few shockers over the years, but this one ranks among the very best of the bunch. Intel’s recent CPU strategy has drawn a fair amount of criticism from several corners. And it appears that things are not going to get any better. The story goes like this. In a perfect world, the Broadwell CPUs could (and should) have been here around now. Intel likes to release new processors well before summer, well before the Back to School season officially kicks off. This is to have new devices on the store shelves for this important shopping period. But thanks to some bothersome trouble advancing from the 22nm process to the 14nm node, manufacturing had to be delayed. And although Intel CEO recently promised that Broadwell based devices will be here by the end of the year, fact is that things aren’t going all that well here. After the launch being pushed back to the end of the year, it seems that the arrival is now set for the second quarter of 2015. At least, according to the grapevine. Interestingly, Intel plans to release both the Broadwell and its successor, the Skylake microarchitecture around the same time. Well, a few months apart, that is. This roadmap, if accurate, will make both processors will compete against one another. And Broadwell, in particular, will be one of the most short-lived family of CPUs, if not the most. Which is important because Microsoft, will, in all probability, use them in the next generation Surface Pro tablets. The last thing Redmond needs is a delay in these newer chips. A severe delay like this. Perhaps that is the reason why it has launched the Surface Pro 3? Perhaps, indeed.]]>
Intel hasn’t been great recently. This is big for Intel and Microsoft. If these chips fail, the next Surface and Intel overall will truly suffer.
Living in a “perfect world” makes me curious, How tall are You? (Hint: My Swamp)
Question, Do you have a link to the Intel Road Map of which you speak?
If anyone was going to continue the process shrinks like physics don’t matter, it would be Intel. However, they had overzealous ambitions that they were just going to walk through 14nm down to 10nm then 7/5nm in their roadmaps. Sorry, even those tens of billions isn’t going to force physics to bend to your will.
The real story is Intel’s CPU’s are just not interesting. The x86 front has been stalled since early 2011. The focus is on power consumption, which is nice if it wasn’t for the fact that every die-shrink naturally causes chips to get tighter and thus hotter due once again to physics. If you’re someone from the 90’s who thought to yourself how cool it would be to have supercharged integrated graphics, well then Intel is looking at you. Except Intel has historically sucked at anything graphics related on the hardware front. This is no different as AMD is walking all over them with ease even with a couple generation old APU’s.
Intel and Microsoft are no longer as interesting as they once were. Instead of leading, they are following with nothing original to boot.