It appears that Intel is postponing shipments of its upcoming Ivy Bridge processors. DigiTimes reports that the company has notified its hardware partners of the delay, and while it will be releasing "a small volume" of the processors in April, the motherlode won't be hitting the market until after June. After an initial announcement of the chips' availability in the first half of 2012, Intel narrowed the release window to Q2 (April and May for its mobile processors), before rumors of the delay were reported.

Excess inventory of last-generation Sandy Bridge processors — both on the part of Intel and its hardware partners — are rumored to be behind the problem, and Intel is said to be delaying the new chips' release in order to move through what's on hand (although it's possible the company is still working on its racing game demo). While the delay would only be a couple of months, postponement of the next-generation 22nm chips could affect the release of some highly anticipated new products, such as Apple's 2012 MacBook Pro and Lenovo's T430u — provided the companies weren't able to secure some of the limited April inventory.