Intel delays their 10nm Cannonlake products towards 2017, instead next year Intel will introduce Kabylake processors, and these are third gen 14nm product series. This effectively puts a halt towards Intel's Tick-Tock product release cycle.
Intel's Brian Krzanich reported this news in a presentation about the quarter results. See, "Tick-Tock" is a model used by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation from 2007 to follow every micro-architectural change with a die shrink of the process technology. Moore's Law has been proven to become more and more difficult, and that now shows.
Every "tick" represents a shrinked process technology based on the previous micro-architecture (sometimes introducing new things like instructions, as with Broadwell, released in late 2014) and every "tock" designates a new micro-architecture. Roughly every year to 18 months, there is expected to be one tick or tock. Haswell (22nm Tock, LGA-2011, high-end), Broadwell (14nm Tick, LGA-1150, mainstream) and Skylake (14nm Tock, LGA-1150, mainstream).
| Microarchitecture | CPU series | Tick or Tock | Fab node | Year Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presler/Cedar Mill | Pentium 4 / D | Tick | 65 nm | 2006 |
| Conroe/Merom | Core 2 Duo/Quad | Tock | 65 nm | 2006 |
| Penryn | Core 2 Duo/Quad | Tick | 45 nm | 2007 |
| Nehalem | Core i | Tock | 45 nm | 2008 |
| Westmere | Core i | Tick | 32 nm | 2010 |
| Sandy Bridge | Core i 2xxx | Tock | 32 nm | 2011 |
| Ivy Bridge | Core i 3xxx | Tick | 22 nm | 2012 |
| Haswell | Core i 4xxx | Tock | 22 nm | 2013 |
| Broadwell | Core i 5xxx | Tick | 14 nm | 2014 & 2015 for desktops |
| Skylake | Core i 6xxx | Tock | 14 nm | 2015 |
| Kabylake | Core i 7xxx | Tock | 14 nm | 2016 |
| Cannonlake | Core i 8xxx? | Tick | 10 nm | 2017 |
Intel will start rolling out its 14nm "Skylake" processors this autumn, the 10nm "Cannonlake" chips were to be the follow-up. However as it is known now, Intel will release Kaby lake in the 2nd half of 2016. Kaby lake will be based on Skylake and will offer better performance. Effectively this means we will see three families of 14nm Intel chips: Broadwell from 2014, Skylake in 2015, and Kaby Lake in late 2016. The 10nm Cannonlake parts will follow in 2017.
The 10nm products under codename Cannonlake will be relased 2nd half of 2017. Krzanich confirmed that the first Skylake parts are on-schedule for production in the second half of this year, but did not confirm a firm launch date.
