After Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake, Intel is now unveiling its next processor: Panther Lake. With Panther Lake, Intel is making the long-awaited leap to the 18A process.
At Lenovo’s Tech World event, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger presented a prototype of a new laptop processor. It was the first time Intel showed Panther Lake in public. Panther Lake will succeed Lunar Lake next year and is intended for laptops.
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Panther Lake
Panther Lake’s announcement followed Lenovo’s presentation of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. This new Aura Edition PC was unveiled by Lenovo, after which Gelsinger appeared on stage to tout the Intel Core Ultra processor in the laptop. He uses the Aura Edition laptop himself. After his speech, he presented Lenovo’s CEO with a Panther Lake CPU to put on his cabinet at home.
Panther Lake is the first AI-powered chip baked using the 18A process. That chip plays a crucial role in the manufacturer’s attempt to become the market leader again. Moreover, this NPU is said to deliver double the performance of Lunar Lake’s NPU, which is already three times faster than the one in Meteor Lake. That’s important to earn the Copilot+ label.
Panther Lake might well be the Intel Core Ultra Series 300 CPU. Those have improved Cougar Cove cores and updated Darkmont E cores.
Intel previously said the first Intel 18A chips were going to hit the market in 2025. Info on availability or price with us is not yet known. However, it will take until 2026 for Intel 18A to be ready for large production volumes.
Intel wants to become market leader again
With Panther Lake and Intel 18A, the chip giant of yesteryear wants to show that it hasn’t lost its touch. Intel is going through one of the most turbulent periods in its history and could use any kind of good news. Intel not only has to deal with competition from AMD, but now Qualcomm is starting to get more explicitly involved in the PC industry.
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That brings sworn enemies Intel and AMD together: the two companies also announced at Lenovo Tech World a historic collaboration to keep the x86 architecture relevant.