Lip Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, recently confirmed in a Q3 2025 earnings call that Nova Lake is set to debut in 2026. Tan says that the series will begin shipping out something later next year, but not before Arrow Lake Refresh.
Nova Lake is expected to be Intel’s first desktop processor lineup to be built using the chipmaker’s 18A process, something that the company intends to use for at least three product generations. Specs-wise, the lineup is expected to have CPUs with up to 52 cores, integrated graphics using Xe3 cores, and a brand new LGA1954 socket, thus confirming initial reports.
Intel hopes that with Nova Lake, the chipmaker will be able to recover some lost ground from rival AMD, who has dominated the CPU market for nearly a decade since the advent of its Ryzen generation back in 2017, and after renowned microprocessor engineer Jim Keller, designed for the red chipmaker.
Tan also confirmed that for Arrow Lake Refresh, the lineup will indeed see two new models: the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, the latter of which we’ve also reported about earlier this week. On a related note, Tan also confirmed with investors that the first Panther Lake mobile CPUs will be arriving by the end of this year, while laptops fitted with said processor are expected to make their debut during CES 2026 next year.
