Haswell (microarchitecture)

Haswell is the codename for a processor microarchitecture developed by Intel as the "fourth-generation core" successor to the Ivy Bridge (which is a die shrink/tick of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture). Intel officially announced CPUs based on this microarchitecture on June 4, 2013, at Computex Taipei 2013, while a working Haswell chip was demonstrated at the 2011 Intel Developer Forum. With Haswell, which uses a 22 nm process, Intel also introduced low-power processors designed for convertible or "hybrid" ultrabooks, designated by the "Y" suffix.
Haswell CPUs are used in conjunction with the Intel 8 Series chipsets, Intel 9 Series chipsets, and Intel C220 series chipsets.
At least one Haswell-based processor is still being sold as of 2021, the Pentium G3420.
Design.
The Haswell architecture is specifically designed to optimize the power savings and performance benefits from the move to FinFET (non-planar, "3D") transistors on the improved 22 nm process node.
Haswell has been launched in three major forms:
Performance.
Compared to Ivy Bridge:
Technology.
Haswell Refresh.
Around the middle of 2014, Intel released a refresh of Haswell, simply titled "Haswell Refresh". When compared to the original Haswell CPUs lineup, Haswell Refresh CPUs offer a modest increase in clock frequencies, usually of 100 MHz. Haswell Refresh CPUs are supported by Intel's "9 Series" chipsets (Z97 and H97, codenamed Wildcat Point), while motherboards with "8 Series" chipsets (codenamed Lynx Point) usually require a BIOS update to support Haswell Refresh CPUs.
The CPUs codenamed "Devil's Canyon", covering the i5 and i7 K-series SKUs, employ a new and improved thermal interface material (TIM) called next-generation polymer thermal interface material ("NGPTIM"). This improved TIM reduces the CPU's operating temperatures and improves the overclocking potential, as something that had been problematic since the introduction of Ivy Bridge. Other changes for the Devil's Canyon CPUs include a TDP increase to 88 W, additional decoupling capacitors to help smooth out the outputs from the fully integrated voltage regulator (FIVR), and support for the VT-d that was previously limited to non-K-series SKUs. TSX was another feature brought over from the non-K-series SKUs, until August 2014 when a microcode update disabled TSX due to a bug that was discovered in its implementation.
Windows XP and Vista support.
While Ivy Bridge is the last Intel processor to fully support all versions of Windows XP, Haswell includes limited driver support for certain XP editions such as POSReady2009. People have modified the graphics driver for these versions to adapt to normal Windows XP to varying degrees of success.
Windows Vista support is also dropped with this processor as well. People who have installed Vista have reported various problems such as services not starting automatically. This same bug affected Windows 7, but was patched by Microsoft with an update that was not backported to Vista. XP is unaffected by this bug.
List of Haswell processors.
Desktop processors.
The following table lists available desktop processors.
SKU suffixes to denote:
Server processors.
The first digit of the model number designates the largest supported multi-socket configuration; thus, E5-26xx v3 models support up to dual-socket configurations, while the E7-48xx v3 and E7-88xx v3 models support up to quad- and eight-socket configurations, respectively. Also, E5-16xx/26xx v3 and E7-48xx/88xx v3 models have no integrated GPU.
Lists of launched server processors are below, split between Haswell E3-12xx v3, E5-16xx/26xx v3 and E7-48xx/88xx v3 models.
SKU suffixes to denote:
Mobile processors.
The following table lists available mobile processors.
SKU suffixes to denote: