We received confirmation that future Chief River notebook platform can support both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors. This means that notebooks will be selling with both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors at the same time.

As you can imagine, Sandy Bridge platform will be really affordable in early 2012, and it will drop Ion price significantly, whereas Ivy Bridge 22nm CPU with DirectX 11 will take over the performance lead.

Intel also promises three display support, DirectX 11, significantly faster graphics, USB 3.0, Display Port and HDMI 1.4. And of course, let's not forget the RST caching feature - a new technology that can make your hard drives much faster.

Notebooks based on Chief River platform are scheduled for 1H 2012 launch, as long as Intel doesn't mess with its plans and decides to rush things.