Tick–tock model

Tick–tock was a production model adopted in 2007 by chip manufacturer Intel. Under this model, every new process technology was first used to manufacture a die shrink of a proven microarchitecture (tick), followed by a new microarchitecture on the now-proven process (tock). It was replaced by the process–architecture–optimization model, which was announced in 2016 and is like a tick–tock cycle followed by an optimization phase. More generally, tick–tock is an engineering model which refreshes one half of a binary system each release cycle.