Intel's delayed Broadwell architecture is finally upon us, though the rollout is going to be more staggered than we're typically used to. This year, we'll just be seeing the low-power Core M chips, with larger and faster versions to follow in the first half of 2015.
Intel did drop one interesting tidbit during our Core M briefing, though: the company mentioned that not all of its socketed desktop CPUs would be refreshed with the new architecture. Intel normally upgrades all of its CPUs over the course of six months or so, starting with the higher-end Core i7, i5, and i3 chips before moving on to lower-end Celeron and Pentium CPUs that are good options for budget buyers. Not so with Broadwell.
"It won't be a full stack with Broadwell on desktop," an Intel representative told us. "You know like, from Pentiums, Celerons all the way up to i7s."
"You'll have to wait for Skylake [Broadwell's successor] before you get a full refresh of our desktop lineup," another added.
On the desktop, the Broadwell architecture will be limited to high-end processors. Intel has already announced plans for one or more chips that incorporate its top-end Iris Pro integrated GPU, something that wasn't available to socketed desktop systems based on Haswell. However, it looks like many lower-end CPUs will stick to the Haswell architecture for the time being. When we followed up with Intel later, it wouldn't be more specific about which chips will and won't get the Broadwell upgrade.