IDF 2014 | Intel announces 14nm Braswell processors for Chromebooks

At this year's Intel Developer Forum held in Shenzen, China, the company revealed its plans for the future and unveiled the fifth generation of processors to use the Core architecture. While Haswell's successor is dubbed Broadwell, the SoCs developed for low-end PCs and Chromebooks to succeed Bay Trail will be part of the Braswell family and will use the new 14 nm manufacturing process.

Just like Haswell, Bay Trail is a 22 nm platform, so the move to 14 nm will bring the usual advantages of die shrinkage, especially lowered power consumption and at least a moderate performance boost. Intel also revealed that Braswell will use an improved version of the Iris graphics technology introduced by some Haswell processors back in 2013.

Next to all in one desktop computers, Intel expects Braswell to find its way inside Chromebooks, as they already announced the intention to increase the number of Intel-powered Chromebook designs to 20 during 2014, a solid increase from only four in 2013.

Unfortunately there is no official timeline for the release of these new chips, so it remains to be seen if rumors that mentioned 5th generation Intel Core processors will arrive before the end of this year end up being true or not.