The holidays can be an interesting time, with Intel rumored to be retiring its Core family of processors in 2019 with the release of Tiger Lake, which will be succeeded with a more efficient, faster approach to the x86 architecture.
Bitsandchips.it is reporting that Intel's next CPU family will be similar to what AMD has done with its Zen architecture, blending in power consumption/performance /price - and in order to save physical space (smaller die), and improve the power consumption/performance ratio, Intel will reportedly get rid of old SIMD and legacy hardware.
This means that we might not have 100% backwards compatibility, but these CPUs won't be here until 2020 - a long time from now. Intel will be able to make a lean, efficient x86 architecture that will compete with AMD's nearly-here Zen architecture. What I'm taking away from this is that AMD will be ahead of the game for a few years until Intel can get their act together with a new architecture to begin competing against the star-studded launch of Zen.