Intel Haswell possibly delayed till June 2013

Intel’s next-generation desktop and mobile platform will not debut till June 2013, according to Chinese website VR-Zone.com. The delay has not been attributed to any particular reason, but the new timing lines up with the 2013 edition of Computex, the world’s largest computer and information technology trade fair. Intel could be planning a large, splashy launch at the event, during which it would be able to showcase its manufacturing partners’ designs. Another possible reason could be to allow manufacturers more time to sell their stocks of accumulated products.

Intel already announced it would break from the annual refresh cycle it had established since the first-generation Core architecture was announced, by shipping Haswell in March-April instead of January 2013. Previous generations have been launched at CES, the world’s most important consumer electronics show, held in Las Vegas each year.

Looks like we may have to wait till June for Haswell.

Haswell is a whole new architecture that will be manufactured on the 22-nanometer process with 3D “tri-gate” transistors that has been proven with the current generation Ivy Bridge series, which itself is a shrink of the earlier Sandy Bridge architecture. Desktop Haswell CPUs will require new motherboards with an LGA1150 socket instead of the current LGA1155. There will be at least 10 new desktop models and seven new mobile models including low-voltage models.

The Haswell processor line-up was recently leaked. It was revealed that the 22nm desktop processors would initially be 14 CPUs spanning the Core i5 and Core i7 brands. The processors will be using a new CPU socket, the LGA1150, on Lynx Point chipset motherboards. They are also split into six standard power SKUs and eight low power SKUs.

The most powerful CPU in the lineup seems to be the Intel Core i7-4770K. It will have a base clock speed of 3.50GHz across four cores and eight threads. It will also have a 3.9GHz boost speed, along with an 8MB cache. The on-board graphics processor will be Intel HD 4600, which has a maximum dynamic frequency of 1250MHz.

All of the Core i7 processors in the line-up will have four cores and eight threads, with 8MB of cache. The Core i5 processors seem to have four cores and four threads, with a 6MB cache.

 
Ultrabooks based on Haswell CPUs will also include a voice recognition and command feature implemented through both hardware and software. Ultrabooks based on the 2013 Shark Bay specification are not likely to be cheaper than existing models. Price has been a limiting factor in the uptake of Ultrabooks so far. Gesture control and facial analysis have been demonstrated at industry events, but their inclusion in the upcoming spec is not confirmed. Haswell will allow for lighter and thinner Ultrabooks due to the low power CPUs which generate less heat, along with battery life of 9 hours on average.