Intel Panther Lake: the next generation of processors works in A0, moving to ODM 10 comments
Intel is set to announce the next generation of Panther Lake processors this year. At CES, the company confirmed that development is proceeding as planned and that partner systems are working. This was demonstrated at the press using ODM devices running on A0 step processors.
A0 exits pre-production
As a result, the installed processors are the first samples from pre-production. Smaller adjustments would lead to an A1 step, larger changes would result in a jump to a B0 step. Adjustments to silicon are still possible, Intel explained on site. Laptops issued by ODMs such as Wistron, Pegatron or Compal were capable of running Windows, but no applications ran on them. And the press was also forbidden from helping out.
Panther Lake systems running from multiple ODMs Image 1 of 6
Panther Lake builds on Intel 18A
Panther Lake is expected to follow Intel’s Arrow Lake series processors, which were finally introduced yesterday. Previous rumors have all three Panther Lake-U/H/P offshoots planned, but no Panther Lake-S desktop chip. Naturally, Intel did not wish to comment on the variants used in the systems presented. The company’s main goal was to show that Panther Lake is capable of working and that its own Intel 18A production is yielding results.
TSMC is not completely out
Speaking of production: unlike Lunar Lake or Arrow Lake, Panther Lake will bring most production back to its own foundry. “We’re bringing all of this back,” one employee said during the demo, before having to bring the GPU tile in again, but without naming the exact foundry. Panther Lake is rumored to offer an iGPU with 4 3rd generation Xe cores (Celestial) in the smaller models and is manufactured in Intel 3. A GPU variant with 12 Xe cores, however, is to be manufactured by TSMC in N3E. The Platform Controller Die (PCD) could also come from TSMC, but nothing has been officially confirmed yet.
Michelle Johnston Holthaus shows image 1 of 3 of Panther Lake
Pat with Wafer is followed by Michelle with Package
In total, five tiles are planned for Panther Lake: CPU, GPU, PCD and two filler tiles in order to obtain a package as rectangular as possible so that the chip can be stabilized under subsequent cooling solutions. Unlike Lunar Lake, the package does not use memory on package (MoP) and therefore requires dedicated DRAM. On the one hand, this is evident from previous leaks, but it is also clear from the chip that interim co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus briefly showed to the audience during Intel’s keynote speech. At Computex in the summer of 2024, former CEO Pat Gelsinger had a Panther Lake brochure in his luggage and gave a glimpse of the prospect of the official announcement of the next Computex.
Topics: Intel CPUs for Intel Panther Lake Laptops at CES 2025 Source: Own, Intel
Marc deciphers processors by testing their performance for gaming, content creation, and artificial intelligence.
