Intel will be at 10nm for many years
For more than a decade, Intel was driven by a "tick/tock" development model. The "tick" took place one year and was a manufacturing process shrink, from 45nm to 32nm, for example. The "tock," which took place one year later, was a whole new microarchitecture, such as Penryn to Nehalem.For about a decade, tick/tock worked well. Intel choked the life out of the insurgent AMD and dominated the x86 market for a long time—and still does. But the limitations of physics have caught up with the company, and ticks are becoming much harder to come by. As it is, Intel delayed the move to 10nm by adding a third generation of 14nm chips called Kaby Lake. The shrink to 10nm was planned for next year's Cannonlake processor. Now word is that might be delayed another year, with 10nm coming in 2018. And the next shrink, down to 7nm, won't take place until after 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here