In an unexpected reveal on October 15, 2024, CEO Pat Gelsinger used his closing moments at Lenovo's Tech World 24 event to hold up a sample of Intel's Panther Lake processor built on its in-house 18A manufacturing process. To say I was surprised would be an understatement since its current generation of Core Ultra Series 2 mobile chips, codenamed Lunar Lake, was launched as recently as September, just before the IFA Berlin 2024 technology conference.
This is our next-year product on 18A that will be launching to build on the great work that we just announced today — isn’t that cool?
Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO
Intel will soon launch its "planned" Core Ultra 200H and 200HX range of high-performance Arrow Lake mobile processors, following brand-new Core Ultra 200V desktop chip variants under the same codename, so where does that place this early preview of Panther Lake, and what sets it apart from this influx of ultra-modern x86-64 processors?
Concrete information is slim right now, but there are rumors and unconventional confirmations on the separate tiles that make up Intel's upcoming Foveros-based System-on-Chip (SoC.) I'll tell you everything I know, including Intel's plans for a release window, and update this page once I hear more.
When does Intel plan to launch Panther Lake?
In its Q2 earnings report, Intel confirmed it's targeting a Panther Lake launch timeframe in the second half of 2025. This early mention of the chips' codename came alongside an update on Intel Foundry's "Five Nodes in Four Years" (5N4Y) strategy for its 18A manufacturing process, which will finalize designs of Panther Lake chips for client devices and Clearwater Forest chips for servers sometime in the first half of 2025.
What's new on the the Panther Lake SoC?
One glimpse into Panther Lake specifications came when technology enthusiast Jaykihn discovered a leak within a patch for Coreboot, an open-source BIOS project designed to create firmware that prioritizes efficiency and bolsters security (via Wccftech.) Presumably used in some form of testing environment for prototype processors, the patch listed at least three Thermal Design Power (TDP) values for Panther Lake chips running at 15W, 25W, and 45W.
Of course, these are all speculative and could change before the chips are finalized, but Jaykihn later shared apparent "final" SKUs of at least Panther Lake-H mobile processors. The most exciting part of this second batch lies in their CPU core architecture and an apparent move to Intel's next-generation Arc Xe3 discrete GPU tile codenamed Celestial, which follows Xe (DG1) and Xe2 (Battlemage) (via Tom's Hardware.)
These SKU leaks so far refer only to Panther Lake-H (high-performance) chips with up to 16 CPU cores but point to Intel adopting a brand new Performance core (P-Core) architecture codenamed Cougar Cove, while the same Skymont Efficient core (E-core) codename carries over from Lunar Lake. Whether or not that means the Skymont cores will remain untouched isn't clear, but it seems likely to be refined or optimized in the same way Meteor Lake's NPU 3 tile was for Arrow Lake.
Speaking of the Neural Processing Unit (NPU), recent Linux patch notes exposed that Panther Lake will adopt an all-new NPU 5 tile, following the NPU 4 seen in Lunar Lake (via Phoronix.) There haven't been any details on a TOPS performance rating for this new variant, but it's reasonable to assume it will be around 55 TOPS, matching AMD's latest NPU in its Ryzen AI PRO 300 chips.
Everything related to specifications and SKUs comes from extremely early hints and rumors, so anything could change without warning before Panther Lake's launch next year.
