There was a time, not too long ago, when the Broadwell lineup of processors were on track to be ready for sampling before 2013 was out. But as is usually the case in life, such things can get off tracked easily.
It was not exactly a massive setback, but the CPUs were said to be delayed well into 2014.
How much into 2014? No idea, back then. Now, however, there are signs that the delay may not be as much as previously feared. The latest on the matter is that Broadwell based processors will be out in the third quarter of the year.
Having said that, the rollout will still be rather slow, as Intel struggles to improve yield levels. This is what Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO said in October 2013:
“We continue to make progress with the industry’s first 14nm manufacturing process and our second generation 3D transistors. Broadwell, the first product on 14nm is up and running as we demonstrated at Intel Developer Forum, last month.
While we are comfortable with where we are at with yields, from a timing standpoint, we are about a quarter behind our projections. As a result, we are now planning to begin production in the first quarter of next year. It was simply a defect density issue.”
Provided this timeframe sticks, and Q3 is the window these new chips make their debut, then we can expect desktop PCs, notebooks, motherboards, tablets and other Broadwell powered products to show up in trade shows and other such technology events by the middle of the year.
Computex 2014 in early June is the one to keep an eye on.
It is widely expected that Microsoft will be using Broadwell CPUs in its third generation Surface Pro tablets that are on track for launch by the end of the year.
Along with some minor processing improvements, major enhancements in visual capabilities of these processors are expected. Intel is also striving to improve the battery life of these chips, so we may even see some notable advances on this front.
