According to a report at VR-Zone.com, Intel's 14nm Broadwell architecture CPUs could feature up to 18-cores in Broadwell-EP or EX Xeon version.

If proven true, the upcoming 14nm Broadwell architecture, scheduled to arrive sometime in 2015, could feature the highest core count to date. Although Intel's 14nm process will bring much better power efficiency, or a 30 percent improvement according to a public demonstration back in September when CEO Brian Krzanich compared it to Haswell architecture, it appears that Intel's strategy will be rely on piling CPU cores on the same die rather than speeding up to cores.

As it was the case with previous new architectures from Intel, there will be a couple of different versions aimed at different types of market so the 18-core will be limited to Broadwell-EP or EX Xeon chips while performance desktop/workstation part should hit 12 to 16-cores. Consumer market is a whole different story since these will most likely be limited to 8 to 10-cores.

In any case, 18-core Broadwell chips are still far away and first sign of consumer Broadwell based chips is expected in the first half of next year.

According to a similar report at CPU-World, Intel is also planning to bring Broadwell architecture to mobile devices and with TDPs as low as 4.5W, we will most likely see some interesting tablet platforms from Intel.





Source: VR-Zone.com, CPU-World.com.