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Intel's Tick-Tock Cycle Skips a Beat
New submitter Ramze writes: Several outlets are reporting on Intel's confirmation that it will make three generations of 14nm processors, delaying the switch to 10nm. The planned 14nm Kaby Lake processor marks the first time Intel has skipped the "tick" of a die shrink on its regular "tick/tock" cycle. Production of Cannonlake processors on 10nm has been pushed back to the second half of 2017 — likely due to manufacturing difficulties. Intel reported earlier this year that it may have to switch away from silicon to exotic materials such as indium gallium arsenide to make the next shrink to 7nm.
Look at Intel's recent earning and revenues. Business is so bad it doesn't justify investing money in a new engineering shrink.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Broadwell was delayed by a quarter due to defects, not a year. 3 months is a mere glitch in the usual 12 to 18 months between Ticks and Tocks. This new delay pushes a regular part of the cycle out a year or more to when we'd expect another "Tick" -- effectively skipping that part of the cycle entirely.
If one were to say that they're "Adding a new tick, not skipping a tock", then we'd expect the usual shrink every 24 to 36 months with 2 architecture improvements instead of 1 in-between the shrinks.
As an analogy: If your employer gives you a $500 bonus on even months and a $20 Subway Gift Card on odd months, and then tells you that your usual expected $500 for August will instead be replaced with another $20 gift card, but that the $500 bonuses will resume in September and the alternating cycle will likely begin again, your company effectively skipped giving you a bonus. Your income for that year will be $500 less ($480 if you count the additional gift card as income).
If instead, your employer who regularly gives you $500 bonuses and $20 gift cards on alternate months decided to give you an additional gift card one month between regular $500 bonuses, THEN you could say that they ADDED a gift card. (or a tock in this analogy).
We're not talking semantics. The tick/tock is all about producing something on a regular schedule. You know, like clockwork. A die shrink is overdue and it's being replaced with an architecture change. The die shrink was planned at this time, and now is not. It has been skipped, so we go to the next part of the cycle which is an architecture change.
Skipping half a cycle and adding an additional part of the cycle only look the same if one takes out the time factor. It's the frequency that matters. You admit to this part of the cycle being "pushed out a year" (or more) when half a cycle length is roughly a year to year and a half. If you look at the frequency of releases as a wave with Tick as peak and Tock as trough, the wave function has skipped a peak and flat-lined at a trough to begin again. On a heart monitor, this would look exactly like skipping a beat.