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Intel may finally be abandoning its "Tick-Tock" strategy:
As reported at The Motley Fool, Intel's latest 10-K / annual report filing would seem to suggest that the 'Tick-Tock' strategy of introducing a new lithographic process note in one product cycle (a 'tick') and then an upgraded microarchitecture the next product cycle (a 'tock') is going to fall by the wayside for the next two lithographic nodes at a minimum, to be replaced with a three element cycle known as 'Process-Architecture-Optimization'.
Intel's Tick-Tock strategy has been the bedrock of their microprocessor dominance of the last decade. Throughout the tenure, every other year Intel would upgrade their fabrication plants to be able to produce processors with a smaller feature set, improving die area, power consumption, and slight optimizations of the microarchitecture, and in the years between the upgrades would launch a new set of processors based on a wholly new (sometimes paradigm shifting) microarchitecture for large performance upgrades. However, due to the difficulty of implementing a 'tick', the ever decreasing process node size and complexity therein, as reported previously with 14nm and the introduction of Kaby Lake, Intel's latest filing would suggest that 10nm will follow a similar pattern as 14nm by introducing a third stage to the cadence.
| Year | Process | Name | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 14nm | Kaby Lake | Optimization |
| 2017 | 10nm | Cannonlake | Process |
| 2018 | 10nm | Ice Lake | Architecture |
| 2019 | 10nm | Tiger Lake | Optimization |
| 2020 | 7nm | ??? | Process |
This suggests that 10nm "Cannonlake" chips will be released in 2017, followed by a new 10nm architecture in 2018 (tentatively named "Ice Lake"), optimization in 2019 (tentatively named "Tiger Lake"), and 7nm chips in 2020. This year's "optimization" will come in the form of "Kaby Lake", which could end up making underwhelming improvements such as slightly higher clock speeds, due to higher yields of the previously-nameed "Skylake" chips. To be fair, Kaby Lake will supposedly add the following features alongside any CPU performance tweaks:
Kaby Lake will add native USB 3.1 support, whereas Skylake motherboards require a third-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 Main10/10-bit and VP9 10-bit hardware decoding.
Previously: Intel's "Tick-Tock" Strategy Stalls, 10nm Chips Delayed
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Wednesday March 23 2016, @04:31AM
This is an optimistic linear extrapolation. A pessimistic - yet equally unfounded - graph would follow an exponential decay function to reflect the known physical limit around 1nm on the y axis and time on the x axis.
Of course, outside the voodoo of statistics and magical thinking regarding node advancements, one could carefully measure the reduced purchasing power over this never-ending recession; Adjust for increased competition from ARM in the data center; Note the lukewarm sales figures of Windows Phones and Desktops; Survey the number of governments switching to open-source software over security and cost concern with long term "talks" regarding open-source hardware; Compensate for the lack of the past IBM precursor advancement in POWER production; etc... And come up with an actually meaningful projection regarding future Intel x86 CPUs sales.
Then again, one is too lazy and tired so one is going to sleep.
compiling...