Intel Confirms Panther Lake for 2H 2025, Nova Lake in 2026, Falcon Shores Canceled

[Nomad76]

Intel shared some news and updates about its upcoming CPU architectures during the Q4 earnings call. Intel confirmed that "Panther Lake", its next major CPU, is set to be released in late 2025. "Panther Lake" will use Intel's latest 18A manufacturing process and might be part of the Core Ultra 300 series. "Panther Lake" is rumored to combine next-generation "Cougar Cove" P-cores with existing "Skymont" E-cores both in the Compute complex, and in the SoC tile as low-power island E-cores. However, Intel hasn't confirmed if it will be available for desktop systems.

The following CPU architecture, "Nova Lake", is set to debut in 2026. Unlike "Panther Lake", we know "Nova Lake" will work on desktop computers. This suggests desktop users might need to wait until 2026 for an upgrade unless Intel surprises us with a desktop version of "Panther Lake" or an alternative option.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we will strengthen our client roadmap with the launch of Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, in the second half of 2025. As the first volume customer of Intel 18A, I see the progress that Intel Foundry is making on performance and yields. And I look forward to being in production in the second half as we demonstrate the benefits of our world-class design and process technology capabilities. 2026 is even more exciting from a client perspective as Panther Lake achieves meaningful volumes and we introduce our next-generation client family code-named Nova Lake. Both will provide strong performance across the entire PC stack with significantly better cost and margin for us, enhancing our competitive position and reinforcing our value proposition to our partners and customers."—Michelle Johnston Holthaus, interim co-chief executive officer of Intel and CEO of Intel Products

Intel changed its plans for "Falcon Shores"; this AI chip series will never be put into volume production and sold. Instead, Intel is using it for testing. However, we got confirmation that Intel next AI chip will be called "Jaguar Shores" instead.

Many of you heard me temper expectations on Falcon Shores last month. Based on industry feedback, we plan to leverage Falcon Shores as an internal test chip only without bringing it to market. This will support our efforts to develop a system-level solution at rack scale with Jaguar Shores to address the AI data center"—Michelle Johnston Holthaus, interim co-chief executive officer of Intel and CEO of Intel Products

Intel has not yet provided any information about the successor to LGA-1851, leaving us in the dark about the motherboards these chips will require.

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[TumbleGeorge]

Intel has yet to provide any information about its new LGA-1851 platform,

Intel has yet to provide any information about its new(after LGA-1851) platform. I think that is better.

 

[Daven]

Intel missed the IoT boom (no fast, low power SoCs), cryptocurrency boom (no GPUs) and now it looks like they will miss the AI boom (cancellation of Falcon Shores). I’m not sure how many more booms they can miss and stay a company. I don’t see a keychain or paperweight boom being lucrative enough to save them.

 

[Sound_Card]

Zen and 10nm fabs really messed them up. How many years were they stuck on 14nm? I also think they were so focused on ARM (hence Atom processors, and later E-cores) they counted AMD out of the race. This company has no idea where to come from here because strong-arming vendors and partners to only accept your CPU's is starting to fall apart.

 

[usiname]

Few months ago Falcon Shores was "on track", but this is normal with Intel, every month or two we hear for new cancelled product

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Based on that timeline, it looks like the next desktop CPU will again require a new socket, making Arrow Lake a single generation platform. Intel cancelled Meteor Lake for desktop, which would have been the first generation on that socket. I guess there won't be an Arrow Lake Refresh either, with higher clocked parts. It's quite surprising to see Intel so much on the ropes. They're looking more like the bulldozer-era AMD every day.

 

[wNotyarD]

Based on that timeline, it looks like the next desktop CPU will again require a new socket, making Arrow Lake a single generation platform. Intel cancelled Meteor Lake for desktop, which would have been the first generation on that socket. I guess there won't be an Arrow Lake Refresh either, with higher clocked parts. It's quite surprising to see Intel so much on the ropes. They're looking more like the bulldozer-era AMD every day.

The way things look ARL refresh is the most 1851 seems to get, and I wouldn't bet on even that coming to light.

 

[Assimilator]

Zen and 10nm fabs really messed them up. How many years were they stuck on 14nm? I also think they were so focused on ARM (hence Atom processors, and later E-cores) they counted AMD out of the race. This company has no idea where to come from here because strong-arming vendors and partners to only accept your CPU's is starting to fall apart.

Nah, what's killing Intel is the same thing that kills every good engineering company: allowing critical decisions to be made by accountants instead of engineers.

 

[Nomad76]

Intel has yet to provide any information about its new(after LGA-1851) platform. I think that is better.

was going to say next.. thanks!

 

[Wirko]

The way things look ARL refresh is the most 1851 seems to get, and I wouldn't bet on even that coming to light.

Yields improve over time, at Intel and TSMC alike, and a refresh is the cheapest way to take advantage of that. I see it as very much probable. We need a 286K after all!

 

[PrettyKitten800]

Nah, what's killing Intel is the same thing that kills every good engineering company: allowing critical decisions to be made by accountants instead of engineers.

But.... but what about the shareholders?? /s

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Has there been any news on Bartlett Lake or whatever the LGA1700 P-core only chips were supposed to be?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Nah, what's killing Intel is the same thing that kills every good engineering company: allowing critical decisions to be made by accountants instead of engineers.

Really? Engineering is THE problem right now. You can’t tell me Intel hasn’t invested heavily in R&D. How much time and money have the Intel engineers had to get any node past 14nm working well, or to produce something better than Arrow Lake? Billions of dollars and years of time. No, instead, I think the marketing group has kept Intel’s head above water for years. Accountants aren’t taping out silicon, and we haven’t been taking about mass engineering layoffs and fabrication budget cuts. Accountants have a place and they do need to see that the company isn’t bleeding to death. How many more billions do the engineers need to get it right?

 

[Assimilator]

Really? Engineering is THE problem right now. You can’t tell me Intel hasn’t invested heavily in R&D. How much time and money have the Intel engineers had to get any node past 14nm working well, or to produce something better than Arrow Lake? Billions of dollars and years of time. No, instead, I think the marketing group has kept Intel’s head above water for years. Accountants aren’t taping out silicon, and we haven’t been taking about mass engineering layoffs and fabrication budget cuts. Accountants have a place and they do need to see that the company isn’t bleeding to death. How many more billions do the engineers need to get it right?

What exactly do you think happens when you have the accountants telling the engineers to work on the wrong things?

 

[InVasMani]

R&D isn't the problem it's management and marketing bleeding R&D dry and/or not hiring either enough people or enough competent people for it's R&D to be successful relative to expectations.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

What exactly do you think happens when you have the accountants telling the engineers to work on the wrong things?

What wrong things? They’ve been working on new nodes, new architectures, new CPUs, new GPUs. All of those. Billions of dollars have gone into all of these things for years.

 

[Assimilator]

What wrong things? They’ve been working on new nodes, new architectures, new CPUs, new GPUs. All of those. Billions of dollars have gone into all of these things for years.

Uh huh.

And if the accountants are saying "no you can't do this because it's too expensive"?

Or "no you can't do this because we don't think it'll provide a sufficient return on investment"?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Uh huh.

And if the accountants are saying "no you can't do this because it's too expensive"?

Or "no you can't do this because we don't think it'll provide a sufficient return on investment"?

What evidence do you have of this? How many cancelled nodes and products had years of effort? So we’re blaming accountants for several years of 10nm failures, for example? Exactly how long and how much money do the engineering teams get before they are accountable? Intel didn’t start cancelling nodes and entire CPU generations until those products failed to deliver results that would actually sell in a competitive market. These things are cancelled because they missed targets so badly that they wouldn’t sell at all. Arrow Lake S is not even competitive, and that’s the best product they have to offer—and they had to go to TSMC for some of the fabrication! How much worse are the products that never were? This isn’t the GloFo situation where AMD just stopped investing in new process technology. No, Intel has fab space, they gave those fabs financial support for years with little to no progress.

Then you have AMD with a fraction of the money invested churning out successful products. Maybe Intel doesn’t have the best engineers anymore, I don’t know. If they do, then they certainly aren’t getting success from them. I don’t think it’s a funding thing, but rather poor management.