Intel uses code names for its new CPUs. Two years ago there was 'Sandy Bridge', last year 'Ivy Bridge', now 'Haswell'. With each new product comes improvements in performance.

This post uses general terms. For an excellent detailed analysis of the new technology, Anandtech has an excellent article located at www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/1.

Intel works, as you may know by now, in a tick-tock strategy. The 'tick' is a die-shrink and performance tweaks, the 'tock' is when they create a new architecture. Haswell is new architecture, a 'tock' in Intel's cycle.

In basic terms, they keep getting smaller and faster....

The main improvements with Haswell are a fairly major increase in instructions per cycle (increases performance), a major reduction in power requirements (increases battery life on notebooks, decreases power consumption on desktops), improved media decoding and performance, and a significant jump in graphics performance on ultrabooks and huge (2x) jump on high-end desktop CPUs.

So, when does this wonderfulness come to a computer near you? The release dates are, and don't hold us to this, looking like June, with quantity product available in the market beginning in July.

So that you have general guideline, the consensus seems to be that this CPU will be about 10% faster (at the same frequency) than the current Ivy Bridge product. If you are in the market for a new computer now, it probably isn't worth waiting until July. However, it is interesting to note the improvements Haswell brings to the market.