Intel Starts Shipping Haswell Processors to OEMs
CNET and Etechnix have reported that Intel has begun shipping its Haswell CPUs to OEMs ahead of its end of quarter release date.
Intel has started shipping its Haswell CPUs to system builders. The site also states that the processors will be launched at the end of this quarter, with Intel providing more details next Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF 2013) conference in Beijing.
The Haswell processor family is part of Intel's "tick tock" design process in which it launches a new processor design in one year, and then shrinks it to a smaller process size in the following year. Haswell offers design tweaks made to the Ivy Bridge architecture, which is essentially a process-shrunk revision of Sandy Bridge. New features introduced in Haswell include HNI instruction set architecture extensions, a high-performance L4 cache layer, models with a 10 W TDP and more.

Is that a rumor or confirmed?
Haswell is the last "open" socket type. I plan on buying this generation as Broadwell will have the CPU soldered onto the mobo. I want the ability to pick and choose.
That's why I plan to stick with AMD, that if the motherboard or cpu dies I only haft to buy one and not both.
Is that a rumor or confirmed?
not true. intel has said that it will likely keep the high end cpus in the lga format
Nothing has been confirmed yet.
Why would they switch back to soldering the CPU onto the motherboard? Most people don't build their own computers and having the CPU soldered onto the motherboard would make it harder for venders to service the computers they sell.
its not a big issue and i could care less if my PC had the bug, it only affects a small pool of USB thumb drives. Not an issue so dont compare it to the SATA degradation on P67, that was a much bigger issue.
That supposed to be already fixed:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Haswell-S3-Sleep-Problem-PCN,21896.html
It's not L4 cache. It's EDRAM.
How is that "switching back"? Intel has never had BGA CPUs for mainstream desktops before, Broadwell would be the first time assuming Intel does not skip conventional desktop PCs altogether with Broadwell to focus entirely on all-in-one/tablet/ultrabook/SFF.
Since most people will never upgrade whatever CPU they buy with the original system (I have not bothered upgrading a CPU without upgrading the rest of the platform along with it in the last 12 years), the CPU being soldered to the motherboard won't matter for the vast majority of people.
Same, I don't upgrade my processor until it is time for a platform upgrade. However i still strongly disagree with the idea of a soldered design for two very big reasons. One being choosing what goes in to begin with. I have a hard time seeing a large selection like we're used to in the high end. Second is servicing. I'm an IT tech, and being able to swap failed parts is important to me. Even if i wasn't a tech it would be.
It will be available in both BGA and LGA varients with the high end market being LGA.
Not quite as bad as described above but still "oh shit!"
Multiple sources have confirmed that mainstream Broadwell CPUs will be BGA-only. What has not been confirmed yet is what the lowest-end socketed chip will be... will it start with i5 k-chips, LGA2011's successor or something lower-endish?
That is relative. With previous generations, most external interfaces served from various motherboard ICs that could get fried would still have required a labor-intensive motherboard swap. With just about everything that can fail integrated in the CPU, the rest of the motherboard is little more than a cheap passive backplane that is cheaper to chuck in the garbage bin than attempt to fix.
It could be argued that fewer fixable parts makes repairs simpler: no messing around with guessing whether the CPU or motherboard is the problem, no worrying about customers telling half the story when processing RMAs, no worrying about ruining a good motherboard with a bad CPU or vice-versa since they are now one single item, etc.
Also, on a conventional motherboard, the non-replaceable Intel chipset accounts for 30-50% of the cost. Replacing the chipset with the CPU simply increases that proportion to 50-80%. In either case, an Intel chip gets fried, the board is dead.
The rumor is that will not happen with desktop CPUs, rather only with laptop CPUs that are used by manufacturers of these laptops. How many people actually upgrade their laptop CPU? Anyone? *crickets*