Roadmap Shows Intel Haswell Refresh K Launch in Third Quarter

According to a roadmap that appears to be coming from Intel, the Haswell Refresh K processors will hit the market in the third quarter of 2014, although the release is likely next month. The first Skylake chips are expected to arrive in the second quarter of 2015.

The roadmap has been posted online by VR-Zone, which has often published authentic roadmaps from Intel in the past. It can be seen that Haswell Refresh K is on the cards for an introduction in the third quarter. That corresponds with a report from WccfTech late last week that the chips will be announced on June 2 during the Computex fair in Taiwan, but will not go on sale until the end of September.

These are the Core i7 4790K and Core i5 4690K, where the K indicates that the chips have an unlocked multiplier. The chips work in combination with the Z97 chipset. The code name for these Core processors is Devil’s Canyon and the processors will receive an improved thermal connection between the chip and the ihs, among other things. Intel has so far only announced that the chips, along with those of the Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition, would be released in mid-2014.

In addition, the roadmap shows that the desktop processors based on Broadwell should be released in the first quarter of 2015. However, WccfTech spoke of a postponement until the second quarter. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said last week that Broadwell-enabled systems would be available by the end of 2014, but he was probably talking about mobile devices. Broadwell is the successor to Haswell and it is a so-called tick in Intel’s tick-tock model. The generation is produced at 14nm instead of Haswell’s 22nm, which should result in considerable energy savings. The generation is struggling with delay, Intel had previously indicated.

Finally, based on an unpublished roadmap, CPU World reports that Broadwell’s successor, codenamed Skylake, is already in the starting blocks for the second quarter of 2015. This would exclusively concern Core i5s and Core i7s for the desktop with locked multiplier. Broadwell-based desktop Core i5s and Core i7s would also arrive in Q2, but those chips would have unlocked multipliers. It wasn’t until the second half of 2015 that Skylake-based Celerons, Pentiums and Core i3s would come. Like Broadwell, Skylake is produced at 14nm, but also has a new architecture.