Intel preparing Basin Falls and Skylake-X CPUs for 2017

According to DigiTimes, chipmaker Intel is planning to launch its latest 300 series of processors by late 2017 with the 200 series coming earlier in the year. The 200 series will supposedly carry native USB 3.1 Gen. 2 and WLAN support without the need for additional external chips or controllers. If true, then this will likely drive up the adoption rate of USB 3.1 Type-C from tablets up to convertibles and notebooks.

The 200 series based on Kaby Lake may make its debut at CES 2017, but it is not expected to offer massive gains over the Skylake platform. Perhaps the largest upgrade is that its number of PCIe lanes have grown from 20 to 24, but the remaining specifications are largely identical with the same ten USB 3.0 ports and six SATA III connectors. Thunderbolt 3 (Alpine Ridge) will be supported alongside the debut of Intel's 3D XPoint. RAM support has been increased from DDR4-2133 to DDR4-2400.

The Basin Falls platform will target the high-end sector for an expected launch by Q3 2017 at the earliest. The family will include hexa-core and octa-core Skylake-X CPUs on a LGA 2066 socket with up to 44 PCIe lanes compared to 40 on the current Broadwell-E generation. Quad-channel memory will support up to DDR4-2400 and DDR4-2666 and up to ten USB 3.0 ports and eight SATA III connections. Interestingly, L3 cache may fall from 25 MB down to 13.75 MB.

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