It seems that manufacturing of Intel's follow-up to its Coffee Lake chips---the 10-nanometer Cannon Lake---is on target. The new CPUs are due to arrive in 2018, but Intel has confirmed that low volumes will be shipping before this year is out.

Intel's chips have been stuck on the 14-nanometer process since Broadwell was released back in 2014. There have been refinements and optimizations, of course, culminating in the recently released 14nm++ Coffee Lake CPUs, but we've been waiting impatiently for the delayed jump to 10-nanometer parts, which were supposed to arrive in 2016.

At the company's latest earnings call, CEO Brian Krzanich said Intel is "on track to ship our first low-volume 10-nanometer part by the end of the year." But they're unlikely to make their way into the hands of consumers until production increases in 2018. Krzanich expects "high volume and system availability in the second half of 2018."

Table data, courtesy Anandtech

In August, Intel suggested that Cannon Lake will fall under the same 8th-generation Core series umbrella as Kaby Lake Refresh and Coffee Lake. It's Cannon Lake's follow-up, Ice Lake, that will be the first 9th generation Core chip.

It's speculated that Canon Lake will be focused on smaller, mobile CPUs that are easier to make when chip yields are poor. The larger Ice Lake desktop processors will arrive once the fabrication process has been improved and refined to 10nm+. Don't expect to see these until late 2018, or perhaps even 2019, though we'll probably find out more at CES in January.