Intel ends Tick-Tock cycle and delays 10nm production to 2017
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.
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Well like this wasn't obvious. Which is basically why I'm going to get on skylake now, nothing is coming for at least the next 2 years thats going to be interesting. It won't be until 10nm Canonlake arrives, and even then Canonlake is mostly just a die shrink of Skylake. Could be 2018 and 10nm with a whole new Architecture before we see something amazing for CPUs in the Desktop space.
At least Z170 chipset will have all the latest features etc Only thing I could think that might be missing from Z170 Platform is PCIe 4.0, perhaps that'll be a feature that Intel use to sell Kaby Lake when it arrives next year, PCIe 4.0 for the mainstream, but limit it to 16 lanes so's not to undercut Skylake-E sales.
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Well like this wasn't obvious. Which is basically why I'm going to get on skylake now, nothing is coming for at least the next 2 years thats going to be interesting. It won't be until 10nm Canonlake arrives, and even then Canonlake is mostly just a die shrink of Skylake. Could be 2018 and 10nm with a whole new Architecture before we see something amazing for CPUs in the Desktop space.
At least Z170 chipset will have all the latest features etc Only thing I could think that might be missing from Z170 Platform is PCIe 4.0, perhaps that'll be a feature that Intel use to sell Kaby Lake when it arrives next year, PCIe 4.0 for the mainstream, but limit it to 16 lanes so's not to undercut Skylake-E sales.
From Anandtech:
The new processor family is being dubbed Kaby Lake. It will be based on the preceding Skylake micro-architecture but with key performance enhancements to differentiate it from Skylake and to offer a further generation of performance improvements in light of the delay of Intel’s 10nm process. Intel hasn’t gone into detail at this time over just what those enhancements will be for Kaby Lake, though we are curious over just how far in advance Intel has been planning for the new family.
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Yes, "tick-tock" is like "Moore's Law," one of those generally understood truths that's false...

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sound like skylake will be what i going after then
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Bummer. Intel needs to get EUV up and going. Pretty crazy that a company with that much money and arguably the best engineers can't figure this out.