Thinking you might skip Broadwell and wait for it successor? Not so fast, as word on the street is the “tock” Skylake upgrade won’t happen so very soon.
At best, we’ll see desktop PC-destined Skylake-S CPUs showcased at the Intel Developer Forum on August 15. Bye-bye, prospective Computex introduction in June, though to be frank, that always seemed a long shot.
Sure, some overly optimistic tipsters told us to look for sixth-gen announcements and corresponding 100-series chipsets in the year’s second quarter. But Intel’s CEO very specifically mentioned H2 2015 when talking even the lowest-end, Core M-branded members of the family.
Additionally, a plausible recently leaked product roadmap puts both the mobile Skylake-U and desktop Skylake-S on the fast track to third quarter debuts between July and September. Bottom line, the stars are aligning for a big August IDF event, with VR-Zone and Digitimes lending further credence to the rumors.
The latter publication claims the “delay” may affect PC sales in the second half of 2015, but at least as far as laptops and convertibles are concerned, Broadwell should take care of business. Towers? They’re stuck on Haswell, most likely, and the only incremental updates on the horizon will aim to slightly improve non-consumer server performance.
Back to Skylake-S, VR-Zone is in possession of a document that not just corroborates the August unveil deadline, but also hints at the aggressive TDPs of some of the roster’s members. Apparently, the top-of-the-line quad-core K CPU will blow 95 watts of maximum heat, but more energy-efficient 65 and 35W variants will be on deck as well.
Hopefully, Intel won’t run into the same development woes with Skylake going forward as they did when prepping Broadwell, and we’ll indeed get a taste of the new, blazing fast processors before leaves start to fall.
