I Can Hazwell?

Intel is opportunist, they won't care about breaking compatibility
They only don't care because they don't have to. If they hadn't had a virtual monopoly on PC processors there's no way they so casually could shut out their entire existing market with repeated new platforms/sockets that bring only minimal (or even no) improvements.

This may change in the future as stationary computers are being increasingly encroached upon by mobile platforms. CPU sockets may in fact not even survive the end of this decade.
 
but, correct me if I'm wrong, they are saying that what is today the "PCH" is going to be on the same package as the CPU?

Yes. But so far, there is information only about the Lynx Point LP, or low power, model. I'd expect this to be in laptops.
 
It would be truly sad if it turns out that the mass-market needs peak with dual-core consumption devices, which rules out future Haswell-like big jumps.
Let's be realistic - heavy computing capability in a CPU is only neccessary for those who actually do heavy computing. It's like expecting everyone to buy cars that can pull off competitive times at a dragracing strip - unrealistic! Not all that sad, really. It's simply reality.
 
Let's be realistic - heavy computing capability in a CPU is only neccessary for those who actually do heavy computing. It's like expecting everyone to buy cars that can pull off competitive times at a dragracing strip - unrealistic! Not all that sad, really. It's simply reality.
Starting from Pentium era, up until tablet/smartphone revolution, the CPUs for the regular mass market have also served the heavy computing market (from Intel/AMD standpoint). Most of the x86 users are currently indeed riding the "almost dragsters".
 
Yeah, because it made sense from many perspectives to have it work this way, but with Moore's law finally starting to hit the ceiling things are changing - and x86 CPUs are so much more powerful than what the average guy needs anyway it's silly.

When shrinking nodes don't bring any appreciable savings in cost per transistor anymore there's little room to improve performance anyway.
 
Starting from Pentium era, up until tablet/smartphone revolution, the CPUs for the regular mass market have also served the heavy computing market (from Intel/AMD standpoint). Most of the x86 users are currently indeed riding the "almost dragsters".

I'd put it at the Pentium Pro, which was indeed the fastest CPU on earth at its launch, on par with Alpha. Then the design scaled up to Pentium 3 1GHz and higher, and Athlon matched it.
Nowadays there's only Sparc supercomputers, POWER7 mini-computers and Z mainframes competing with the desktop PC :p
 
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...rete_Weapon_Integrated_Voltage_Regulator.html

Intel Corp.’s next-generation code-named Haswell microprocessors will not only improve performance and feature some tricks to lower power consumption, but will also feature a secret weapon: integrated voltage regulator module (VRM). The latter will allow to improve granularity of power supply to central processing units and thus further cut power consumption without compromising performance.
 
great thread, this has me intrigued
You'll see many things, especially with Broadwell, that you cannot do without owning a fab.
 
What will motherboard makers actually include on their boards after Intel is finished integrating everything?
 
Intel's been doing its own thing with packaging as well.
LGA is something they've been able to do, as well as some of the on-package memory for their mobile chips.
They've been able to push multi-chip packages to the consumer level in a way AMD has been unable to match.
There are a few other things that didn't make it to market, like bumpless build-up layer packaging, but Intel's quite formidable in that regard as well.

The increasing levels of integration and interposer tech might be blurring some of the lines as well.

As far as owning the fab goes, it sounds like Broadwell and friends are going to be tweaking the silicon even more extensively. This is at least partly out of necessity, since even the foundries are admitting they can't build anything decent without bringing the designers into the process.
Intel and AMD x86 has a longer history with that kind of integration, so it sounds like whenever the foundries make it to ten years ago, Intel's going even further.
 
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