As you will have noticed, Intel has been separating its laptop and desktop architectures for some time now. Lunar Lake will amplify this further, with a significant difference compared to the desktop architecture. Panther Lake, which is due to be launched in 2025, will continue in this direction by being a purely mobile architecture. But in 2026, the architectures should come together with the future Nova Lake platform.
A return to a single architecture in 2026?
For the moment, information on Nova Lake is scarce and sometimes contradictory. We think we know that the Nova Lake P-Cores will use the Panther Coves architecture, while the E-Cores will use the Arctic Wolf architecture. You don’t have to be a keen analyst to realise that Intel has been focusing most of its efforts on mobile architecture since Meteor Lake. Is this really a tragedy for fans of desktop PCs? Not really. On the contrary, it is in this battle of lost time that everything is at stake. While many problems have been caused by the race for frequencies, Intel is going to take a different path that will benefit the PC as a whole. Of course, the race to improve the engraving process is a thorny issue which is putting a strain on Intel’s accounts and should continue to do so, at least until Panther Lake, when Intel will be able to benefit from these infrastructures and restore its margins. But above all, from a technological point of view, Intel is moving towards a multiplication of E-type cores, which are much more powerful, and a stacking of functionalities within its chips, with a considerable advance in its mastery of packaging.
Nova Lake: Intel’s biggest-ever change of CPU architecture
In the meantime, we’re hoping for Arrow Lake-S in the next few weeks, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty about what stage will lead up to Nova Lake. For a while, there was talk of an Arrow Lake refresh for 2025 , but according to the latest rumours, this seems to have been called into question… Finally, will the socket 1851, which is due to appear in the near future, still be around for Nova Lake? A lot of questions remain unanswered. What’s important to note is that the future of the PC in general is currently being played out on mobile chips. This heralds major changes at Intel. And contrary to what you might think on first reading, it’s really not bad news. It’s hard to say, especially these days, but if this roadmap is adhered to, things could happen very quickly for Intel, and a reversal of fortunes against its main rivals is by no means out of the question… Really.
