Intel may be a couple of months away from launching its Core "Haswell" processor family, and the 8-series "Lynx Point" family of chipset to back it, but is already talking to partners about the platform's successor, slated for the second quarter of 2014. Core "Haswell" introduces the industry to socket LGA1150 motherboards, and Core "Broadwell" could, in all likelihood, provide continuity to it, much in the same way "Ivy Bridge" did to "Sandy Bridge." Intel could introduce a new chipset to tag along with "Broadwell."
According to a roadmap slide seen by VR-Zone, Intel's 9-series chipset will include at least two models, the Z97 targeting enthusiasts, and the H97 targeting mainstream consumers. These chipset could drive socket LGA1150 motherboards going into the second half of 2014, and could support both "Haswell" and "Broadwell," in the same way today's 7-series chipset support "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge." Intel could introduce a major feature with 9-series, SATA Express.
We already know that Intel's upcoming 8-series chipset sees the chipset feature SATA Rev. 3.0 (6 Gb/s) on all six of its ports. Today's 7-series chipset feature a combination of two SATA 6 Gb/s, and four SATA 3 Gb/s. Tomorrow's 9-series could introduce SATA Express, although there's no information on just how many ports will support it. SATA Express is being drafted by SATA-IO into what could be SATA revision 3.2. It is essentially SATA link-layer over PCIe physical layer, although it manages to retain backwards compatibility with older SATA standards (at reduced performance, of course). SATA Express could provide drives with 1000 MB/s of bandwidth per direction.