Intel has now officially confirmed that it won't follow its well-known "tick-tock" development cycle and will be focusing on 14nm manufacturing process.

We already knew that Intel had issues with 10nm manufacturing process and that first 10nm Cannonlake chips are scheduled for the second half of 2017. This also means that the company will have to stick with 14nm manufacturing process for a while and change its famous "tick-tock" development strategy to tick-tock-tock model.

Intel has managed to keep to the tick-tock strategy quite well but upcoming Kaby Lake will be an anomaly. In case you missed it, the "tick" represents a node shrink with new manufacturing process, like the 14nm Broadwell chips, while "tock" is a new architecture, as it was the case with 14nm Skylake chips. The upcoming Kaby Lake chips will still be based on 14nm manufacturing process so can be considered as a "semi-tock".

In a latest K-10 filing, Intel has confirmed that it will not be able to keep up with the tick-tock strategy, but will have three or more processor families on the same die shrink. Intel states that it expects to lengthen the amount of time it will utilize 14nm manufacturing process and next-generation 10 nanometer process technologies.

This pretty much confirms that 10nm Cannonlake chips won't be coming before next year and that upcoming Kaby Lake architecture is indeed based on 14nm manufacturing process, but also puts a big question mark on the 7nm manufacturing process, which might be pushed to a distant future, probably 2019-2020 or even later.



Source: Techspot.com.