VR-Zone has leaked new Intel plans again pertaining to the next CPUs for the consumer’s market. Thinking back, the successor architecture of the current Haswell will be the Broadwell with a manufacturing process of 14 nm and DDR4 memory support. Skylake will come immediately after, also in 14 nm.
Initially, the idea was a progressive launch: Broadwell was forseen for the first months of 2015 or even before the end of 2014, and Skylake would come during the second half of 2015.
However, the new information contained in Intel’s updated roadmap points out that Broadwell was belated until the second trimester of 2015, something we already took for granted given Intel’s delays on the last years. Also, there was the small detail of the recent launch of Devil’s Canyon and it wouldn’t make much sense to overlap so much the launch of a new family of processors. Also, these Broadwell chips will come with an unlocked multiplier and everything seems to point out that Broadwell will only be available in K models.
However, it really draws our attention that the Skylake won’t be delayed, on the contrary, if we accept what the roadmap shows, what will be the 6th generation of Intel Core processors, will come out during the second trimester of 2015, fully coexisting with Broadwell. Skylake-S is the name of the version with LGA socket of this architecture.
On the event of a joint launch, Broadwell will make more sense as a generation, as it is the only updating alternative for users who search for a processor for overlock because of its unblocked multiplier, as Skylake-S, at least at the beginning, won’t arrive with any unblocked multiplier models.
We will have to see if, in the future, Skylake gets its portion of multiplier unblocking, or if Intel is placing its bets on launching independent families with unblocked multipliers. Actually, the launch of Devil’s Canyon could be their first attempt to this new strategy, with processors that include additional upgrades and not only an unblocked multiplier.