Intel has unveiled new details of its product roadmaps for 2015 and beyond, and it’s now clear that the company is pushing Skylake full steam ahead, despite Broadwell’s exceptionally late arrival. Intel now expects to introduce a bevy of 14nm products based on both architectures in 2015, with additional 14nm Atom hardware replacing Bay Trail as well.
First, a bit of a mea culpa is in order — I initially predicted that Skylake could slip into 2016 based on the Broadwell delay and the unlikely prospect that Intel would launch multiple architectures within the same year. It’s now clear that the company does intend to go this road, though it’s still possible that it will arrange its introductions in a manner that doesn’t leave Skylake overwriting just-launched Broadwell hardware.
Desktop and mobile
Here’s how the introduction is going to happen, courtesy of ZDNet:
Core M (Broadwell’s ultra-mobile flavor) is already shipping in a few early devices and will ramp up through the end of the year. By this coming spring, it’ll have branched out and taken over the product stack Haswell currently occupies, with fifth-generation refreshes for the entire laptop/convertible MARKET. In the back half of 2015 we have new budget product launches, including Braswell (more data on that in a moment), and finally Skylake with its new architecture on 14nm.
That’s it for Intel’s official statements. According to WCCFTech, Intel will also launch new desktop parts next year, with a Core i7 5000 unlocked CPU (Broadwell-K) and a second set of desktop SKUs dubbed the Core i7-6000 family, or Skylake-S. Broadwell-K is reportedly compatible with the Z97 family of chipsets that are already shipping, while Skylake-S will require a new motherboard.
Broadwell is the 14nm refresh of Haswell, with a die shrink and a handful of minor improvements to the CPU, but not much more. Skylake, in contrast, is the full architecture refresh — so what are its (rumored) features?
No More FIVR: Intel’s Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator has always been rumored to cause the company headaches. Whether or not that’s true, we do know that putting the voltage regulator next to the CPU can cause additional heat to build up on-chip, and that heat only increases as the CPU clock and voltage increase. Skylake is supposed to dump the FIVR design, though it’s possible the ultra-low power CPUs will retain it to maximize power savings.
New instruction sets: Skylake is expected to include the updated form of AVX with support for 512-bit registers (AVX 3.2/512F), along with specialized instructions for executing SHA-1 and SHA-2 securely. Intel MPX (Memory Protection Extensions) and Intel ADX (Multi-Precision Add-Carry Instruction Extensions) are also expected with Skylake.
Core M (Broadwell-Y) versus Haswell
Core M (top) vs. Haswell. Broadwell-Y is a much, much smaller package — ideal for tablets.
New GPU enhancements: While integrated graphics remains unacceptable for a majority of gamers, steady improvement in this area has become the norm, even from Intel. Skylake will retain the maximum 128MB EDRAM L4 cache, but should incorporate additional GPU-side performance improvements. DirectX 12 should be supported on this GPU family, and we’ll see more desktop chips debuting with some version of the L4 cache.
Skylake will also support DDR4, though WCCFTech thinks this will be SKU-specific, with some chips staying on DDR3 through the end of 2015. There’s also rumor of a new “UniDIMM” form factor, that could bring interoperability with DDR3 or DDR4 in the same board. Desktop Skylake chips will still top out at four cores + HyperThreading; if you want more than eight threads you’ll need to move to the E-variant of the platform. Intel may also push its “no cables” idea for the platform (we were dubious on that score but are willing to be convinced).
Exactly how much raw performance Skylake will offer remains to be seen. Haswell looked fabulous on paper, but in non-AVX optimized code the actual real-world performance gain was around 7%, clock-for-clock, over Ivy Bridge. Devil’s Canyon pulled away from the older Ivy Bridge parts, but it did that the old fashioned way — with clock speed.
Whether Intel will attempt to clock Skylake more aggressively is an open question at this point. The first SKUs won’t be unlocked, so desktop enthusiasts may choose to wait for the Skylake-K variant, coming in 2016.
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