Intel is making good progress with next year’s Haswell CPU architecture, as the company has already finalized the first qualification samples (QS) of these processors, as proven by a picture that has recently popped up online. The image in question shows a chip with no heat spreader and a limited number of identification codes, that OBR-Hardware claims is a Haswell QS processor.
According to the same website, the CPU is actually a quad-core model with Hyper-Thearding support, its die measuring approximately 185 square millimeters in size.
As one can clearly notice from the comparison shot provided, Haswell’s die is actually larger than that of Ivy Bridge, which will measure 162 square millimeters. Haswell will be a “Tock” on Intel’s roadmap meaning that it has an entirely new architecture built using the 22nm production node.
The first chips using this new core will arrive in 2013, but Intel plans to split these processors into two distinct product groups, the first including the company’s desktop and notebook processors, while the latter will be specially designed for Ultrabooks.
These will drop the 2-chip platform approach used by Intel for quite some time now in favor of a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design. Desktop CPUs will feature either two of four processing cores with TDPs of 35, 45, 65 or 95 Watt, and will include a dual-channel DDR3/DDR3L memory controller, as well as GT2 or GT1 integrated graphics cores.
Mobile chips will be available in the same dual or quad-core configurations, but the memory controller only supports DDR3L DIMMs, while for graphics duties they will rely on the more powerful Intel GT3 GPU.
As far as the Ultrabooks Haswell chips are concerned, these will be limited at supporting dual computing cores.
Site
Navigation
