CES 2015: Intel Officially Announces Broadwell-U 5th Generation Core Processors

After launching Core M processor last year, Intel is now finally ready to unleash additional Broadwell processors into the market. This time around, they come in the form of 5^th generation Intel Core processors which consisted of 14 new chips targeted at consumers and businesses alike. Also joining them are several new Pentium and Celeron chips that were build using the same 14nm manufacturing process.

Here is the list of the new chips, which are designed for laptops, all-in-one desktop PCs, and mini PCs:

Even though Broadwell is generally a 14nm variation of Haswell architecture which was the basis of 4^th generation Core processors, Intel still manages to fit Broadwell processors with more transistors than its predecessors. This led to improvements in terms of performance and power consumption.

Specifically, Intel has stated that the 5^th generation Core U processors are able to provide up to 22 percent better graphics performance, 50 percent faster video conversion, 4 percent better productivity and 1.5 hours longer battery life as compared to their predecessors.

Aside from these improvements, the new Intel HD Graphics 5500 and 6000 as well as Intel Iris Graphics 6100 GPUs that are present within these new 5^th generation Core processors also able to support 4K resolution even when utilized through Intel Wireless Display technology. They also supports VP8, VP9, and HEVC video compression formats together with DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, and OpenCL 2.0.

Not to forget, these GPUs are ready for the upcoming DirectX 12 as well. The 5^th generation Core processors also come together with a new integrated Digital Signal Processor that supports Waves and DTS technologies for audio post processing as well as the ability to wake up system with Microsoft InstantGo (previously known as Connected Standby) via voice activation.

In terms of availability, products based on these new processors will be released into the market starting from this month onwards with many of them are making their debut at this week’s CES 2015 such as these products from Acer and Lenovo. So, expect to see them in Malaysia soon enough.