Intel launches Core Extremely Sequence 3 laptop computer chips: Panther Lake is go

Intel’s Core Extremely Sequence 3 chips, aka “Panther Lake,” have entered the market, backed by dozens of PC makers.

“We’ve beeen on the market shaping what it means for elementary computing, mentioned Jim Johnson, senior vp and normal supervisor of the Intel Shopper Computing Group, in a launch occasion at CES 2026.

Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s chief govt, mentioned he was “proud” to focus on that Intel has shipped its first Intel 18A processors, the manufacturing know-how upon which Panther Lake is constructed upon. The know-how makes use of RibbonFET gate-all-around to handle present and power effectivity, whereas PowerVia is Intel’s identify for bottom energy supply, enabling 15 p.c higher efficiency per watt.

What’s Intel’s Core Extremely 300 ‘Panther Lake’?

Intel confirmed off what was merely often called “Panther Lake” in October, when Intel introduced the Panther Lake know-how together with a few of its implementations.

Intel’s Core Extremely Sequence 3 chips return to the period of efficiency cores (P-cores), effectivity cores (E-cores,) and low-power effectivity cores (LP E-cores) of Intel’s Core Extremely 100 chip, aka Meteor Lake. These are paired with an NPU able to 50 TOPS value of AI processing in addition to Intel’s Xe3 GPU, which ought to enhance Intel’s 3D capabilities.

Intel mentioned then that Panther Lake’s single-threaded efficiency must be 10 p.c greater than Lunar Lake on the similar energy. In comparison with each Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, Intel’s Panther Lake presents greater than 50 p.c higher multithreaded efficiency, Intel mentioned in October. However the energy must be 10 p.c lower than Lunar Lake.

Anecdotally, Intel representatives have been characterizing Panther Lake because the efficiency of Arrow Lake — an structure which struggled on the desktop however carried out surprisingly effectively in Arrow Lake laptops — with the facility consumption of Lunar Lake.

Panther Lake consists of three completely different organizations of the P-cores, E-cores, and LP-cores:

• An 8-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 4 low-power (LP) E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing models; and reminiscence interfaces to both 6800 MT/s LPDDR5x or 6400 MT/s DDR5.
• A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing models; and reminiscence interfaces to both 8533 MTs/ LPDDR5x or 7200 MT/s DDR5.
• A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores, 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray-tracing models; and reminiscence interfaces to 9600MT/s LPDDR5x, interval.

At CES 2026, Johnson mentioned that the Panther Lake delivers about 60 p.c extra energy than the Core Extremely 200 sequence, or Lunar Lake, utilizing the Cinebench 2024 mujlticore benchmark. Relying upon the banchmark, Intel lower the facility by about 2.8X.

Foundry / Mark Hachman

Considerably like AMD’s Ryzen AI Max (“Strix Halo”) or the Ryzen 9000X3D household, each of which focus giant quantities of cache reminiscence to enhance efficiency, it’s the ultimate “12Xe” configuration that can kind the premium lineup on many laptops. The GPU will likely be referred to as the Intel Arc B390 graphics, mentioned Intel’s Dan Rogers, the vp answerable for PC merchandise at Intel. On common, gaming efficiency will likely be about 73 p.c greater than Lunar Lake, Rogers mentioned.

The B390 GPU may reap the benefits of body technology to enhance body charges additional, he mentioned. XeSS3 can render three AI-generated frames for each GPU-rendered body, Rogers mentioned.

How good does Intel suppose Panther Lake is? Intel will launchn a whole handheld platform, primarily based on Panther Lake, later this 12 months, Rogers mentioned, taking over AMD’s management within the house, Rogers mentioned.