Intel to Release 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs on April 8, Say Taiwan PC Makers

After many rumors and suppositions regarding the release date of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors hit the streets, a recent report citing sources from Taiwanese PC makers has revealed that the chip giant plans to launch these new 22nm CPUs on April 8, 2012.

Previously, all we knew about the launch date of Ivy Bridge processors was that Intel wanted to go for the March/April timeframe, with some recent rumors claiming that May could also be a potential launch target.

However, sources cited by DigiTimes have now revealed that Intel is actually planning to release its first Ivy Bridge chips on April 8, 2012.

The initial release will cover the third-generation Core i5 and Core i7 desktop products with prices ranging from $184 to $332 (141 to 254 EUR), and Core i7 mobile chips, while the next CPU batch will include Core i3 and Core i5 mobile processors.

This launch will also take place in the second quarter of 2012, while desktop Pentium processors will presumably follow in Q3 2012.

As far as chipsets are concerned, on April 8, Intel will unveil the Z77, H77, Z75 and B75 platform controller hubs for desktop systems and the HM77, UM77, HM76 and HM75 notebooks chipsets.

Ivy Bridge is the code name used for the 22nm die shrink of the current Sandy Bridge chips and features basically the same architecture, but with a few minor tweaks and improvements.

This includes a new on-die GPU that will come with full DirectX 11 support as well as with 30% more EUs than Sandy Bridge, in order to offer up to 60% faster performance that current Core CPUs according to Intel.

In addition, the processor cores have also received some minor tweaks as their AVX performance was slightly increased and Intel has updated the integrated PCI Express controller to the 3.0 standard.

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