Intel is heading to the 22nd Annual Global Technology Conference with some news about Panther Lake. The company has officially announced that it will be using its 18A process for future processors, a sign that things are improving for this node. As a reminder, the initial feedback was that the process was calamitous, with an appallingly low yield rate. In reality, things are more complicated, but the Blues seem to be confident!
Panther Lake in 18A confirmed!
During the conference, interim co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus clearly and unequivocally stated that :
“We are now using Intel Foundry for Panther Lake, which is our 2025 product, coming in 18A”
So this is excellent news for the company and its new process, which seemed complicated. If the company is announcing that its future generation of CPUs will use 18A, then things are on the right track. What’s more, Michelle Johnston Holthaus points out that this is the first time in a long time that the company has been the first customer for its process.
What’s more, the first processors are starting to come off the production line. But be warned: for the time being, only a very limited number of 8 samples are being produced, so mass production is a long way off. What’s more, we’re talking about ES0 units. It’s hard to say exactly what they are, but TechpowerUp suggests that they could be the very first Panther Lake Engineering Samples. And according to the co-CEO’s feedback, things are going well, with all eight samples successfully powered up.
As far as this generation is concerned, we’re looking at CPUs with configurations totalling up to 18 cores (6P/8E/4LP). Some architectural changes will be made, with LP cores remigrating into the SoC tile, while the latter could be etched thinner than 6nm. Finally, the P-Cores will use the Cougar Cove architecture, while the E-Cores will still be in Skymont. The graphics part would use Celestial architecture, while a more powerful NPU would be grafted onto the whole.
It remains to be seen when Panther Lake will be launched, but according to our colleague, it may not be before 2026. To be continued.
