Advertisement

Leaked Intel roadmap hints at Ivy Bridge's future

Considering how frequently Intel roadmaps leak out, you have to wonder which super-spy is smuggling all those diplomatic bags out of Santa Clara. The latest seems to contain detailed plans for 2012's Ivy Bridge desktop chips (and the sad news that the release has been pushed back to Q2). There are no big surprises in the documents, since the company just shrunk some Sandy Bridge CPUs in the wash. Going down from a 32nm to 22nm microarchitecture has managed to wring 19 percent better power usage, which enabled Chipzilla to concentrate on beefing up the range's integrated graphics performance, making it (reportedly) 60 percent faster than its bigger brother. The chipset will sit neatly atop your current Sandy Bridge motherboards, (You'll just need to flash your BIOS), which is good because we're stuck with the asthmatic, geriatric processor for at least another few months.