Intel’s silicon fabrication has evidently hit a huge roadblock. It turns out that not just “Kaby Lake,” but its two successors “Cannon Lake” and “Coffee Lake” could also be built on the 14 nm node, at best with a few process-level improvements. “Coffee Lake” is the company’s 9th generation Core architecture, which is two steps ahead of even the “Kaby Lake” architecture, which is due later this year. “Kaby Lake” makes its way to the 45W mobile (H-segment) and 15W mobile (U-segment), in Q4-2016 and Q3-2016, respectively. The 15W U-segment will be augmented by “Cannon Lake” (8th generation Core) in Q4-2017. By mid-2018, Intel plans to launch “Coffee Lake” across both H- and U-segments.
According to a “Hot Hardware” report, based on a job listing for a systems engineer at the company, Intel could be staring at the scary prospect of holding out on 14 nm for the next three years, only to be relieved by the stopgap 10 nm node, which makes its debut with the 10th generation Core “Tiger Lake” architecture, due for 2019. “Tiger Lake,” its succeeding “Ice Lake,” and one other architecture could be launched on 10 nm, before finally deploying 7 nm around 2022.
Sources: HotHardware, AnandTech Forums
