News Intel pledges Skylake ramp in 2015

So, Haswell hasn't sold in expected numbers, Broadwell was late, but is still being held back because of high Haswell stocks, and they still plan to release Skylake on time?

Did they actually resolve the low yields on Broadwell or have they decided low stocks won't matter if they release Skylake on schedule?

 

Here's an idea Intel,

Drop the price of the Haswell i5/i7 chips by $30 & $50 across the entire range today, and see that unsold stock clear in no time.

Of course....you wont do it though.

 

I really don't get the hate I've read on this forum against Intel for having the nerve to update their CPU range too often.

OMG, isn't that a really good thing? In the mobile space intel have taken us from VIA CPUs being a valid option for low power consumption chips to Intel being able to power a tablet 'all day' running a full fat windows install. This has happened in only a few short years. I had a UMPC running a VIA CPU.... it was a pig!

The Haswell range brought some real nice battery improvements on mobile. It was a worthwhile upgrade to make available. I didn't go out and replace my Ivy Bridge laptop due to the cost, but I would love the battery life update which was almost double the previous generation.

Would people be happier if they hadn't of bothered to update the desktop CPUs to Haswell and say moved to a two year update cycle?

 

That depends if you are in the market for a low power CPU doesn't it ? Then again if you do want a low power draw CPU wouldn't you just choose ARM.
I'm not sure i would go as far as to say people hate Intel, but it seems to me (and maybe others) that Intel have neglected the desktop (enthusiasts) market for a good few years trying to chase the mobile (low power) market.

 

The refreshed Haswell-chips are unnecessary, as they offer nothing but a 100MHz increase. So yeah, some updates are really something we could do without.

Ofc I want to see improvement, but I wan't to see real improvements. The improvement between IvyBridge and Haswell are too small to call them a real improvement imho so I most of the time skip one generation and only buy the ticks instead of the following tocks.

From a buyers-perspective the small updates (tocks) makes the market overcrowded with unnecessary products, so yeah I'd prefer a situation with a two-year cycle, where there's only ticks and no tocks.

I'm in the market for a new setup, as I basically don't need a dedicated GPU anymore, but more CPU-power. However, I don't want to waste my money on a small upgrade and that's why I'm waiting for the new 14nm-parts to get shipped, as they noot only will have more grunt but they'll also use less power then the Haswell-parts.

 

For some of their products, it's going to be more than $50 off for me to be willing to pay. But to me the real problem with intel is it's getting increasingly difficult to justify an upgrade. Sandy Bridge is still more than sufficient for most purposes and still pretty power efficient.

I'd argue that intel should focus more on their IGPs, but I honestly don't think that really matters. When people buy an intel CPU, they're not buying it for the IGP. That being said, it'd bother me to know that the high premium I pay is partially going to something that a discrete GPU disables. Personally, I think intel should remove the IGP from their i7 products and improve it in everything else.

 

Odd, i prefer the tocks.
As Gareth pointed out, normally the tock improves or fixes any problems discovered from the tick.

 

Yeah, but maybe if intel had longer release cycles, such issues wouldn't occur in the first place. What exactly is intel in such a rush for anyway? With AMD so far behind the high-end CPUs, intel could use the same product for the next 3 or 4 years. At this point it feels like intel is just releasing new products simply because they can, but it doesn't seem their approach is very profitable lately considering the dropping sales.

 

What major errata in Sandy Bridge?

And Broadwell will not be a die-shrink from Haswell, but a totally new architecture, as they remove the controller from the die, etc.

Also. They can take their time ironing out glitches in their offices as they like, but they don't need to release those tock-thingies to the public. A new CPU every two years is perfectly fine.

 

A Skylake ramp? I can't be the only person who sees that phrase and thinks of Evel Knievel...

 

It reminded me of Alton Towers.

 

Of course the advantage of each new release is that last year's almost as capable model drops a bit in price. And we like cheaper chips, don't we?