Intel's next-gen Nova Lake-HX laptop CPUs reportedly feature up to 28 cores

A new leak from hardware sleuth Jaykihn on X (formerly Twitter) suggests that Intel's next-generation Nova Lake HX family of processors will top out at a 28-core configuration. These CPUs are set to replace the incumbent Arrow Lake HX series, which is scheduled to arrive by late 2026 or early 2027.

Following the architectural shifts seen in Meteor Lake through Panther Lake, Intel's Nova Lake is expected to further refine this modular approach. At the microarchitectural level, Nova Lake is expected to pair "Coyote Cove" P-cores with "Darkmont" E-cores. While Darkmont has debuted with Panther Lake, details on the specific IPC gains and structural changes in Coyote Cove remain unknown.

The flagship desktop configuration is rumored to be a massive 3D package with several tiles, with up to 52 cores (16P+32E+4LPE), 48 of which are split across two Compute Tiles (each housing up to 24 cores) expected to be fabbed on Intel 18A or TSMC's N2 node, a centralized SoC Tile (expected to house the 4 LPE cores), a GPU Tile, and potentially a dedicated I/O tile.

The new leak suggests Nova Lake HX will top out at 28 cores (8P+16E+4LPE), rather than the massive 52-core configuration for desktop Nova Lake. Intel's HX CPUs, like AMD's, are essentially flagship desktop CPUs on a BGA package with conservative power targets. This can be attributed to power constraints and the cost associated with stitching two compute tiles together. We recently saw a leak that the 52-core NVL-S configuration can draw up to 700W of power with all power limits disabled. Although it would make for an interesting Halo product, we wonder how much performance Intel can realistically extract from two compute tiles as opposed to one at mobile power limits.

While a 2-core GPU configuration may seem modest, these cores are rumored to utilize Intel's refined Xe3P (Celestial) architecture, which should mirror the improvements we saw when moving from Xe-LPG to Xe-LPG+. Likewise, leveraging the disaggregated design introduced with Meteor Lake, Intel is expected to pair its Xe3 graphics with next-generation Xe4 (Druid) Media and Display engines on the SoC Tile.

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Intel is also reportedly preparing a scaled-down variant that halves the flagship's P-core and E-core counts. This configuration features 16 hybrid cores (4P + 8E + 4LPE) while maintaining the same dual-core Xe3 iGPU and four-core low-power island found in the higher-end models.

Beyond the raw core count, the most significant upgrade over the current Arrow Lake-HX lineup may be in power efficiency. While Arrow Lake-HX features an SoC Tile derived from its desktop counterpart, which notably lacks a low-power island, Nova Lake-HX incorporates dedicated LPE cores on the SoC Tile. However, since these remain high-performance parts at their core, battery life may vary depending on how the manufacturer tunes the processor.

The response from Team Red is set to arrive in the form of Gator Range. Assuming these are similar desktop replacements like Nova Lake-HX, leaks suggest a flagship configuration of 24 Zen 6 cores spread across two CCDs, with each chiplet featuring 48MB of L3 cache. It's clear AMD is likely aiming to neutralize Intel's cache and core-count advantages, so it'll be interesting to see how the two stack up next year.