Intel’s launches are not as predictable as before because the company abandoned the famous tick-tock strategy: within a generation, the manufacturer deployed a new miniaturization (tick) technology; In the next generation, the same manufacturing process was used in a new architecture (tock). But Broadwell (5th generation), Skylake (6th generation ), Kaby Lake (7th generation ) and Coffee Lake (8th generation) are all manufactured at 14 nanometers. It’s a tick-tock-tock-tock. There are not many details about Coffee Lake chips. For now, Intel simply says that the new processors will have more than 15% performance increase over the current Kaby Lake (which, in turn, had a 15% gain over Skylake). But as Ars Technica notes, Kaby Lake’s “gain” was actually just a clock-up on desktop processors.
— Intel News (@intelnews) February 9, 2017 The 8th generation Core processor lineup is expected to include a six-core Core i7 for less-fortunate people; Currently, the company only puts more than four CPU cores into the very expensive Core i7 Extreme Edition or Xeon chips. The first machines with Intel’s next lake will be launched in the second half of 2017. While Intel is slow to showcase its 10-nanometer architecture (the 9th-generation Cannon Lake still has no launch forecast yet), the new manufacturing process is ready to hit smartphones – as the smartphone chip maker Qualcomm and Samsung have already started manufacturing Snapdragon 835, which will be released in the first half of the year.
