# Panther Lake (microprocessor)

Panther Lake processors will support PCIe 5.0. Thunderbolt 5 will finally be available for desktop processors. DDR5 will be JEDEC standard. The first Panther Lake processors are expected to launch in H2 2025 with mass production in 2026. LGA 1851 socket longevity planned until 2026.

## Design and development

Intel is looking towards Panther Lake production in house rather than using TSMC. Intel is also developing Nova Lake for in-house production. TSMC does have second source capabilities which can complement Intel's own production capacity.
Earlier Intel was considering 20A but settled in 18A as the D1X Hillsboro, Oregon fab overhaul neared completion. All of Intel's plants have adopted 300 mm wafer in Hillsboro and most of the industry has also moved to 300 mm wafers. Intel is still worried about Cannon Lake and Ice Lake. The Raptor Lake processors, Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake marked a gradual turnaround. Intel is developing 14A which intended to keep the company competitive. Meteor Lake introduced chiplets.
The new Cougar Cove performance core will offer slightly better performance than Meteor Lake. The Skymont efficient cores are also likely to be redesigned. Intel 18A is using a RibbonFET design to reduce leakage. Unlike FinFETs, both the width and the number of the sheets can be varied to adjust drive strength or the amount of current the transistor can drive at a given voltage. The sheets often vary from 8 to 50 nanometers in width. The width of the nanosheets is known as Weff, or effective width.
The PowerVia backside power delivery network allows for better energy efficiency. Intel believes it will deliver about 6% performance gain.

## Description

Panther Lake will be Intel's Core Ultra Series 300 CPUs, with updated Cougar Cove performance cores and revised Darkmont E-cores, too. Intel's 18A process, however, is where Intel hopes to right the ship, regain its manufacturing leadership, as well as handle the bulk of the chip's production. It makes sense, then, that Intel is going to push Panther Lake as hard as it can. Depending on demand Intel may find Panther Lake will have to make a good showing with mobile machine vendors.
The Core 300H is now known to be designed near 55W of power which will be the entry level.
(P+E+Xe) 4+8+4, 4+8+12 and 4+0+4 are some models being developed. More details as press releases become available.

## NPU

Intel is developing AI features. Intel is expected to be offering a 5th gen NPU design to help with Windows Copilot and Google Chrome etc. Mobile lag behind desktop processors so it is not clear if a NPU will be added to the U series processors.
The first gen NPU came out in 2018, gen 2 in 2021, gen 3 in 2023, gen 4 in 2024 and with Panther Lake Intel has the 5th gen. Nvidia has had AI features since the GeForce 20 series. AMD has XDNA and XDNA2 in competition with Intel and NVIDIA.
Microsoft Copilot is designed for a machine capable of 40 TOPS. Modern CPU chiplet designs may be able to overcome the thermal power limits by moving L3 off die.

## GPU

The Intel Arc Xe$^3$ GPU, codenamed Celestial GPU, is a graphics card that will be used in laptops. It's expected to be released in late 2025, alongside the Panther Lake CPUs. Intel is known to be working on the drivers for Xe$^3$ so that when next generation laptops ship they will be ready to go.

## Design

Panther Lake features up to 24 cores (8 performance cores plus 16 efficiency cores) and 32 threads. H series tend to have half as many cores and U series the design is 9–15 W. The chiplet design may allow Intel to offer additional L3/L4 cache memory.