Intel talked about its upcoming Panther Lake, Nova Lake, Coral Rapids CPUs, and its Foundry plans involving 18A & 14A during its Q3 earnings call.
Intel Confirms That 18A Will Be Used By At Least the Next 3 Generations of Client and Server Products
During the Q3 2025 earnings call, Intel's CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, talked about his plans for how the blue team will go forward with its client, server, and foundry-side businesses. The talk mainly focused on expanding on most of the stuff that the company has already highlighted recently, along with a few new key points.
Starting with the first one, Lip-Bu once again reaffirmed that the first Panther Lake CPU SKU will be launched by the end of this year, while additional SKUs will follow in the first half of 2026. Intel itself has confirmed that Panther Lake CPUs will launch at CES 2026, where the company will do a full unveil, and the first PCs based on the Core Ultra Series 3 family will be available in January. The first SKU is also going to be more premium, but as the ramp continues on 18A, Panther Lake will enter more cost-effective territory.
In addition to that, Intel once again reaffirms that the high-end desktop segment remains an intense battlefield, but they're making steady progress. The company is expected to refresh its Arrow Lake CPU family with Core Ultra 200S Plus soon on the LGA 1851 socket, which will be succeeded by the Nova Lake-S platform on the LGA 1954 socket in 2H 2026. Nova Lake is expected to feature up to 52 cores, new Xe3P Arc iGPUs, and also feature brand new architecture and software changes.
In addition, and just as important, the group will spearhead the build out of a new basic and design service business to deliver purpose-built silicon to a broad range of external customers. This will not only extend the reach of our core x86 IP, but also leverage our design strength to deliver an array of solutions from general purpose to fixed function computing. In client, we are on track to launch our first Panther Lake SKU by year end, followed by additional SKUs in the first half of next year.
This will help us to solidify our strong position in the notebook segment across both consumer and enterprise with cost-optimized products across our full PC stack from our entry-level offering to our mainstream core family up to our highest performing core ultra family. In high-end desktops, competition remains intense, but we are making steady progress. Arrow Lake shipments have increased throughout the years, and our next generation Nova Lake product will bring new architectural and software upgrades to further strengthen our offering, particularly in the PC-thinning hello space.
Lip-Bu Tan - Intel CEO (Q3 2025 Earnings Call)
On the server side, Intel pointed out that demand for its Granite Rapids (Xeon 6 P-Core) CPUs remains strong and now includes instances across every major hyperscaler. The company also expects the CCG (Client Computing Group) segment to be down in the coming quarter, but the strong demand in server chips will lead to gains for the DCAI group.
Intel's Xeon family will also see new additions to the family with the Xeon 6+ "Clearwater Forest" chips around mid-2026, which are based on 18A, Diamond Rapids P-Core family on 18A under the Xeon 7 family, and the next-gen Coral Rapids SKUs, which will reintroduce SMT back to Xeon.
We remain the AI hit notes of choice, with strong demand for granite rapids, including instances across every major hyperscaler.
So I think clearly the Diamond Rapids getting stronger, hyper-skilled feedback. And then we also focus on the new product, the Coral Rapids, and that will be included SMT, the master trading, and that can drive higher performance. We're in the definition stage, and then we will work out the roadmap, and then we're going to execute that in the work year going forward.
Lip-Bu Tan - Intel CEO (Q3 2025 Earnings Call)
On the Foundry side of things (IFS), Intel seems to be making steady progress on 18A, which is entering HVM at Fab 52 in Arizona, which we recently toured during Tech Tour 2025. The blue team is also working towards the 18A-P PDK milestone, and one major thing confirmed by Intel is that the 18A process tech is going to span at least three generations of client and server products. Do note that the 18A-P is more of a performance-optimized variant of 18A, offering 10% higher gains. Lip-Bu also sheds some light on 14A & EMIB-T.
We are making steady progress on Intel 18A. We are on track to bring Panther Lake to market this year. Intel 18A yields are progressing at a predictable rate, and Fab 52 in Arizona, which is dedicated to high-volume manufacturing, is now fully operational.
In addition, we are advancing our work on Intel 18A-P, and we continue to hit our PDK milestone. Our Intel 18A family is the foundation for at least the next three generations of client and server products.
On Intel 14A, the team continues to focus on technology definition, transistor architecture, process flow, design enablement, and foundation IP. We remain active, engaged with potential external customers, and are encouraged by the earlier feedback, which helps us to drive and inform our decisions.
Lastly, our advanced packaging activities continue to progress well, especially in the areas like EMIB and EMIB-T, which we have true differentiation. Like our Intel products, my conviction in the market potential for Intel foundry continues to grow. The rapid expansion of critical AI infrastructure is fueling unprecedented demand for wafer capacity and advanced packaging services that present a substantial opportunity, demanding multiple suppliers.
Intel foundry is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this unprecedented demand as we execute. As I mentioned last quarter, our investment in foundry will be disciplined, and we will focus on capability and scalability, giving us flexibility to ramp quickly, and we will only add capacity when we have committed external demand. Building a world class foundry is a long‑term effort founded on trust.
As a foundry, we need to ensure that our process can be easily used by a variety of customers, each with their unique way of building their own products. We must learn to delight our customers as they call on us to build wafers to meet all their needs for power, performance, yield, cost, and schedule. This is only by doing this that they can rely on us as a true long‑term partner to ensure their success.
This requires a change of mindset that I'm driving across Intel foundry as we position this business for long‑term success. As we look ahead, my focus remains firmly on the long‑term opportunity across every market we serve today, and those we will enter tomorrow. Our strategy is crystallized around our unique strength and value proposition supported by the accelerating and unprecedented demand for compute in the AI‑driven economy.
Lip-Bu Tan - Intel CEO (Q3 2025 Earnings Call)
And lastly, for those who want to hear more about Intel's GPU side, yep, both Arc and GPUs were mentioned. Plus, Intel also referenced its recent announcement of Crescent Island, the first Xe3P accelerator designed for AI inference workloads. The company is working on a multi-generational roadmap, which will focus on a chip with enhanced memory and bandwidth. You can learn more about Crescent Island here.
In the near term, we will continue delivering AI capabilities to Xeon, AI PCs, ARC, GPUs, and our open software stack. Looking ahead, we plan to launch successive generations of inference-optimized GPUs on the annual cadence that features enhanced memory and bandwidth to meet enterprise needs.
Lip-Bu Tan - Intel CEO (Q3 2025 Earnings Call)
Once again, this is just a follow-up and add-on to what Intel has already stated over the last few months. The first 18A product, Panther Lake, is coming out soon, so it won't be long before we know how 18A performs in real-world scenarios and what surprises it holds for future products on the client and server side.
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