Intel promises its line-up of future CPUs are all on track – but can they compete with AMD?
Intel has been busy showcasing its new Meteor Lake processors – which are expected to land in December – during its Innovation keynote, but we’ve also been hearing about subsequent generations of CPUs.
And the good news from Team Blue is that the roadmap for these next generations of silicon is still on track, with no slippage observed yet in terms of release times.
These generations include Arrow Lake, which will be the next desktop and mobile offering – to follow Meteor Lake (mobile, just revealed) and Raptor Lake Refresh (desktop refresh imminent) – as well as Lunar Lake, which will likely sneak in after Arrow Lake. (the latter being expected at the end of 2024, in theory).
Lunar Lake is a little different in that it will be very focused on power efficiency (truly power-efficient mobile processors), and we’ve heard in the past that it’s best thought of as another Ice Lake release from Intel.
Intel actually showed off a Lunar Lake-powered test system at the Innovation event, looking ahead to a (presumably relatively early) launch in 2025. CEO Pat Gelsinger also talked about Panther Lake, which will follow Arrow Lake (possibly as a dual offering for desktop and mobile, although some discussions indicate it will be desktop only – alongside Lunar Lake, which will cover laptops).
According to Gelsinger, Panther Lake is on schedule and the chip design is complete – it is expected to appear in the first quarter of 2024, according to the German technology site Hardwareluxx.de reports (via VideoCardz).
Analysis: A panther is approaching us?
Although the first quarter of 2024 may seem very early for the Panther Lake design to be completed and registered, there is actually still a long way to go before finished processors roll off the assembly lines.
Obviously, we’re not going to see Panther Lake next year – Arrow Lake won’t even be released until later in 2024. Panther Lake could will show up in 2025, but undoubtedly at the end of this year – at the earliest, we imagine, and it will most likely even be in 2026. It’s good to hear that it’s on track, though .
To give an idea, Meteor Lake was registered in May 2021 and, as we just saw, it is not scheduled to launch until December 2023.
However, Intel seems quite satisfied with the progress made and we expect enormous progress from these future generations of processors. Arrow Lake could provide a considerable performance boost, at least if early rumors are true, although a big step forward might be needed to make up for the relatively lackluster upgrade in this year’s desktop release.
Speculation around Raptor Lake Refresh has been muted to say the least, but it is (mostly) a simple refresh of existing 13th generation processors – and notably we haven’t heard anything from Team Blue about this news desktop chips. It’s a bit worrying, really…
And with AMD’s Ryzen 8000 (Zen 5) processors set to make a splash midway through next year, Intel could absolutely need Arrow Lake to be something special to keep up with Team Red.