Haswell, Intel's Ivy Bridge successor leaked

Intel's Sandy Bridge processors are slowly entering mainstream markets and Ivy Bridge is just around the corner. TechPowerUp have managed to get their hands on leaked slides of the upcoming Haswell architecture. Like the Ivy Bridge architecture, Haswell will be based on the 22nm architecture, as well. Haswell still has a long way to go before its release in the second quarter of 2013, more than a year and a half from now. Most of 2012 will be dominated by the launch of Ivy Bridge. If you thought the LGA1155 socket was going to stick around, you’ll be frustrated to know that Haswell will use an all new socket - LGA1150. Ivy Bridge, on the other hand will use the existing LGA1155 socket used by Sandy Bridge processors.

All new socket when Haswell arrives

While there are going to be improvements to the RapidStart booting features, as well as video transcoding, the bigger suprise is bound to be the introduction of NFC and Thunderbolt support. This is the first time mainstream desktops and notebooks will have access to these features. The only Thunderbolt capable notebooks today are from Apple. The LGA1155 will have been around for roughly two years and users will be forced to change their motherboards to be able to use the new processors that follow.