The new Core M chips are due in the second half of the year and will mean much thinner tablets, hybrids and laptops. The batteries will last a lot longer too.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference yesterday that the thinnest tablet with a Core M Broadwell processor today is 7.2 millimeters, and the thinner designs should help Intel give Apple's iPad Air 2 a good kicking. The Air is 6.1 millimeters thick while its owners are very thick indeed.

The Skylake chips should also improve graphics and general application performance compared to the current processors.
The Skylake chips will be able to run Windows 10, as well as Google's Chrome and Android OSes, Krzanich said.

Intel may give more details about the new Core M chips in June at the Computex trade show in Taipei, where it introduced the first Broadwell-based Core M chips last year.

Skylake systems will also support the second generation of Intel's RealSense 3D camera technology, which uses a depth sensor to create 3D scans of objects, and for gesture and facial recognition. The current version is used in a handful of products including Dell's rather nice Venue 8 7000 tablet.

This is the first indication that Intel wants to get Skylake to market quickly and close the curtain on Broadwell which was so late that we dubbed it the Godot chip.