BARCELONA—A senior Intel Corp. executive has admitted that its next generation Ivy Bridge microprocessor will be delayed by around eight to 10 weeks to be launched in June.
Sean Maloney, executive vice-president of Intel and chairman of Intel China told the Financial Times that the 22-nm processor would now not be shipping in April as had widely been expected by analysts.
Intel had previously given an ambiguous “spring” launch estimate, with many believing the firm would ship the chips earlier rather than later, with some even predicting a mid-to-end March arrival.
“I think maybe it’s June now,” said Maloney to the Financial Times. It’s unclear whether Maloney was referring to all Ivy Bridge chips or just certain SKUs.
This is the first time, however, that an Intel executive has gone on record to confirm that the successor to Sandy Bridge would be delayed, blaming the push back on the complexity of the new manufacturing process.
Intel spokespeople refused to comment on Maloney’s remarks and said that officially, Intel’s guidance for shipping Ivy Bridge in the second quarter remained unchanged.
Jim McGregor of In-Stat told EE Times that according to his industry sources in Taiwan, Intel's Ivy Bridge server parts were only delayed from April 8 until April 29, though the dual core i5 and i7 parts for notebooks had been pushed out from a planned May 13th launch to June 3.
Core i3 parts would launch as planned on June 24, said McGregor.
“It doesn’t really matter because there’s not really any compelling competition right now,” said one industry analyst on condition of anonymity, referring to AMD’s recent lag in the market.
“After a long string of successes, it seems like Intel has finally made a manufacturing mis-step, with the 22nm FinFETs. This suggests that advanced CMOS may get even more challenging in the future for foundries such as TSMC and Global Foundries,” said David Kanter of Real World Technologies.
