Intel is saying goodbye to its traditional “tick-tock” product cycle, and turning to a new three-step process for the foreseeable future.
The chip giant revealed its plans in a 10-K filing with the SEC, first spotted by Fool.com. Instead of moving to a new manufacturing process technology roughly every two years—with new CPU architecture on that same process in intervening years—Intel will stretch out the timeline and add a third leg to the cycle, called “Optimization.”
The first example of this will be Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake processor, which will follow Broadwell and Skylake to become the third Intel chip with a 14nm process. Intel won’t move to a 10-nm process until the second-half of 2017, at least two and a half years after Intel introduced Broadwell.
Although Intel’s 10-K filing doesn’t really explain why the company is deviating from its decades-old approach to new processor technology, CEO Brian Krzanich has previously pointed to the “recipe of complexity and difficulty” that each new transition brings.
