'Ivy Bridge', Intel's next generation of processor technology, will be unveiled toward the end of Q1 2012 rather than the early part of the year.

At its annual developer conference in September, Intel executives talking about Ivy Bridge's release unanimously used the phrase "early next year".

That's usually code for the first quarter, but it was hoped Ivy Bridge, the 22nm version of the 32nm Sandy Bridge chip architecture - the second-gen Core i series - would appear sooner rather than later.

Not so, say motherboard maker moles cited by DigiTimes: Ivy Bridge won't launch until March 2012 "at the earliest".

Ivy Bridge is a key component of the large numbers of second-gen Ultrabook skinny laptops Intel hopes World+Dog will buy in 2012. ®