According to a leaked development roadmap, Intel plans to release two series of engineering sample chips, which are going to be followed by a batch of qualification samples. The latter won't arrive until the second week of November 2011, and the first Ivy Bridge processors are expected to enter mass production in the final week of December 2011.

However, the initial production run will include only quad-core CPUs, as dual-core parts will only enter mass production in the first or second week of February. According to Intel's documents, this means that dual-core SKUs won't reach the retail market until April or May of 2012.

Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are a die 22nm shrink of the Sandy Bridge chips and feature the same architecture with a few minor tweaks and an improved graphics core. This will receive DirectX 11 support as well as 30% more EUs than the HD 3000 GPU used in current second generation Core processors.

Other CPU features include better AVX performance, an integrated PCI Express 3.0 controller as well as native USB 3.0 support thanks to the Panther Point chipsets, which are also expected to enter mass production in the final week of December 2011.

Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge processors use the same LGA 1155 socket as their current counterparts, so most Sandy Bridge motherboards should be compatible with these chips after a simple BIOS update.