Intel has once again reaffirmed its Arrow Lake Desktop CPU refresh launch for next year, followed by Nova Lake in late 2026, & provided more updates on 18A & 14A process technologies.
Intel Arrow Lake Desktop CPUs To Provide Some Help In Filling The High-Performance Desktop Gap Early Next Year, But Nova Lake Desktop CPUs Are The Real Deal, Planned For Late 2026
During the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, Intel's VP of Corporate Relations, John Pitzer, sat down and revealed new details on the Blue Team's x86 & IFS plans. The main takeaways were that desktop-side will see two new CPU launches to address the high-performance market gap with AMD, and how 18A is mostly being utilized internally, and how 14A will be the game-changer when it comes to external customers.
So starting with the desktop side of things, Intel once again acknowledges that there are holes that they have to fill in in the segment. Arrow Lake "Core Ultra Series 2" CPUs didn't turn out the way Intel wanted, as such, the company is quickly working on a refresh to begin its reclemation process. The refreshed CPU family is expected to launch in the first half of 2026 and will be compatible with existing LGA 1851 socket platforms. They will likely be labeled under the "Core Ultra Series 2" family while Panther Lake will use the "Core Ultra Series 3" family branding.
Following Arrow Lake Refresh, Intel will be introducing its Nova Lake Desktop CPUs. These will be labeled as the "Core Ultra Series 4" and will be the main competition against AMD's Zen 6 family. Nova Lake will be compatible with the newer LGA 1954 socket platforms and will feature up to 52 cores. The first SKUs will arrive in 2026, with more additions being made in 2027. So we are likely going to get some "K" SKUs early on, followed by the Non-K and budget-friendly offerings, along with mobility SKUs once the ramp starts.
And then you look at the x86 business, I think we've got a strong product portfolio in PCs. We've got a couple of holes we've got to fill on the desktop front. But quite frankly, we feel confident in the roadmap. We'll have a refresh of Arrowl Lake next year, which will help start the process on the desktop side. And then we'll conclude that with Nova Lake when we launch late next year into 2027.
John Pitzer - Intel SVP of Corporate Relations (at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference)
For Nova Lake, it looks like Intel confirmed that while 18A is currently booked for Panther Lake, the first client-side and the first product to feature the new process technology, next year, it's going to be Nova Lake, besides the server-side Clearwater Forest and Diamond Rapids products. Intel states that both the desktop and notebook sides will have 18A wafers dedicated to them, so it looks like at least one tile for Nova Lake will leverage the new process node.
The only thing I'll remind you is this year's 18A capacity is really being put in place to support Panther Lake. Panther Lake is only a notebook part. As we think about next year's CapEx, it's really going to support Nova Lake, Clearwater Forest, and Diamond Rapids .Just Nova Lake itself being both a notebook and a desktop part has pretty meaningful implications for the amount of wafer starts that we need on 18A.
John Pitzer - Intel SVP of Corporate Relations (at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference)
Intel also reaffirms that Panther Lake "Core Ultra Series 3" CPUs will be launching at the end of this year. The first SKU will be pushed out in various OEM designs, while other SKUs will be ramping for 1H 2026.
We're excited that we will be launching our first SKU of Panther Lake by end of year. We'll be ramping multiple new SKUs of Panther Lake coming in the first half of next year. And that will help on the profitability side.
John Pitzer - Intel SVP of Corporate Relations (at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference)
Moving to process technologies, especially the next-gen 14A node, Intel states that the new node is more suitable for external customers. The reason is that 18A was primarily designed for Intel's own internal products, and as such, it was more optimized for those products.
Furthermore, Intel only started to engage external customers in 14A's development stage, and while some customers didn't have an issue with Intel prioritizing 18A for its own products, others did. That changes with 14A, where Intel is already talking to external customers in the definitional phase of the node.
Just so there's no confusion, we are all in on 14A development. That said, we did talk about on the earnings call that in order to generate a good return on our owner's capital, we need not only demand from Intel products internally, we also need to sign up a significant external customer to make the node work.
If you look at those external customers we're looking at, it's really two things. It's the PDK readiness and maturity and the yield curve. We feel very good about where we are in 14A development. The way I would think about it is I'm perfectly thinking three phases to any new node. There's the definitional phase, there's the development phase, and then there's the high volume manufacturing phase. I think 14A is a very different node for us.
At 18A, in the definitional phase, we were really only working with Intel products. All the choices we made on the 18A node was really to optimize for the internal customer. We didn't really engage external customers until we got to that development phase. To be clear, for some customers externally, the fact that it was an optimized for Intel products didn't make a difference. For others, it did. The big difference on Intel 14A is right in the definitional phase, we are actively engaged with external customers to define the node. We're also working with Intel products, but quite frankly, what that really means is 14A from the get-go is more suitable for external foundry customers.
It also means we're getting earlier, more, and better feedback from those external customers. We've talked about some of the hard design choices for 14A that our customers will need to make, probably happening in the second half of 26, going into the first half of 27 as far as cruise points. Given the interaction we're having today, we'll have a good sense of the trajectory of our success probably well before that. From an investment community perspective, what are the key developments and milestones that investors should be tracking to determine whether 14A is on track or not? Again, the role of a foundry is to make their customers successful, not to market their customers. I'll leave it up to you guys to do the channel checks and find out how we're doing. In general, it really is about PDK progression, the yields and progression of test kits.
John Pitzer - Intel SVP of Corporate Relations (at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference)
Lastly, talking about competition in the entire PC space, Intel thinks they are doing well on laptops, where Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake are performing well, but the desktop still needs work. And as mentioned above, it will be up to Nova Lake to really address the performance gap. However, despite that, every 7 out of 10 PCs shipped have Intel inside, whereas the competition (AMD) ships two, and ARM ships about one unit.
So I'm kind of curious how you think that trends. Yeah, in general, we're still shipping relatively seven out of every 10 PCs. Our competitor ships two and the ARM competitor ships about one. We feel pretty good about our position.
Clearly, I think this year, we've seen some challenges at the high end of the desktop market. As I alluded to earlier, we're going to see a mid-cycle refresh of Arrow Lake coming up, which should help stem that a bit. I think as Nova Lake comes out at the end of next year, into 2027, I think we're going to have a leadership position across the board on desktop.
On the notebook market, we feel good. I think Lunar Lake absolutely was a great product for this year. I think it proves or I think it bumps the myth that X86 can't have 20 hours worth of battery life. I have my own Lunar Lake. I need to charge it about once a week, and that's fantastic.From that perspective, I think when Panther Lake comes out, we just build on that momentum. I'd also be remiss not to point out that our enterprise sort of ecosystem lock-in is still pretty strong with vPro and the like. And so if there is an acceleration of the Win 11 upgrade cycle, we should be well positioned to benefit from that.
John Pitzer - Intel SVP of Corporate Relations (at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference)
Intel has a lot riding on its next-gen products, whether they be desktop CPUs, laptop CPUs, or server-side stuff. They still haven't figured out a strategy for the Datacenter / AI side, where NVIDIA and AMD are dominating. Jaguar Shores is expected to tackle some of those holes, but whether it will be on the same level as the competition is questionable until Intel shares more details.
AMD is also gearing up for Zen 6, which will be its main architecture that powers the entire desktop and laptop segment. Intel also has the Arc GPU side, which is doing well on the integrated side, but the desktop side hasn't seen much action besides the Battlemage Arc B580/B570 products. So 2026 is really going to be a year for Intel to prove itself as a leading-edge chip maker.
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