Intel's next-gen consumer CPU platform will be Nova Lake-S, Panther Lake could be mobile only

Intel is still yet to launch its new Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs, with teases of its next-gen Nova Lake-S being the successor to Arrow Lake on desktop.

The news on Nova Lake is coming from leaker "Jaykhin" on X, who said that Intel's next-gen consumer desktop platform is Nova Lake, and that Panther Lake will be mobile only. This is a similar play to Intel using Meteor Lake on mobile only, and Arrow Lake on desktop.

Intel's upcoming LGA 1851 platform will launch with the Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs, with Nova Lake-S arriving after and fitting into the same socket. Dell teased this back in May through leaks, that Panther Lake laptops will arrive in 206, and Nova Lake CPUs would follow in 2027... which is still years and years away at this point.

• Read more: Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPU: biggest architecture improvement in Intel history, on TSMC 2nm

I have been writing about Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs over two years ago now if you can believe it, reporting back in August 2021 on the rumors at the time. In that story, Nova Lake was teased as the: "biggest architectural change in cpu architecture since the Core architecture is introduced in 2006. Intel is working to build an entirely new architecture from the ground up much like Ryzen with up to 50% cpu performance improvement from lunar lake. This is also the reason why Glenn Hinton returned".

• Read more: Intel next-gen CPUs: Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Nova Lake in 2023 to 2025
• Read more: Intel Lunar Lake-MX mobile CPU rumor: Samsung LPDDR5X on-package memory
• Read more: Intel Arrow Lake is first gaming CPU with AI, Lunar Lake: 3x faster NPU for laptops

The CPU Tile on Nova Lake will be the key for Intel, which is why it's using TSMC's future 2nm process node. Before that, we'll see Intel release its next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs (in mobile form as well) on TSMC's new 3nm process node. Lunar Lake will also have an upgraded NPU 4.0 (Neural Processing Unit) for AI performance that will skyrocket over Meteor Lake, which was just released as the first-gen Core Ultra CPUs during CES 2024 earlier this year.

Intel's biggest CPU architecture change in company history, and Team Blue has chosen TSMC to make its next-gen Nova Lake CPU... strange, considering Intel has its own "superior" Intel 18A process that will be in production in the second half of this year and uses TSMC. I guess we'll have to wait and see what type of performance uplifts we'll expect... Nova Lake is when Intel should be able to come out on top of AMD and its continuous ass-kicking with Ryzen CPUs.