Broadwell Late Than Never

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich swears the next-generation CPU will be out in quantity in time for Christmas buyers.

For years now Intel’s CPU releases have followed a “tick-tock” schedule. The tock release is a new processor architecture, and tick release is the die shrink of the current generation. From all the delays — nearly a year’s worth — you might think that Broadwell was a tock release, but it isn’t. It’s just the die shrink of the current Haswell.

Die shrinks aren’t easy, but Intel is the master of that stuff — or at least they used to be.