Intel reveals "roadmap enhancements, platform features and software partnerships" at Game Developer Conference 2014, all to prove that it has not abandoned the desktop PC format in favour of mobiles or wearables.
"The desktop business is a large and important segment for Intel, and we are investing in it-– reinventing form factors, experiences and products for our customers," the company says. "Enthusiasts are the heart and soul of the desktop and they asked us to give them more. We are delivering – more cores, better overclocking, faster speeds."
Thus GDC sees a preview of "Devil's Canyon," a 4th generation Core processor featuring an improved thermal interface and CPU packaging materials promising "significant" enhancements to performance and overclocking capabilities. It supports the DDR4 memory standard and will be available as an 8-core 16-thread "Extreme Edition" come H2 2014.
Furthermore company will celebrate the 20th birthday of the Pentium brand with an Anniversary Edition CPU featuring unlocked multipliers for independent core and memory frequency boosting, and reveals unlocked versions of the upcoming Broadwell CPU lineup.
Also seen at GDC 2014 is a new All-in-One PC reference design-- "BlackBrook," a thin and light PC described as a "portable AIO" (aka pAIO). It carries a RealSense 3D camera, quad microphone array, "premium" audio and an HD touchscreen, looks like an oversized tablet and, as the name suggests, is thin and light enough to merit the "portable" descriptor.