Yesterday in its Q2 2014 conference call Intel finally owned up to the Broadwell delays that our own Charlie Demerjian has been keeping tabs on since last year. Broadwell is late, a year late if you count by our numbers and six months late by Intel’s own count. To quote Intel’s CEO Brain Krzanich himself, “… I wouldn’t say that we’re a year late. I’d tell you we’re six months on.” To add more character to this statement he continued later that, “Six months yes, it’s not a year. And you’ll see a series of products through next year.”
Broadwell is late but it’s on track to launch before the end of this year in limited quantities and then see full retail availability in the first half of 2015. The real question though is how does this effect Sky Lake; the 2015 follow-up to Broadwell. According to Intel’s CEO it doesn’t. “We’ve set it in 2015 so it’s a pretty broad window there. … It’s going to be … when they are ready for Sky Lake. That will drive it as much as anything on the process readiness and the product readiness.”
It appears then that there is no change in the official plan for the launch of Sky Lake, a chip that should have launched before Broadwell will be released. Given Broadwell’s delays the likelihood that we’ll see Sky Lake in the first half of 2015 is minimal and any time during 2015 is not good odds. At the same time Intel hopes it will likely hit stores in time for next year’s back to school season which Intel seems regretful about missing with Broadwell this year.
Intel has a lot of riding on its 14nm process with a refresh of Intel’s Atom line codenamed Cherry Trail theoretically launching alongside Broadwell at the end of this year. This will be followed up in short order by anther Atom refresh dubbed Broxton and later by Sky Lake. All four of these chips are designed around and built on Intel’s 14nm process which should enable the company to be more competitive with its low-power offerings.
Intel was questioned about the status of its 10nm process on this call but the company refused to say anything other than that 10nm was on track and that it would be unaffected by the delays to Intel’s 14nm products. In theory that process should have been released about when Intel is now promising the 14nm Sky Lake.
Overall Intel had an excellent Q2 as far as finance is concerned but the company has yet to really prove that it is a major force in the tablet and phone markets. They are executing on and adjusting their roadmap to meet that objective, interpret that how you will. Broadwell is officially half a year late, but the rest of Intel’s product pipeline is claimed to be more or less in order.S|A
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Thomas Ryan
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