The word that Intel would be hard mounting future CPUs caused quite a stir in the enthusiast community who suddenly feared being able to pick and choose the CPU you wanted. However the initial report was quickly explained as a misunderstanding and the world returned to normal. Intel will be working on two lines of CPUs, one using the traditional FPGA socket and the other BGA and soldered to the board. The fact that these will have similar performance profiles is a very important step for Intel as they play catch up in the mobile and phone market.

Intel recently admitted that they missed the boat on low-power CPUs for smartphones and tablets, but as we saw when AMD slid past them to grab the performance crown, Intel can be a monster when properly motivated. If Intel can gain the same focus that brought Conroe to us (and the performance crown back to them) then we might see Intel muscle out ARM as the leading processor provider in the mobile world.
 
As of this writing the expected release date of both Broadwell and the Asus T300 Chi is late 2014. Now the only problem that Intel faces is the lukewarm demand from consumers for Windows 8 based tablets. This one fact could slow adoption of any x86 based tablet until Microsoft makes some changes to Windows. Remember it is not just what is under the hood that sells tablets and laptops, it is also the software that the user has to deal with… of course there is always Apple, but their laptop sales are not really enough for Intel make any real money.

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