Intel roadmap leaked

Nehalem mobiles aplenty, and a mess more from Intel in the future.

A roadmap showing upcoming processors based on Intel's Nehalem architecture has been leaked to Japanese site PC Watch.

Although much of the information is already publicly known in one form or another, the roadmap includes new details of a generation of Nehalem mobile chips, and indicates a more aggressive push into the mainstream for the 32nm process compared to 45nm.

It also shows how increased on-chip integration will lead to socket incompatibilities within the chip family which is likely to keep high-end motherboard makers busy in the redesign department in the near future.

Scheduled for release this Autumn are three quad-core Clarksfield processors, the i7-720QM, i7-820QM and i7-920XM, clocked at 1.6GHz, 1.73GHz and 2GHz respectively. The top two CPUs will carry 8MB of cache. Prices will start at around $US340 for the 1.6GHz model and there will be iterations that pull less than 45W TDP.

Replacing today's low-power Core 2 Duo CPUs, two ultra-low-power Core i7 chips clocked at 1.06GHz and 1.2GHz that draw 10W will also join the family in Autumn, alongside two low-power iterations consuming 17W clocked at 2GHz and 2.13GHz.

These will be joined in early 2010 by Arrandale dual-core chips, drawing 25W to 35W. The Arrandale flagship is a Core i7 model with 4MB of cache clocked at 2.66GHz. Two i5 models will run at 2.4GHz and 2.54GHz, and prices kick in at around $US200.

Using Turbo Boost, which trades off cores for higher clocks, all the speeds can be significantly accelerated. For example the three Clarksfield i7s can be pushed to 2.8GHz, 3.06GHz and 3.2GHz, respectively, as there are more turbo stages in these CPUs versus the current Core i7.

PC Watch speculates that further CPU on-die integration will force more frequent socket changes and limit the CPU upgrades on a single mainboard. That will make life interesting for mainboard manufacturers, we guess.