Panther Point is the chipset for Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge 22nm CPUs with a new faster graphics core. The chip is expected to launch in first days of 2012. Production should start in Q4 2011 and its the world's first 22nm part.

The chipset supports both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs, meaning the pin count remains the same, 1155. SATA 6 Gb/s is also available and let's hope that they won't mess it up this time around. Intel rapid storage technology is also on board, as well as PCIe 2.0 at 5 GT/s. The chipset supports three independent displays including HDMI 1.4 and Display port 1.1 support. This smells like 3D movie support to us.

Both old USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 are here and this is something that we are missing from current P67 and H67 boards. The future platform will chance things in very early 2012. Of course, the Panther Point chipset supports both mobile and desktop platforms so it is up to you to chose which machine you want to upgrade.

There won't be any notebook motherboard and CPU swapping but it will work for desktops just fine.