Pages

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Intel Releases 7-Series Chipsets, Paves Way for Ivy Bridge

Intel Ivy Bridge

Intel on Monday made available its 7-series chipset family of products for notebooks and desktops using its current-generation Core processors as well as the 22-nanometer, next-generation of chips code named Ivy Bridge that are expected to come out later this month.

The 7-series chipset supports USB 3.0 and features Intel responsiveness technologies like Smart Response, Smart Connect, and Rapid Start. The chip maker said in a statement that 7-series products are now available to its OEM partners and that it is also releasing several of its own desktop motherboards featuring its own 7-series Express Chipset.

In recent weeks, the date that Intel plans to release its Ivy Bridge chips has been coming into focus.

Intel, meanwhile, had originally planned to launch Ivy Bridge this month but production issues caused the chip giant to push back the launch of the bulk of chips in its next-generation, 22-nanometer product line to June, Intel executive Sean Maloney said back in February.

Now it looks like a whole bunch of Ivy Bridge processors could show up on the original schedule, after all. Earlier in April, CPU World pointed to reports from SWEclockers and Donanimhaber pointing to an April 29 release date for Ivy Bridge desktop and notebook CPUs.

The processors that are supposed to arrive on that date include several new Core i5 and Core i7 chips for the desktop market, and three Core i7 mobile processors as well (a list is here). All of the Ivy Bridge parts rumored for an April 29 arrival are quad-core CPUs, with some additional dual-core mobile chips (plus another handful of quad-core desktop chips) supposedly coming on June 3, according to CPU World.

For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.