Intel Officially Kills “Tick-Tock”

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According to financial documents spotted by the folks at Motley Fool, Intel has officially killed its yearly tick-tock cycle. Intel even provided a little graphic to explain the new three step process.

We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize out 14 [nanometer] and out next-generation 10 [nanometer] process technologies, further optimizing out products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions."
 
I guess that is a sign that a silicon replacement is pretty far away.
 
latest

R.I.P. Tick Tock, you will be missed
 
So, We get a new architecture. Then new versions of the same architecture with better optimizations (like Haswell E?). Then that architecture shrinks to a new process size. Then a new architecture at that new size... and so on?
 
No surprise there. It's not realistic to expect a new process node every other release, as it gets ever more difficult to shrink them.
 
Yeah, it's been clear it's been dead for a year. Every Broadwell release was fashionably late (6 months) before you could buy it in quantities, and Skylake has shown the same issues. I expect similar if not longer teething periods for each new node.

We already knew that the cost of new process tech is rising so high it costs more per-transistor. Higher costs = more time.
 
i say its about time. calling their product cycle 'tick tock' was nothing more than a marketing gimmick that we can do without. i don't know about you guys, but i'd far rather a product misses schedule a bit if it means releasing something of quality.
 
More like....
New Node size
New architure
Refinement of node to allow larger die sizes (What intel calls optimization)

Intel is REALLY REALLY good at optimization out of the gate. What they have done with Atom is amazing, given the overhead of intels legacy CPUs. They are only limited in the number of transistors they can lay down to speed things up (reduces number of compute units possible)
 
Roughly translated, Intel realizes that Moore's law is slowing down, and they won't have much further down in die-size to go before there is no where else to go with existing technology or the x86 architecture as it is now.
So, this will allow them to spread out their new processes over and even longer period of time (allowing more sales and gives them more of a buffer before shit hits the fan and/or something completely different must be done [fibre-CPU or quantum computing]) and will allow them to optimize and refine their CPUs even more so than usual to squeeze as much performance out of a generational architecture as possible (which might actually be a good thing).
 
This is what happens when AMD isn't doing well in this market.
I think it is more about the approach of a fork in the road, as others mentioned. It is ARM and the mobile processor makers that now dominate the market, not AMD and Intel. Intel dominates a market that is saturated and gradually shrinking. They are also approaching a massive technology shift where they will be forced to abandon the silicon technology they have used for the last 40 years. Stretching out the silicon development cycle while they prepare for the Sea Change coming is only prudent business. Especially since there is no indication that PCs will ever return to their boom cycle levels again. Mobile based ARM technologies are likely here to stay and will continue their expansion into the PC territory. PCs won't die as prognosticators like to periodically prognosticate but they will diminish to some commodity level and probably stay there, pending another form of Sea Change that is as yet not on the horizon.
 
Silicon = 27% of the earths crust. Refined Germanium = 21x rarer than refined Gold. You bet their asses they better slow down if they have to change materials to shrink beyond 10nm.
 
Half expected it, considering we are seeing Skylake in force, yet Broadwell is still absolutely nowhere in sight.
 
You know what happened when AMD was top dog with the A64? Intel raised their prices. AMD is too small to matter.

This particular issue is about physics, not market conditions. The cost of die shrinks is skyrocketing for everyone.
To be fair, Intel was pushing AMD out of the market through unlawful tactics. So of course they can charge a boat load when everyone is buying from you anyway. Probably the only people who didn't buy Intel were DIY builders.

Also, it's only a physics problem when you're trying to shrink the die of the CPU. You can still add more cores. Intel Xeons are 28 cores I think. And while non of us here could make good use of that many cores, that's also a software issue. Developers need better tools to use that many cores, like DX12 and Vulkan for example.

I think it is more about the approach of a fork in the road, as others mentioned. It is ARM and the mobile processor makers that now dominate the market, not AMD and Intel. Intel dominates a market that is saturated and gradually shrinking. They are also approaching a massive technology shift where they will be forced to abandon the silicon technology they have used for the last 40 years. Stretching out the silicon development cycle while they prepare for the Sea Change coming is only prudent business. Especially since there is no indication that PCs will ever return to their boom cycle levels again. Mobile based ARM technologies are likely here to stay and will continue their expansion into the PC territory. PCs won't die as prognosticators like to periodically prognosticate but they will diminish to some commodity level and probably stay there, pending another form of Sea Change that is as yet not on the horizon.
Not the way I see it. Though ARM will definitely move onto the desktop market eventually. The mobile market is dying just as much as the PC market. Both are "dying" because of lack of new things. Why don't 4690K owners go buy a 6600K? Better yet, why doesn't a 2500K owner go buy a 6600K? There's no good reason to do so. Why doesn't a Galaxy S6 owner go buy a S7? You don't, at least if you're sane you don't.

Intel's big money maker is the server workstation market right now. Cause there's enough idiots in that market that will pay 10x more than the consumer, for the hardware equivalent of the same thing but with ECC memory. Which ECC memory pisses me off cause every PC should have that by now, but whatever. If Intel were to make 8 core CPUs for the same price as a 6600K, then Intel would lose money and raise standards for no reason. With no AMD to compete against them, there's really no reason.

There's also the lack of software utilizing the hardware. Until open source AI, games that aren't built around Xbox and PS4, and decoding your own genome is more common at home, then nobody needs more than 8 cores. I would also argue there's a lack of software tools as well.


 
You know what happened when AMD was top dog with the A64? Intel raised their prices. AMD is too small to matter.

This particular issue is about physics, not market conditions. The cost of die shrinks is skyrocketing for everyone.


Huh? Intel's prices didn't change when AMD was top dog with their A64 and X2s. I wanted to go with an X2 during then but it was about $500 for their cheapest X2. I opted for a 3.4 ghz dual core Prescott for $300 during then. Ran hot as balls, but I was watercooled, so I didn't care.
 
they're so far ahead of AMD that they can just not produce anything new for 5 years
 
they're so far ahead of AMD that they can just not produce anything new for 5 years

Why don't they produce a chip that can beat AMD APU on both fronts , lets see them do it in 5 years :) Same price category same manufacturing process ..

Don't worry about ARM either ...
 
Why don't they produce a chip that can beat AMD APU on both fronts , lets see them do it in 5 years :) Same price category same manufacturing process ..

Don't worry about ARM either ...

Intel already beats AMD's APUs and in the same price category. Not the same manufacturing process, cause AMD is slow. Maybe AMD needs to catch up to Intel's manufacturing process in 5 years instead, so they can actually compete with the same process. I don't see Intel wasting their time waiting.
 
Why don't they produce a chip that can beat AMD APU on both fronts , lets see them do it in 5 years :) Same price category same manufacturing process ..

Don't worry about ARM either ...
The problem with AMD APU's is why? No seriously, why buy one? The 7850K is currently $115 and that's not a bad price, but you couldn't really game on that. At least not games in medium or higher settings anyway, not including AA. And while no Intel can do that for $115, you could just grab any $100 graphics card and get a 10x better experience.

We all also forget that all of Intel's consumer CPU's are APU's. They're crap but not totally useless. You could also buy a 860k and throw a $50 graphics card and still get a better gaming experience for about the same price of a 7850K.

Intel already beats AMD's APUs and in the same price category. Not the same manufacturing process, cause AMD is slow. Maybe AMD needs to catch up to Intel's manufacturing process in 5 years instead, so they can actually compete with the same process. I don't see Intel wasting their time waiting.
No they don't. A 7850K will pretty much beat any Intel CPU alone. Not with a graphics card. But in my opinion, not enough to make it valuable for gaming. Cause you're going to want a graphics card regardless.
 
No they don't. A 7850K will pretty much beat any Intel CPU alone. Not with a graphics card. But in my opinion, not enough to make it valuable for gaming. Cause you're going to want a graphics card regardless.

The i3 6100 beat the 7850K, not so much in the graphics dept. You have to move into the budget FX and even those get trounced, except in multi-core benches/tests.

Also I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy those budget CPUs for gaming. Some obviously will since that's what their budget affords, but I would hope they'd pick the i3 or FX procs over an A-series.
 
The i3 6100 beat the 7850K, not so much in the graphics dept. You have to move into the budget FX and even those get trounced, except in multi-core benches/tests.

Also I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy those budget CPUs for gaming. Some obviously will since that's what their budget affords, but I would hope they'd pick the i3 or FX procs over an A-series.
I don't know i think amds apus are decent.
AMD A10-7890K APU Review - Introducing The A10-7890K
 
Never said they were bad procs, just don't see them as being all that good either. They're just there. I just think ppl should shoot for the i3 or FX, so they are on an upgradeable socket for future proofing. Granted in the case of the FX proc, you'll need to get a cheap GPU. To try to keep the cost equal, you'd end up with a real crappy GPU. One the APU is going to easily stomp.

If the user never plans to move away from the APU and stay budget, than I see it being perfectly fine to pick. I'm just not that kind of consumer. I upgrade. I was on Socket 478 for the longest time. As friend's upgraded, I picked up their old procs for like 10-20% of their original price. Went from 1.8 ghz P4 to 3.4 ghz P4, right up until my mobo broke. Then I moved to Core 2 Duo.
 
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