Xeon
Introduced in May 2013, Xeon E3-12xx v3 is the first Xeon series based on the Haswell microarchitecture. It uses the new LGA 1150 socket, which was introduced with the desktop Core i5/i7 Haswell processors, incompatible with the LGA 1155 that was used in Xeon E3 and E3 v2. As before, the main difference between the desktop and server versions is added support for ECC memory in the Xeon-branded parts. The main benefit of the new microarchitecture is better power efficiency.
X86
There have been several attempts, including by Intel itself, to end the market dominance of the "inelegant" x86 architecture designed directly from the first simple 8-bit microprocessors. Examples of this are the iAPX 432 (a project originally named the "Intel 8800"), the Intel 960, Intel 860 and the Intel/Hewlett-Packard Itanium architecture. However, the continuous refinement of x86 microarchitectures, circuitry and semiconductor manufacturing would make it hard to replace x86 in many segments. AMD's 64-bit extension of x86 (which Intel eventually responded to with a compatible design) and the scalability of x86 chips such as the eight-core Intel Xeon and 12-core AMD Opteron is underlining x86 as an example of how continuous refinement of established industry standards can resist the competition from completely new architectures.