Intel's 14nm Skylake platform to support DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA Express

A leaked Intel Xeon roadmap purportedly sheds some light on what the chip maker has in store for Skylake, the successor to the yet-to-be-released Broadwell platform. Chips aren’t slated to hit the market for a couple more years but when they do arrive, they’ll be carrying an array of new tech with them.

Intel 9-series chipsets may not be backwards compatible with Haswell

Intel's current generation of 'Haswell' processors, as well as the upcoming 'Broadwell' processors, will share the same LGA1150 CPU socket. However, the upcoming 9-series chipsets designed specifically for Broadwell may not be backwards compatible with Haswell, and the current 8-series chips designed for Haswell may not support Broadwell, which could cause a headache for motherboard manufacturers.

According to documentation obtained by VR-Zone, there are slight changes in the implementation requirements of the two processor families. Specifically, Broadwell processors require slightly different connections between the socket and chipset, mostly to facilitate a new power source called VCCST. If motherboard manufacturers implement these changes in their boards with 9-series chipsets, Haswell processors will likely be incompatible.

Leaked Intel roadmap pegs Broadwell for 2H 2014

A leaked Intel roadmap has revealed the company's next line of processors, codenamed 'Broadwell', are scheduled for release in the second half of 2014. Broadwell is the 14 nm shrink of the current 'Haswell' fourth-generation Core processors, however according to this roadmap Intel will be focusing on mobile parts at the expense of desktop.