Intel’s Lunar Lake processors are off to a positive start, with widespread acclaim from the press and critics. It is the chipmaker’s first mainline family to be almost entirely fabbed by TSMC (N3B for CPU & N6 for iGPU). The same likely applies to Arrow Lake-S, slated to launch in the coming month as the Core Ultra 200 processors for desktop and DIY segments. The formerly 15th Gen lineup was supposed to be refreshed with higher core counts and faster clocks, but that’s no longer the case (via @harukaze5719).
Intel CPU Roadmap 2024: Arrow Lake-S for Desktop & DIY
With Lunar Lake out of the bag, Intel will next focus on Arrow Lake-S set to launch as the Core Ultra 200 branding. It will replace the 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S processors in the desktop and DIY space. Like its mobile counterpart, it’ll feature a tiled (chiplet/modular) architecture fabbed on TSMC’s 3nm “N3B” node, with an integrated NPU unit.
The Core Ultra 200 “Arrow Lake-S” processors will feature the same core counts as Raptor Lake, topping out at 24 cores, with 36 MB of L3 cache. The per-core L2 cache has been increased by 50% to 3 MB per core (up from 2 MB). On the flip side, the boost clocks have been lowered to accommodate the newer process node, with 5.7 GHz reportedly being the upper limit for the Core Ultra 9 285K.
Arrow Lake Desktop (ARL-S)
- 8P+16E on TSMC N3B.
- 6P+8E+2LPE on Intel 20A.
The latest leaks indicate strong single-core performance, but mediocre multi-core and gaming capabilities. If true, these can be attributed to the lack of hyper-threading and a developing tiled architecture. The Lion Cove (P-core) is expected to offer a 15-20% IPC uplift over Raptor Cove, with Skymont boosting performance by an even larger degree on the E-core side. More on Intel’s CPU cores here.
Arrow Lake-U: While the desktop CPU tiles will be fabbed on TSMC’s 3nm “N3B” process node (and Intel 20A?), the mainstream notebook chips “ARL-U” will leverage the Intel 3 node. These will leverage an “enhanced” Redwood Cove and Crestmont core architectures, and offer 15% higher performance (or 20% lower power) than vanilla Redwood Cove/Meteor Lake (via “Moore’s Law is Dead”).
Arrow Lake Mobile
- ARL-HX: 8P+16E on TSMC N3B.
- ARL-H: 6P+8E+2LPE on TSMC N3B.
- ARL-U: 6P+8E+2LPE on Intel 3.
Intel CPU Roadmap 2025-2026: Panther Lake & Nova Lake
Panther Lake will be the first consumer lineup to leverage Intel’s 18A process node, including RibbonFET (GAA) and PowerVia technologies. Like Meteor Lake, it’ll be exclusive to the mobility market featuring a mix of Cougar Cove “P” and Darkmont “E” cores. Panther Lake will feature the following core configurations on notebook PCs (via Jaykihn):
- 4P+8E+4LPE+12Xe tGPU @ 25W.
- 4P+8E+4LPE+4Xe tGPU @ 25W.
- 4P+0E+4LPE+4Xe tGPU @ 25W.
Dies with up to 6 P-cores are being tested, but may or may not make it to the final retail stack. The Panther Lake family will leverage the Xe3 “Celestial” graphics architecture with up to 12 Xe cores on the top-end processors. The Panther Lake NPU is expected to offer 80-120 TOPs of inferencing throughput, up from 48 TOPS on Lunar Lake. These chips will allegedly land in the latter half of 2025.
Nova Lake will succeed Arrow Lake-S in the desktop and DIY segments with up to 40 cores (16P + 32E). It’ll be fabbed on the Intel 14A node and adopt Coyote Cove P-cores capable of leveraging Rentable Units and Arctic Wolf E-cores. These CPUs are expected to feature high-cache variants akin to AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips. A late 2026 launch is planned for Nova Lake.
