Intel has record sales of Core i7 and K-model processors in declining CPU market

In the last quarter of 2015 Intel has seen its revenue for client processors drop by 8% due to a declining market, however high-end PCs seem to make a comeback or are more popular then ever as they increased their sales in this segment with the high-end Core i7 processors.

Especially the 14nm based K models like the 6600K and 6700K sold extremely well. With good news comes bad news, the high demand of flagship processors has an effect. As a direct result the average direct sales price of these SKUs went up by a good 17% compared to 2014. 

Intel: Even though the Client Computing Group ended the full year down 8%, we were excited to see that we were able to grow sequentially in the second and third and fourth quarters. As of November, 14 nanometer products made up more than 50% of the Client Computing volume. For the year, high-end Core i7 microprocessors and our K SKUs for gaming, both set all-time volume records, leading to our rich product mix.

14nm products sold well, this year we'll see the 3rd gen 14nm products released as Intel expects to take the 14nm fab lifespan to five years opposed to four years. That is fabbed under the microarchiteure name kaby lake. 

Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for the upcoming 14 nanometer successor to the Skylake micro-architecture. Skylake, a "tock" in Intel's "tick-tock" strategy, was to be succeeded by the 10 nanometer Cannonlake, which is a "tick", but it was announced on July 16, 2015 that Cannonlake had been delayed until the second half of 2017.

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
Kaby lake	Core i 7xxx	Tock	14 nm	2016
Cannonlake	Core i 8xxx?	Tick	10 nm	2017

Kaby Lake will add native USB 3.1 support, whereas Skylake motherboards require a 3rd-party add-on chip in order to provide USB 3.1 ports. It will also feature a new graphics architecture to improve performance in 3D graphics and 4K video playback. Kaby Lake will add native HDCP 2.2 support. Kaby Lake will add full fixed function HEVC Main10/10bit and VP9 10bit hardware decoding. Kaby Lake will have an integrated memory controller that supports both DDR4 (2400 MHz) and DDR3 (1600 MHz) memory.

The 200-series chipset tied to the processor series is tagged under codename "Union Point," and will support Intel Optane SSDs and Rapid Storage Technology support for PCIe storage devices.  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. 10nm Cannonlake parts should follow in 2017.