Earlier at this year’s Lenovo Tech World, Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, gave the world a glimpse of the first-ever sample of its Panther Lake processor. This reveal marks the first viewing of the chipmaker’s CPU, made entirely in-house with its 18A die lithography.
As a quick primer, the “A” in the 18A name refers to the Angstrom unit of measurement. 1A is equivalent to 0.1nm, making the new Panther Lake processor’s process node 1.8nm. For context, Intel’s current flagship mobile processor, Lunar Lake, is built using TSMC’s N3B, which is a variation of the 3nm process.
Like Lunar Lake and the earlier Meteor Lake, Panther Lake is still based on a “disaggregated” chiplet design, built mainly using Intel’s Foveros packaging technology. Each chip comprises five dies and in this case, the new 18A process plays house to the upcoming Panther Cove P-Cores and, possibly, Darkmont E-Cores.
Beyond its brief pass over of the first sample from Gelsinger’s hands into the hands of the Lenovo CEO, there is little else known about Panther Lake, not even its desktop equivalent. The lack of information regarding the latter is understandable, especially given that the upcoming Arrow Lake-S was only just announced and expected to go on sale later this month.
That being said, there is an unconfirmed rumour that Intel may be cancelling an Arrow Lake refresh, meaning that instead of getting two generations of the same processor, we could be skipping over directly to Panther Lake entirely.
(Source: Lenovo via YouTube, Videocardz)
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