Published in PC Hardware

Skylight on Skylake

by on17 April 2015


New Intel leak

Details of Intel's upcoming Skylake generation of CPUs and their accompanying platform controllers has been leaked on a Chinese site.

EXPreview has published details of Skylake based on apparently leaked internal presentation slides from Intel. Skylake will introduce a new architecture on the now-proven 14nm process and is expected to hit markets by the end of this year.

Desktop versions of the chips intended for installation in socketed motherboards are apparently known as Skylake-S. A new socket, LGA1151, will break compatibility with existing motherboards. A new three-digit naming scheme for chipsets is also needed, as two-digit numbers have been exhausted with the 9X series.

What is interesting in the slides is that there will be support for DDR4 RAM as well as low-power DDR3L for some form factors. This will mean that the new high-speed standard will be going mainstream and bring prices down.

There is a revamped graphics component with support for DirectX 12, OpenCL 2.0 and OpenGL 4.4 as well as accelerated encoding/decoding for the modern VP9, VP8 and HEVC video codecs.

There is no mention of embedded DRAM caches, which had been expected and are used by Intel's top-end processors with integrated Iris Pro graphics.

Power

Power is optimised, with the mainstream TDP dropping from 84W to 65W. Low-power dual- and quad-core models will be available with 35W TDPs.

Enthusiast quad-core parts will have a 95W TDP rating. Unlocked models will allow for overclocking of the base frequency.

The 100-series chipsets promise 40 percent more I/O bandwidth thanks to wider use of the PCI-express 3.0 standard and more flexible allocation options. M.2 and SATA Express SSDs will be able to tap four PCIe lanes each for improved bandwidth.

The Z170, H170 and H110 target enthusiast, mainstream and value consumer segments respectively. Up to 10 USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 3.0 ports will be supported natively on the Z170, while the H110 drops to four each.

Last modified on 17 April 2015
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