Intel recently posted a product change notice (PCN) to its quality document management system that stated it would reinstate its 22nm Haswell Pentium G3420 processors due to a "new roadmap decision." Intel now tells us that it made the statement in error. Here you can see the original PCN:
After reaching out to the company and waiting several days for a response on the matter, it turns out the company never intended to cancel the product. That means the "new" qualifier for its roadmap decision isn't entirely accurate. Per Intel:
"Intel regularly updates customers on product changes via our Product Change Notification (PCN) process. On December 5, a PCN was erroneously posted on product discontinuance of the Intel Pentium Processor G3420. There is no change to the Intel Pentium Processor G3420 product roadmap, and that product continues to be supported by Intel."
Intel says the original notification of the Pentium G3420 discontinuance was made in error, and the Haswell 22nm processor, now a dinosaur by semiconductor standards, lives on. The company issued a new PCN to correct the record because the language in the existing PCN obviously needed to be corrected.
The fact that the G3420 lives on isn't entirely surprising, as processors on trailing-edge manufacturing nodes are often produced long after their debut, typically to satisfy particular needs for OEM systems and IoT applications.
Intel posts documents to its quality document management system to keep its partners apprised of changes to its products. However, this marks the second incident of an incorrect listing in recent months, with a previous entry listing that certain Apollo Lake processors suffered from an LPC bus degradation issue that required a new stepping of the processor. Intel also corrected that PCN to reflect that the chips didn't require a new stepping, after all.
