The 6th generation of Intel's Core architecture, codenamed ?Skylake?, is the latest in a line of CPUs which began with the Nehalem microarchitecture in 2008. Since then Intel followed a ?tick-tock? development strategy - alternating larger architectural revisions and smaller fabrication process nodes in each new release ? which has been hugely successful in keeping them ahead of the game and the competition.

As the 6th generation Core architecture, Skylake is classed as a ?tick?. Utilising the same 14nm fabrication process node as Broadwell, in Skylake Intel have taken what they?ve learned from a year of Broadwell and focussed on advancements in architecture to make the CPU both more power-efficient and powerful. Furthermore Skylake brings high-bandwidth DDR4 memory to mainstream computing, one year after Haswell-E brought it to the enthusiast and workstation segment.