Intentional or not, a huge set of company-confidential diagrams from Intel have surfaced from Japanese website PC Watch. The diagrams show Intel's roadmap until the beginning of 2010. While the authenticity of these diagrams are questionable, and there are bound to be inaccuracies, they provide a broad view of Intel's consumer PC processor plans. The first time shows a gradual transition between the current Core and upcoming Nehalem architectures. What's more, it shows how Intel may have segregated the desktop PC market, with six main product divisions from bottom to top being integrated board, value, essential, mainstream, performance and extreme. The value, mainstream and performance segments are further classified on price-bands.


The contents of the diagram are pretty self explanatory in terms of what kind of products are slated for when and a little peak into what they are made of. Highlights of the diagram include:

• Demotion of Core 2 Quad Q9550 to Mainstream. It leads the mainstream segment. This follows a significant price cut after the entry of Q9650.
• Core 2 Quad Q9400 enters the sub-segment of high-Mainstream.
• There are variations in the QuickPath interconnect bandwidth between the Core i7 2.66 GHz, 2.93 GHz parts with that of the extreme segment 3.20 GHz model. The extreme segmant Core i7 seems to have a higher bandwidth QPI system interface.
• Lynnfield is on course, slated for Q3 2009.
• Two 3.xx GHz dual-core Havendale parts will take seats along with Lynnfied, definitively with 4 MB caches. One of them gets into high-Mainstream sub category.
• Havendale parts make it even to essential and value classes with the low-end value parts continuing to be based on Core architecture till a little longer.
• A six-core Nehalem part code-named Westmere comes out in 2010.

As you can see, that's quite a huge fleet ready for tomorrow's market. Intel has a processor to sell you in every price-band, any every level of performance. There is however an inaccuracy in that graph, two Havendale parts feature above the thick blue dual-quad core demarcation line. Atom's future looks quite exciting as well (covered here). A quick round-up of the processors' schematics is provided in this rather large image:


For more pictures and a detailed explanation, visit this translated page. The year 2009 looks the the year of upgrades for the computer enthusiast community.

Source: PC Watch