Intel’s had a challenging year or two, at least as far as its best processors are concerned. With things like the Raptor Lake instability issues and the less-than-impressive generational improvements offered by the Core Ultra 9 285K and the rest of the Arrow Lake lineup, Intel’s next-gen CPUs have a tough road ahead. However, Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan shared a reassuring update on the product roadmap, including Panther Lake and Nova Lake CPUs.
Lip-Bu Tan stepped into the role of CEO earlier this year, following the departure of Intel’s previous CEO, Pat Gelsinger. In a new letter sent to stockholders (which was shared by Wccftech), Lip-Bu Tan admits that there’s room for improvement, but follows with a hopeful note: “While there are clear challenges that we need to overcome, there are also significant opportunities to accelerate our turnaround and improve our performance.”
Later on, he refers to the expected roadmap for consumer CPUs — and despite previous reports, it looks like Intel’s right on track to stick to its previous plans.
“We will further enhance our position in the second half of this year with the launch of Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, followed by Nova Lake in 2026,” said Lip-Bu Tan in the letter to stockholders.
For a quick refresher, Panther Lake is the name of Intel’s next-gen mobile CPUs that will end up in laptops (and other devices). These will most likely fall under the Core Ultra 300 series umbrella and will be optimized for efficiency and performance.
Meanwhile, Nova Lake refers to the next-gen desktop and laptop CPU lineup, and by the sound of it, it’s going to be mighty powerful. Early leaks estimate up to 52 cores for the flagship chip, which would be a massive increase over the current generation — but of course, take it all with some healthy skepticism until we actually see these chips up for sale.
This update marks good news all around, especially considering that recent leaks told us we’d have to wait until 2026 to see Panther Lake break cover. Now, it seems like Intel is still planning to launch the chips in 2025, although it’s hard to say at what scale. Seeing as these will be built into laptops, we might get some product announcements with availability after CES 2026, which is what often tends to happen, but perhaps there will be some devices available at launch with more to follow early next year.
