Along with many others, I am eagerly anticipating the release of Haswell, Intel's next step on their roadmap. It will replace the current 'third generation' of the Core series known as Ivy Bridge and will bring new power optimisations among many other features.
Some of the new features that we can expect are the new LGA (Land Grid Array) socket 1150 for desktops, rPGA (Pin Grid Array) socket 947 and BGA (Ball Grid Array) socket 1364 for mobile versions, DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 4.0 support for the built-in graphics chip featured with all Haswell chips. The merged southbridge and northbridge design known by Intel as the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) will receive a die shrink from 65nm to 32nm.
The chip will continue to be manufactured at 22nm and will continue to use Intel's Tri-Gate transistor platform, but it will be incompatible with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge motherboards. If you are like me and hoping to get your hands on Haswell, wait until after the initial launch as with Sandy Bridge and later Ivy Bridge, I can no longer trust that it will be flawless from the release and will wait a bit longer before considering the upgrade on my slightly faulty Sandy Bridge.
What else would you like to see with Haswell? Comment below.
