Intel CEO Confirms that Broadwell Will Launch Later this Year

At last week’s Maker’s Faire in San Mateo, California, Reuters caught the opportunity to chat to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and get an update on Broadwell, the Haswell microarchitecture successor. According to Krzanich, the chips are set to launch this holiday season, but not at “the last second” – something nice to hear.

Given this, it seems likely that we’ll see Broadwell in November, which is obviously a ways off. Thus, if you’re in need of building a new PC, there’s no need to hold out quite that long. Given the generational improvements we’ve seen of late, while Broadwell is sure to be a nice upgrade, it’s not going to be stark enough to make you regret building a Haswell machine a couple of months before.

What is Broadwell, you ask? Part of Intel’s “Tick-Tock” cadence, Broadwell is tick, which is a die shrink of Haswell. That puts Broadwell at 14nm, with Skylake, to be Intel’s next tock. Broadwell’s die shrink alone should help bolster performance and decrease power usage, but it also brings new features like added instruction sets and VP8 support to Quick Sync.

For those looking for enthusiast parts, we should be seeing Haswell-E in Q4, which at the very least will introduce some 8 core parts. I, for one, cannot wait for that.