Intel's 2013 Platform Slides Reveal a Haswell SoC Design

Chinese forums recently leaked a series of images detailing the upcoming Shark Bay platform, the base around Haswell architecture which will debut in 2013.


Intel Haswell is going to utilize the LGA1150 Socket, incompatible with current Sandy and upcoming Ivy Bridge LGA1155 platform



As you can see in the slide above, Intel Haswell microarchitecture is based off quad-core processing design, with a dual-channel memory controller supporting DDR3L memory (1.35V). If rumors hold true (mostly from memory vendors), we expect Intel to start forcing the adoption of SO-DIMM and abandoning the conventional DIMMs for the first time since the company abandoned SIMM design in early 1990s.


Intel Shark Bay natively supports NFC technology, for example, as well as Thunderbolt, TPM and of course - overclocking

The Shark Bay Client Platform, as the company calls it calls for a radical rethink of Intel's definition of a platform. Up until Haswell, the company had close to identical products for desktop, notebook and server platform, with customizations being low-power design or enterprise-specific features.


Ultrabook platform is going with a single chip design, which will feature two dies on the same piece of silicon: dual-core Haswell and Lynx southbridge

No more. In 2013, Intel will reveal its new strategy, which brings further separation of low-power designs vs. enterprise segment. Intel's Ultrabook platform is being targeted with a single-chip design i.e. SoC approach, while conventional notebook, desktop and workstation will continue to utilize the CPU+Chipset design.

If DDR3L sounds familiar to you, you're exactly on target: DDR3L is a low-power specification of DDR3 memory which still consumes a lot more power than LPDDR2 versus regular DDR2, but offers much higher performance. DDR3L debuted with NVIDIA Tegra 3, and Intel will support the memory standard starting with 22nm Silvermont (Atom SoC) and Haswell (Core) architectures. Furthermore, Haswell will support LPDDR3, memory standard which is expected ratification this year and should begin to replace LPDDR2 in the embedded world in late 2012.