HardwareProcessorsIntel on its next-gen laptop chip: ‘Panther Lake will take everything you love about Lunar Lake to the next level’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareProcessorsIntel on its next-gen laptop chip: ‘Panther Lake will take everything you love about Lunar Lake to the next level’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Intel Corporation)
2024 is almost certainly a year that Intel would prefer everyone to forget about and at this year’s mega-tech CES event, it’s been singing its own praises regarding how it plans to bring things around in the coming months. Top of the list, despite only appearing briefly at the conference, was Panther Lake—the architectural successor to the well-receivedLunar Lake.
Interim Co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus held a sample of the tiny chip aloft for the assembled crowd of journalists to see. That was about all we really got to observe about Panther Lake, though Holthaus did her best to promote it.
“Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, will launch in the second half of this year. It will take everything you love about Lunar Lake, all the advances in the architecture, to the next level. We have systems already running Panther Lake, and we’re sampling it across all of our major customers already.”
A variety of different laptops using Panther Lake chips were on display in another booth but given that the processor is still in development, nobody was permitted to play around with the machines nor observe them running any applications.
Not that Panther Lake will really matter for PC gaming because while some gaming laptops have sportedMeteor LakeCPUs, almost none are using Lunar Lake. The exception, and it is a very loose exception, isMSI’s Claw 8 handheld gaming PC. That’s clearly not a laptop but Lunar Lake does pretty well in that format, so there’s a good chance that Panther Lake might appear in the odd handheld or two.
(Image credit: Future)
The one thing we do know about Intel’s next-gen processor is thatit won’t be using on-package DRAMlike Lunar Lake does. This should help to make the chip more palatable to system vendors, who want to offer customers a broad range of products, especially in the budget sector. Compared to a typical laptop CPU, Lunar Lake is quite expensive and rather limited in scope, because it has two DRAM chips bonded to the package.
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Investors will be looking very carefully at how good Panther Lake is because it’s the first commercial chip to roll off Intel’s 18A production line. Previous CEO Pat Gelsinger famously “bet the whole company on 18A” and if the little CPU turns out to be a miniature marvel then his gamble will be fully justified. If it isn’t though, then it’s difficult to see how Intel Foundry can continue operating.
It might just be for a fairly niche sector but an awful lot of Intel’s fortunes are going to be riding on Panther Lake. For the consumer’s sake (i.e. a competitive market), let’s hope it’s as good as Intel says it is.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
Catch up withCES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
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