Intel Cannonlake Delayed Till Mid 2017 Could Help AMD in a Big Way

Despite all the bad news from AMD thus far, it looks like they’ll be getting a break for next year. According to a rumour, Intel is delaying their Cannonlake CPUs from late 2017/early 2017 to at least the second half of 2017. Given AMD’s launch of their new Zen CPUs will take place around the original Cannonlake launch date, AMD has a chance to make their 14nm offerings before Intel launches the 10nm Cannonlake.

After Sky Lake which launched a few months ago, Intel is expected to follow up with a 14nm refresh named Kaby Lake refresh in early/mid-2016. That was expected to be followed up by the 10nm refresh Cannonlake in late 2016/early 2017. With Cannonlake now pushed back, it pretty much confirms that Intel’s Tick-Tock will have to move to at least 1.5 years and likely closer to 2. Kaby Lake is set to target sales up to week 9/18 of 2017 meaning Cannonlake will come sometime afterwards.

With 10nm pushed back, AMD has the opportunity to launch their own 14nm Zen CPUs in late 2016 against Intel’s 14nm Kaby Lake. While the process nodes are different, on marketing, this is a win and likely a better showing in terms of power and die efficiency. It also means that AMD can target the holiday season relatively unaffected by a new Intel lineup. The delay for Cannonlake also means the Sky Lake architecture successor will be pushed back as well, giving AMD more time to catch up with Zen as Kaby Lake and Cannonlake are not expected to improve IPC too much.

A delay to Cannonlake also means that the rumoured core count increase for the mainstream platform won’t be out yet, giving AMD an opportunity to compete on core counts as well if their IPC falls short of Kaby Lake. Overall though, it drives home that fact that even with their massive resources, Intel is still hitting a wall with newer silicon processes and it’s time to start looking for a successor.

Thank you Benchlife for providing us with this information