Does Intel still sell Sandy Bridge?

And if so, does Intel give OEMs discounts on new SB CPUs? Browsing around, I see tons of cheap laptops with i3-2xxxM CPUs and Windows 8, so it can't simply be old stock that didn't manage to sell...

 

Yep. In fact, last November I helped buy my girlfriend a Latitude E5430 with Win7 and an i3-2281M.

I'm guessing that right now, Intel and OEMs are selling SB versions of some laptops as a budget option compared to the current IB versions.

 

Could also be excess Intel stock, which Intel is unloading to OEMs at lower prices. They are nearly drop-in replacements, so it'd be easy for OEMs to use both SB and IB.

 

Intel is still producing lower-end SB chips. They did the same thing with Arrandale chips they kept pumping out during Sandy Bridge's main production run. You could still buy new laptops with Arrandale after Ivy Bridge was released.

 

But... why? If Intel has so much excess Ivy Bridge stock lying around that they actually had to idle some of their 22nm fabs in Q4, why would they continue to push Sandy Bridge?

 

Money! Of course. They're a business, businesses's sole goal is to make it, not lose it. Plus those are still good parts that many people can use and those not willing to pay the premium for the shiney brand new stuff, they can buy last gen's product at a discount and capture more markets. I don't know.

 

Wouldn't it cost Intel more money to make SB than IB at this point? Economies of scale are only achieved when you're operating at (or close to) capacity, and at least in Q4, Intel clearly wasn't. Splitting production across 2 process nodes (32nm and 22nm) only makes that worse.

 

If they still have orders for the SB they sure will. Plus lots of companies order stock for warranty purposes, etc. I mean in a couple years if your machine dies, and it's still under warranty, they have to give you a new CPU to replace it unless they decide to give you a whole new machine, which has happened before too. And by this point I'm sure they've paid for any capital equipment that they've invested which means their piece cost is primarily raw materials and labor which will greatly reduce the cost.

 

IIRC with Intel's tick-tock roadmap, the capital expenditure for ticks doesn't get fully paid for until after the next tock comes out. So even if everything is going according to plan (and it may very well be), 22nm will be in the red until Haswell is out.

 

Well, idk. But it could be anything. They might just have a huge stock of Sandy Bridge wafers they made and are manufacturing new CPU's using that until the supply runs out. Or maybe they are still making CPU's because people and companies still want to buy them since they might be better performance for the cost at the price Intel will sell them at. They could also just be trying to get the most out of their 32nm manufacturing facilities.

 

Remember that all fabs are not retolled at once and intel will still have 32nm production capacity.