This week has seen the launch of Sandy Bridge-E on the new X79/LGA 2011 platform. With a commercial life of only about a week so far a successor is already planned and under development. Following a logical naming pattern the successor will be Ivy Bridge-E and will be based off the Ivy Bridge architecture due out early 2012. In addition to this we now also know Ivy Bridge-E will be compatible with the current X79/LGA 2011 platform providing some socket longevity for consumers.
Sandy Bridge-E suddenly looks like a much more attractive option given the fact it should last at least two years. There is not much news in terms of the specs of Ivy Bridge-E however but considering Sandy Bridge-E already packs up to 8 cores with 20MB of cache it seems likely Ivy Bridge-E could be similar with a smaller fabrication process of 22nm instead of 32nm which should give a performance boost. As far as we know Ivy Bridge will launch March-April 2012 and Ivy Bridge-E will come November-December of 2012.
