In a call for funding, Intel has indicated that the company will not be offering a new series of desktop processors this year. If you want something new, you’ll have to wait until 2026 with the arrival of Nova Lake… On the one hand, that’s a shame, but on the other, it will allow for a bigger generational leap. Panther Lake is still scheduled for this year.
No new desktop CPUs in 2025 for Intel!
Broadly speaking, 2025 is likely to be a very poor year for new products from Intel. Admittedly, the company has reserved Panther Lake for this year, and things seem to be going well, with a launch still planned for the second half of the year. We’re talking here about processors using the 18A process. With this series, the brand is targeting the laptop sector. What’s more, not all of the processor will be produced by Intel – no, 70% will come from the brand’s own foundries, while the rest will come from external sources, such as TSMC.
Otherwise, on the server side, we learn that the company has cancelled Falcon Shores, the successor to Gaudi 3 for the AI sector. As for Clearwater Forest, the launch has been postponed until 2026. On the bright side, better that than a disappointingly hasty launch, especially in this sector!
Finally, we come to the subject that interests us: Nova Lake, the next generation of processor for the desktop sector. We’re talking about a launch scheduled for 2026, so there won’t be any refresh series. However, this announcement does raise a few concerns about current motherboards, since nothing has been said about their compatibility with this coming generation of CPUs. Otherwise, this generation could benefit largely from in-house production via a 14A process if all goes well.
Finally, it would seem (according to rumours) that the IMC (memory controller) is still separate from the compute tile… But the Blue guys are working on optimisations to reduce memory latency, which is having a serious impact on Arrow Lake performance at the moment, especially in games.
