Tick-Tock is a model once used by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation to follow every change to the microarchitecture with a die shrink of the process technology, originally adopted in 2007. Every "tick" represented a shrinking of the process technology of the previous microarchitecture (sometimes introducing new instructions, as with Broadwell, released in late 2014) and every "tock" designated a new microarchitecture. Every year to 18 months, there is expected to be one tick or tock.
Starting in 2014, Intel introduced "Refresh" cycles after a tock in form of a smaller update to the microarchitecture. It is said that this is done because of the expanding times to the next tick.
In March 2016 in a Form 10-K report, Intel announced that it had deprecated the Tick-Tock cycle in favor of a three-step "process-architecture-optimization" model, under which three generations of processors will be produced with a single manufacturing process, adding an extra phase for each with a focus on optimization. Intel had already broken the Tick-Tock cycle by delaying the 10 nanometer Cannonlake to 2017, and planning a third generation of processors using 14 nanometer transistors, Kaby Lake; the company stated that extending the lifecycle of each manufacturing process it uses would allow Intel to "further [optimize] our products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions."