Intel tick

Intel Tick-Tock comes to an end, from now on the evolution in microprocessors will be slower and we will see more families manufactured with the same manufacturing process. No surprise since in recent years the silicon giant has already suffered several delays in its roadmap.

Intel Tick-Tock is replaced by a three-phase cycle

Intel's Tick-Tock strategy has consisted of maintaining a great pace in the evolution of its processors. The Tick represents a change in the manufacturing process (reducing the nm) and the Tock consists of introducing a new microarchitecture, these phases have been produced in alternate years so that in one year the manufacturing process is reduced and the following year a new microarchitecture is launched.

Given the difficulty of continuing to lower the nm, Intel had no choice but to put an end to its Tick-Tock cycle and move on to a new three-stage cycle. This means that from now on each reduction of nm will follow two steps without lowering the nm, in one of them a new architecture is introduced and in the next the architecture introduced previously is optimized.

To put us in context, the last Tick has been the 14nm Tri-Gate introduced in Broadwell and this will be followed by the Skylake (new architecture) and Kaby Lake (Skylake optimization) processors. The next step will be a new reduction of nm with Cannonlake, in this case we will go to 10nm.