Intel 14-nanometer Skylake Platform To Support DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA Express

[everything count to life]

Intel's first chips based on the company's new, and Industry first, 14-nanometer manufacturing process are expected to hit markets in late 2015. With Skylake, Intel will introduce their new 9th-generation Intel HD IGP. The new platform will be the first to bring dual-channel DDR4 memory support. Skylake won't be the first platform to support DDR4 memory. In the 2H of 2014, Intel will launch their enthusiast grade Haswell-E platform, with support for quad-channel DDR4 memory. Skylake will be more of an evolution of Broadwell, which in turn is essentially an die shrink of Haswell to 14nm.

Additionally, the new mainstream platform will bring in support for PCI-E 4.0, essentially doubling the bandwidth offered by the current PCI-E 3.0 standard. More powerful GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD should be able to take advantage of the improved bandwidth, as their cards keep getting more and more powerful with each passing generation. Skylake will also introduce support for SATA Express. The advantage? SATA Express allows for a max bandwidth of about 16 Gb/s, more than 2.5x the 6 Gb/s bandwidth offered by the current SATA standard. While the product slide doesn't specify exactly as to when the first Skylake based products are scheduled to hit the market, our best guess places it at the end of 2015.

Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/186615/intel-14-nanometer-skylake-platform-to-support-ddr4-pcie-4-0-sata-express.html

[Kuzma]

Yea.... Amd needs to get smaller xD

Like seriously :( I <3 AMD but the future is a bleak blue coloured nightmare (the irony is blue is my favourite colour) and it looks like AMD has no hope.

[EChondo]

Yea.... Amd needs to get smaller xD

Like seriously :( I <3 AMD but the future is a bleak blue coloured nightmare (the irony is blue is my favourite colour) and it looks like AMD has no hope.

Well Excavator will be out way before Skylake, so we might see AMD go smaller after they have finished their current setup.

[Hazy125]

I thought Broadwell was also looking at supporting DDR4 as well?

[Blade of Grass]

I thought Broadwell was also looking at supporting DDR4 as well?

According to the image he posted (which I assume is genuine), it shows that broadwell will be a tick (so it's just going to be a die shrink).

[YellowDragon]

Really?, PCI-E gen 4 ? PCI-E3.0 was just released with Ivy Bridge and no card could even saturate a 2.0 lane, whats the point of adding more bandwidth if no card is even close to saturating a lane, with PCI-Gen3 bandwidth in mind it does not make any sense as no card is bottlenecked by the interface.

[MdX MaxX]

That definitely looks like something worth waiting for.  My 2600K should hold up just fine until late 2015.  B)

[everything count to life]

That definitely looks like something worth waiting for.  My 2600K should hold up just fine until late 2015.  B)

It will :D

[speciealpha]

Really?, PCI-E gen 4 ? PCI-E3.0 was just released with Ivy Bridge and no card could even saturate a 2.0 lane, whats the point of adding more bandwidth if no card is even close to saturating a lane, with PCI-Gen3 bandwidth in mind it does not make any sense as no card is bottlenecked by the interface.

future proofing i guess.  as cpus get more powerful they can handle more bandwidth, so why not build in a path to allow for it. we don't know what gpus will be like in a couple years, but we can be sure that they are gonna get better. 

 

Also remember that pcie slots are not only used for graphics cards, they are also used for other high bandwidth devices like SSDs and Raid cards.  More bandwidth = more better. 

[Emperor_Piehead]

Yea.... Amd needs to get smaller xD

Like seriously :( I <3 AMD but the future is a bleak blue coloured nightmare (the irony is blue is my favourite colour) and it looks like AMD has no hope.

It's really expensive for these die shrinks. Intel has done it since they have something like 10x the amount of money Amd has.

[Austin152]

Holy crapsack when this all comes around its gonna be perfect for star citzen, i hope everything will be powerful enough to run the game in 4k!