Leaked Intel Roadmap Shows 14nm Kaby Lake In Q3 2016, With 10nm Cannonlake Arriving In Q3 2017

A leaked roadmap that purportedly shows Intel's planned release schedule for its mobile processors reaffirms what we already know, which is that Kaby Lake is coming to town later this year followed by Cannonlake late next year. Counting currently available Skylake CPUs, Intel is looking at three generations of processors between now and the end of 2017

Chinese-language website BenchLife.info posted the leaked mobile platform roadmap, which shows Intel continuing to ship 14nm Skylake processors up until the third quarter of 2016. That's when Intel's 14nm Kaby Lake will take over, arriving just in time for the back-to-school shopping rush. You can expect to see Kaby Lake highlighted in a variety of mobile products, including Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 detachable devices.


As is typical of new processor family launches, Kaby Lake is likely to consume less power than Skylake, which translates into better battery life, along with improved performance and faster integrated graphics.

Following Kaby Lake, Intel will introduce its 10nm Cannonlake architecture in the third quarter of 2017. That's assuming there won't be any further delays, as shrinking to 10nm hasn't proven easy for Intel. But should everything go to plan, like Kaby Lake, Cannonlake will arrive just as students and parents start their back-to-school shopping.

One thing that's interesting to note is that this roadmap interrupts Intel's normal tick-tock cadence. That's because Cannonlake (previously known as Skymont) was initially supposed to succeed Skylake as a "tick" in Intel's tick-tock release schedule, but manufacturing challenges related to the die shrink forced Intel to push its release back a year.

In the meantime, Kaby Lake, another "tock" after Skylake, will fill the gap. Instead of a tick-tock cadence, what we end up with is a tock-tock-tick (Skylake, Kaby Lake, Cannonlake) release schedule.