Intel Panther Lake: the latest news and rumors you need to know

By Jon Martindale and Kunal Khullar Updated October 28, 2025

Intel’s desktop processors might not be setting the world on fire, but its mobile chips remain among the strongest in the game, and that’s only going to continue. Enter Intel Panther Lake, Intel’s next-generation Core Ultra Series designed to bring the power of the upcoming 18A process node to laptops.

Originally expected to cover both desktop and mobile, Panther Lake is now confirmed to be a mobile-first design, but that doesn’t slow down the excitement. Early details suggest a leap in onboard GPU performance, AI acceleration, and power efficiency.

Intel shared a bunch of details around Panther Lake including the architecture, chip design, and more at an event earlier this month, and here’s everything we know about Panther Lake so far.

Intel has confirmed the first Panther Lake processors are scheduled to ship before the end of 2025, with wider market availability expected around January 2026. With that timeline in mind, it’s likely we’ll learn more about the lineup during CES in January 2026.

Panther Lake CPUs will likely take on the moniker of Core Ultra 300 processors. While Intel is yet to confirm the final SKUs, the company has outlined three distinct Panther Lake SoC configurations built from a mix of two different 18A compute dies and two integrated GPU options along with potentially different I/O tiles.

Recently, we spotted a bunch of new Intel CPUs listed among the latest release notes for HWMonitor version 1.6. If legitimate, Intel might initially launch 12 SKUs across three tiers, namely Core Ultra X, Core Ultra H, and Core Ultra U segments.

Specifically, models such as Core Ultra X9 388H, Core Ultra X7 368H, Core Ultra X7 358H and Core Ultra X5 338H appear in the X-tier; Core Ultra 9 375H, Core Ultra 7 355H, Core Ultra 7 345H and Core Ultra 5 325H in the H-tier; and Core Ultra 7 360U, Core Ultra 5 350U, Core Ultra 5 340U and Core Ultra 3 320U in the U-tier.

Intel’s new Panther Lake features Cougar Cove P-cores and Darkmont E-cores, with improvements that appear largely evolutionary.

Cougar Cove benefits from an AI-based power management system that dynamically adjusts functional units like the prefetcher, along with refinements to branch prediction and memory disambiguation.

These optimizations, combined with a larger translation lookaside buffer (TLB), improve instructions-per-cycle (IPC) performance, responsiveness, and energy efficiency.

The Darkmont E-cores also see incremental improvements. They feature enhanced branch prediction, dynamic prefetcher tuning, and extended nanocode execution, allowing complex instructions to run in parallel without blocking the microcode sequencer.

Low-power Darkmont cores in the “island” can handle more demanding tasks than previous generations while remaining energy-efficient, contributing to multi-threaded workloads when needed.

Notably, not every part of Panther Lake is built on Intel’s 18A process. The platform continues the disaggregated architecture of Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake, separating different functional units into tiles that are then integrated using Foveros 3D packaging.

Each 18A compute tile includes up to four Cougar Cove P-cores, up to eight Darkmont E-cores, and a four-core low-power Darkmont island. The low-power cluster accesses an 8MB memory-side cache, coherent with the rest of the chip via dedicated home and coherency agents.

These 18A tiles also integrate Intel’s fifth-generation NPU, seventh-generation IPU for premium webcams, and Xe media and display engines separate from the graphics tile.

The smallest Panther Lake SoC seems similar to Lunar Lake’s core layout with four P-cores paired with four low-power E-cores. Intel hasn’t shared details on the cache configuration, but since there are no higher-power E-core clusters, it may feature around 12MB of shared cache allocated to the P-cores.

This entry configuration also integrates a compact Xe3 GPU with up to four Xe3 graphics cores. For memory, it supports either DDR5 SO-DIMMs or LPCAMM modules running up to 6800 MT/s, as well as soldered LPDDR5X at speeds up to 6400 MT/s.

On the connectivity side, the platform controller tile offers a total of 12 PCIe lanes, four Gen 5 and eight Gen 4, which should offer plenty of bandwidth for a Gen 5 SSD along with entry-level storage or a discrete GPU.

Expect this particular chip to appear in thin-and-light notebooks that prioritize battery life, portability, and general productivity workloads.

Stepping up, the midsize Panther Lake SoC adds eight E-cores connected via a shared ring bus alongside the original four P-cores, in addition to retaining the four low-power E-cores in their isolated cluster.

Intel notes this compute die can offer up to 18MB of shared L3 cache for both P-cores and E-cores. GPU capabilities remain the same with a four-core Xe3 tile.

Memory support on the other hand gets a bump with DDR5 at up to 7200 MT/s and LPDDR5X up to 8533 MT/s, providing additional bandwidth headroom.

This configuration also introduces a more capable platform controller tile with up to 12 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and eight PCIe Gen 4 lanes. The configuration make this variant a solid fit for ultraportables equipped with discrete GPUs, an approach Intel took with Meteor Lake, while offering more computational resources than the entry-level model.

At the top of the stack, the largest Panther Lake SoC keeps the same 4P+8E+4LPE core layout as the midsize version but upgrades to a significantly more powerful integrated GPU with 12 Xe3 cores.

To feed those additional execution units, Intel has limited the memory support to LPDDR5X only, enabling the highest bandwidth across the lineup at speeds reaching 9600 MT/s.

The flagship tier also has a smaller I/O tile providing just eight PCIe Gen 4 lanes and four PCIe Gen 5 lanes. That design decision suggests a focus on premium thin-and-light notebooks and even handheld gaming consoles where a strong iGPU matters more than extensive expansion.

That’s why adding a separate graphics card to this setup probably wouldn’t make sense for the system’s design.

Intel has given an early look at Panther Lake’s expected performance, offering projections based on internal testing. For single-threaded workloads, the company claims its new Cougar Cove P-cores can deliver approximately 10% higher performance at similar power levels compared to both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake.

Alternatively, these cores can operate at up to 40% lower power while maintaining similar performance in less demanding scenarios. These figures suggest continued emphasis on efficiency improvements, particularly for everyday tasks and bursty workloads commonly encountered on mobile platforms.

The multi-threaded performance story on the other hand is a bit different. Intel says that Panther Lake could achieve up to 50% higher multi-threaded performance at comparable power levels relative to Lunar Lake. In situations where power efficiency is prioritized, it can reportedly match the multi-threaded performance of Arrow Lake-H while consuming 30% less power.

Additionally, Intel’s charts also suggest that there is room for higher peak performance at similar power when compared to Arrow Lake-H. This additional headroom likely due to the 4P+8E+4LPE core configuration, which provides a larger pool of execution resources for parallel workloads.

Beyond these high-level projections, Intel has not disclosed specific details related to clock speeds, core frequencies, sustained boost clocks, or power management targets for Panther Lake. As with most modern laptop SoCs, actual performance will vary significantly based on system design.

Thermal constraints, chassis size, cooling solutions, and OEM power tuning can all influence results to a degree that makes broad generalizations difficult.

We are still a few months away before getting hands-on these new CPUs, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled. As more details emerge, we’ll keep this updated.

Interested in what comes after even Panther Lake? We have a guide to Intel Nova Lake too.