Next Intel Atom will go straight to 14nm

FUD Zilla reports Intel is accelerating the development of its Atom processors. For most of its processors, Intel follows a tick tock strategy, first the chip giant shrinks its previous architecture to a smaller process node, and once all the kinks are worked out the next-generation processor architecture is introduced on this process node. This strategy will not be followed for the next-generation Atom architecture, the current generation is 22nm and the next generation will move straight to 14nm:

Rani N. Borkar, Vice President General Manager, Intel Architecture Development Group has said Fudzilla that this is about to change. We expect to see Airmot in 2014 as the next generation Atom and this is going to be a 14nm chip. Intel didn’t want to comment on any launch schedule just that it is coming in the next year. In all goes well we expect to see it at IDF 2014, roughly a year from now. Intel plans a refreshed version of Atom in 2015, developed again in 14nm manufacturing process but with some improvements.

This is the strategy that Intel plans employ before it gets to 10 nm Atoms and beyond, making consumers get a new Atom based chip every year, or almost every year. Bay Trail Atom is now also ending up with Celeron and Pentium branding, making it harder for end users to actually keep track of different models and know what sort of CPU core they are buying.