Another day, another Intel leak and a few surprises as well. During the last few days we covered Intel's desktop roadmap for the next twelve months, bringing you news and insights on Intel's plans for the aforementioned time interval. Today we bring you news on what's to follow in the second half of 2014, specifically, on Intel's Premium Desktop plans for the interval, namely Haswell-E, DDR4 and the X99 PCH.

Haswell-E will be Intel's last and best offering using the 22 nm fabrication process, it will come in two versions, core count wise, 8 core part(s) as well as 6 core part(s) with hyper-threading enabled, therefore, boasting no less that 16 execution threads for the 8 core chips and 12 execution threads for the 6 core version(s). Judging by that alone, Haswell-E should constitute a far superior upgrade over Ivy Bridge-E, compared to what the latter will be in relation to Sandy Bridge-E, Haswell-E offering two additional physical cores that translate into four additional execution threads. The new chips will boast 2.5 MB of L3 Cache per core, summing up to 20 MB total L3 cache for the 8 core parts. TDP will remain in the same neighborhood it was in the case of its predecessors, around 130-140 W.Haswell-E will of course be accompanied by a new platform, dubbed Wellsburg, the X99 chipset will bring a host of new features, the most important one being quad channel DDR4 support. With four basic frequency settings, starting at 1333 MHz and moving up in increments of 266 MHz to a maximum of 2133 MHz, at which point overclocking should be employed to attain superior clocks. However we sincerely doubt that any DDR4 modules/kits, clocked below 2133 MHz, will be made available for this platform. Modestly clocked (1333 MHz), low voltage (1.2 V) kits are supported by the new platform as well. The DIMM connector was also modified to support Non Volatile DIMMs, receiving four more pins for the purpose (288 instead of 284), modification that will not negatively impact compatibility with 284 pin modules in any way.

Other points of interest regarding the X99 chipset are:

• Up to six USB 3.0 ports
• Up to eight USB 2.0 ports
• Up to ten SATA 6 Gbps ports
• Integrated Clock support
• TDP of 6.5W

The LGA 2011 socket will be updated too, dubbed LGA 2011-3, the socket will see the pin layout changing while remaining numerically the same. The change, going by Intel's own slides, claiming superior efficiency. The chip's IHS received a makeover as well, looking very different from current Intel offerings.

Given the information at hand, trying to quantify performance gains, speculate on overclocking potential and other such conclusory attempts to wrap up the above presented information, I admit is quite enticing and intriguing, but I'll end here and outsource the pleasure of doing that to you.

Post Scriptum
A big hand for radrok, for bringing this to my attention.