A leaked Intel roadmap by Chinese portal of VR-Zone has spilled the beans of some interesting details of the upcoming Haswell-E Processors which would replace the Ivy Bridge-E platform.

Haswell-E Compatible With X99 Chipset and LGA2011-3 Socket - DDR4 Support Confirmed

We know that Ivy Bridge-E launches in Q3 2013 and would consist of three SKUs which would be compatible with the current LGA 2011 socket and X79 chipset based motherboards. A year after its launch, the Ivy Bridge-E would be replaced by the Haswell-E platform which brings alot of new developments along with it. Haswell-E would be compatible with the X99 chipset which we heard off a while ago. Not much is known what improvement or key features X99 chipset has to offer but we can point out the addition of SATA Express support with the Haswell-E platform.

Now the most intresting thing about the slide is that while Haswell-E processors would be compatible with LGA 2011 socket, they would also offer compatibility with the new LGA 2013 socket. Now the LGA 2013 socket can be seen mentioned in the slide as (2011-3), now we can't officially say that it would be a new socket so we will have to wait for some official reports. But i guess that since VR-Zone is reporting that Haswell-E would be the first platform to officially bring DDR4 support to consumers, Intel could develop LGA 2013 motherboards with DDR4 DIMMs compatibility while the LGA 2011 socket would restrict users to LGA 2011 socket. Another possibility is that the LGA 2011 socket would feature the X79 chipset which would be backwards compatible with Haswell-E but to gain access to DDR4 support, users would have to move towards the X99 chipset based LGA 2013 motherboards.

So DDR4 or not, its good to know that we won't have to wait over two years for a platform to replace the Ivy Bridge-E processors. Other reports mention that Haswell-E would bring 8-12 core SKUs in Intel's desktop platform. Whether or not this hold truth, only time would tell.

Images are courtesy of VR-Zone!

Another slide was leaked by VR-Zone which details Intel's transition from Z87 to Z97 and H87 to H97, the upcoming chips for LGA 1150 based Broadwell processors. Broadwell would also be backwards compatible with the Z87 chipset but Z97 brings SATA Express, Boot Guard and RST13 w / SRT. The 9-Series platform and broadwell 14 nm processors would launch in Q2 2014.