Speculative Intel "Nova Lake" CPU Core Configurations Leaked Online

[T0@st]

Intel's freshly uploaded fourth-quarter 2024 "CEO/CFO earnings call comments" document has revealed grand CPU-related plans for 2025 and beyond. One of Team Blue's interim leaders—Michelle Johnston Holthaus—believes that "Nova Lake" processors (a next-generation client family) will arrive in 2026, following a comprehensive rollout of "Panther Lake" CPU products. This official timeline matches previously leaked and rumored development schedules—most notably, in a shipping manifest that was discovered last week. In recent times, industry watchdogs have linked "Nova Lake" to Intel's own 14A node and a TSMC 2 nm process node. Additionally, tipsters pointed to an apparent selection of Coyote Cove performance cores and Arctic Wolf efficiency-oriented cores.

Following yesterday's official announcements, a leaker shared several insights—theorized core configurations and manufacturing details were posted on the Hardware subreddit. Community members were engaged in a debate over Intel's "killing of Falcon Shore," but a plucky contributor—going under the moniker "Exist50"—redirected conversation to all-things "Nova Lake." They believe that Intel has shifted all "compute dies to TSMC" for manufacturing, after a change in plans—initial designs had the "8+16 die" on TSMC's N2P, and the "4+8 die on Intel 18A." Exist50 seemed to have inside track knowledge of product ranges: "Nova Lake (NVL) has a unified HUB/SoC die across mobile and desktop. So yeah, the baseline there is 4+8+4. But there's at least one more die for mobile." The flagship desktop (NVL-S or NVL-SK) chip's configuration could feature as many as sixteen performance cores and thirty-two efficiency cores, due to tile reuse—2x (8P+16E). Exist50 advised Intel CPU enthusiasts to forgo current generation offerings. "Nova Lake" should be: "quite a jump from Arrow Lake (ARL) in terms of MT performance, to say the least. I think anyone who buys ARL will end up regretting it, big time!"




Based on the leaker's information, VideoCardz has kindly compiled this data into a stack of Intel "Nova Lake" product tiers with "matching" core configurations:

• NVL-SK: 2x (8P+16E)
• NVL-HX: 1x (8P+16E)
• NVL-S/NVL-H: 4P+8E
• NVL-U: 4P+OE

Their summary stated: "it is now claimed that Intel is working on several Nova Lake variants, including desktop, high-end mobile, and mainstream mobile platforms...The Nova Lake-HX platform for enthusiast gaming laptops is expected to feature 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores. This suggests that Intel may no longer use the same dies for S (desktop) and HX (mobile) platforms. Additionally, there is mention of other S and H variants that would stick to a 4P + 8E configuration. Intel is also expected to launch a 4-core variant for low-power laptops."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Crazybc]

I have read a few things on Nova lake I'll wait for release and some reviews but that's a long ways off I always had intel till a month ago when I put together my first AMD system . We shall see if Intel can get there act together between now and then but I did also read it will be a complexly new architecture. For now I'm happy with this one and next year is still a long ways away barring any set backs

 

[Daven]

Nova Lake at 48 total cores would be interesting. By then, AMD would easily respond with 2x12 Zen 6 P-cores with HT.

 

[Visible Noise]

Exist50 is just some guy on Anandtech forums. He knows nothing.

 

[Diverge]

I have read a few things on Nova lake I'll wait for release and some reviews but that's a long ways off I always had intel till a month ago when I put together my first AMD system . We shall see if Intel can get there act together between now and then but I did also read it will be a complexly new architecture. For now I'm happy with this one and next year is still a long ways away barring any set backs

I'm in the process of building my first AMD system since Opteron 170's were released in 2005.

 

[sudothelinuxwizard]

My gosh, if NVL-U only has 4 cores, Intel is so screwed. That mean we would have gone 10 years without a meaningful core count jump

 

[Squared]

"Nova Lake" should be: "quite a jump from Arrow Lake (ARL) in terms of MT performance, to say the least.

I think people are generally pretty happy with Arrow Lake's MT performance. It's the ST that wasn't great. The last several times Intel has released a new node for desktop it been very late (like Alder Lake which was the 3rd generation of that node), suffered from poor clock speed (Arrow Lake), or skipped desktop (Broadwell on 14nm was skipped in favor of Skylake on 14nm+; Meteor Lake on desktop was also skipped). Also Rocket Lake tried to bring new cores to desktop but it clocked too slow on 14nm. Intel on desktop won't be well-received until there's a release of semi-new tech on a node that can reach high frequencies. (On that thought, it seems like Meteor Lake on desktop would've been a decent product on the more mature Intel 3 node, compared to Arrow Lake on TSMC's slowest N3 node.)

 

[TristanX]

For Nova Lake Intel said x86 compute tiles to be made by Intel and TSMC. But it may turn as with Arrow Lake, where TSMC make all tiles.

 

[N/A]

If the SOC tile jumps node to N4 I'm interested.
And if the price is right. Currently 245K costs $40 above 225 or better yet Ultra 7 at $140 more. Makes no sense. Where is the good cheap 10 core budget CPU. I don't need 50 core.
Sadly no word on the memory controller, but it's safe to assume Intel still thinks best location is on the moon orbiting the earth for improving latency.