Tick Tock Tock Says Intel Now As Well

The familiar "Tick-Tock" is a model used by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation start started in 2007 to follow every micro-architectural change with a die shrink of the process technology. Based on Moore's Law this been proven to become more and more difficult, it's becoming Tick-Tock-Tock

 Earlier this year we already reported that starting with Kaby Lake things would to be changing as the cycle changes towards two tocks.

Now if this sounds like gibberish to you allow me to explain; 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 was  expected to be one tick or tock. Examples: Haswell (22nm Tock, LGA-2011, high-end), Broadwell (14nm Tick, LGA-1150, mainstream) and Skylake (14nm Tock, LGA-1150, mainstream).

In it's yearly Form 10-K document about Intel's financials the company now really makes note of a three-step cycle. So after a new procedure (die shrink), there will be a new architecture followed by an upgrade of that architecture. This way Intel can release a new processor each year.

We are now at Skylake, which will be followed by Kabylake and Cannonlake. After Cannon lake we'll see Icelake and Tiger Lake.
 

Microarchitecture	CPU series	Tick or Tock	Cycle	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	Process	14 nm	2014 & 2015 for desktops
Skylake	Core i 6xxx	Tock	Architecture	14 nm	2015
Kaby lake	Core i 7xxx	Tock	Optimization	14 nm	2016
Cannonlake	Core i 8xxx?	Tick	Process	10 nm	2017
Icelake	Core i 8xxx?	Tock	Architecture	10 nm	2018
Tiger Lake	Core i 9xxx?	Tock	Optimization	10 nm	2019
tba	tba	Tick	Process	7 nm	2020

Intel started rolling out its 14nm "Skylake" processors last autumn, the 10nm "Cannonlake" chips were originally planned to be the follow-up. However, Intel will release Kaby lake likely in the 2nd half of 2016. Kaby lake will be based on Skylake and will offer better performance (architecture update). 

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 code-name Cannonlake will be released 2nd half of 2017.
 

Intel by the way is stepping away from the somewhat goofy sounding Tick-Tick-Tock naming, it'll be Process <-> architecture <-> optimization. Around 2020/2021 we should see 7nm ...