Tick–tock model


Tick–tock was a production model adopted in 2007 by chip manufacturer Intel. Under this model, every microarchitecture change was followed by a die shrink of the process technology. It was replaced by the process–architecture–optimization model, which was announced in 2016 and is like a tick–tock cycle followed by an optimization phase. As a general engineering model, tick-tock is a model that refreshes one side of a binary system each release cycle.

History

Every "tick" represented a shrinking of the process technology of the previous microarchitecture and every "tock" designated a new microarchitecture. These occurred roughly every year to 18 months. In 2014, Intel created a "tock refresh" of a tock in the form of a smaller update to the microarchitecture not considered a new generation in and of itself.
In March 2016, Intel announced in a Form 10-K report that it deprecated the tick–tock cycle in favor of a three-step process–architecture–optimization model, under which three generations of processors are produced under a single manufacturing process, with the third generation out of three focusing on optimization. The first optimization of the Skylake architecture was Kaby Lake. Intel then announced a second optimization, Coffee Lake, making a total of four generations at 14 nm.

Roadmap

Atom roadmap

Note: There is further the Xeon Phi. It has up to now undergone four development steps with a current top model that got the code name Knights Landing that is derived from the Silvermont architecture as used for the Intel Atom series but realized in a shrunk 14 nm technology.

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