During a conference call with journalists to talk about the company's latest quarterly financial numbers, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the vendor will add a third 14-nanometer processor—dubbed "Kaby Lake"—to its roadmap, pushing back the timetable for its 10nm processor to the second half of 2017, reports eWeek (http://tinyurl.com/n9w892e).

"This is similar to what happened on the 14-nanometer," Krzanich said. "On all of these technologies, each one has its own recipe of complexity and difficulty. [The move from] 14-nanometer to 10-nanometer [is the] same thing that happened from 22-nanometer to 14-nanometer. The lithography is continuing to get more difficult as you try and scale and the number of multipattern steps you have to do is increasing."

Intel will try to get back to a two-year schedule, but company officials will have to continue to evaluate the situation as the process moves from 10nm to 7nm and lower, Krzanich said.