Octa-core CPUs seem to be on the agenda of every silicon company out there and the latest joining the list is Intel with plans of releasing a full-blown octa-core CPU for desktops in third quarter of 2014.
Intel’s upstream supply chain is abuzz with reports that the world leading processor manufacturer is planning to launch Haswell-E series 8-core CPUs in Q3 2014 and will carry a price tag of a whopping $1000. Intel is also planning to launch its X99 chipset to go along with the next-generation CPU. It is said that Intel will announce the new CPUs and chipset in June 2014.
DigiTimes reports through its sources that the new Haswell-E series will be a successor of the currently available Ivy Bridge-E family of processors and that it will be based on the 22nm process. The new CPUs will be having two sub branched – X and K series – and they will support Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, PCI Express Gen 3.0, DDR4 RAM and Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.
The report also reveals that the new X99 chipset will have native support for USB 3.0 and will feature 10 6Gb/s SATA ports.
Wait? 8 core with hyper threading? Who is going to write code that requires 16 threads running concurrently? Its impressive and probably worth the price if you need that kinda horse power but I find it unlikely anything will use it to its full potential.
I do video editing work on my system. I frequently max out all four cores of my old Q9450, so I’d love an octocore.