and wastes orders of magnitude more rare earth metals than the few micrograms that are "wasted" on two measly disabled cores...