Panther Lake (microprocessor)

The Intel Panther Lake architecture is presently in risk production. Panther Lake will support PCIe 5.0 however it is not known if Thunderbolt 5 will finally be available. DDR5 will be JEDEC standard. Press release said samples will be available for PC manufacturers with mass production expected in Q3 2025 after validation with then risk product stage.

Design and development

Intel is looking towards Panther Lake production in house rather than use TSMC. Intel is also developing Nova Lake for in house production. TSMC does have second source capabilities which can complement Intel's own production capacity.

Earlier Intel was considering 20A but settled in 18A as the D1X Hillsboro, Oregon fab overhaul neared completion. All of Intel's plants have adopted 300 mm wafer in Hillsboro and most of the industry has also moved to 300 mm wafers. Intel is still worried about Cannon Lake (microprocessor) and Ice Lake (microprocessor). The Raptor Lake processors, Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake (microprocessor) marked a gradual turnaround. Intel is developing 14A which intended to keep the company competitive. Meteor Lake introduced chiplets.

Larger 450 mm wafers are experiencing many challenges. Intel has much experience with 300 mm wafers to be able to get good yields. ASML has been trying to produce enough EUV systems and getting high-NA into production. High-NA EUV systems for 300 mm are already enormous – difficult to transport systems, making much bigger 450 mm versions would be an unprecedented engineering challenge.

The new Cougar Cove performance core will offer slightly better performance than Meteor Lake. The Skymont efficient cores are also likely to be redesigned. Intel 18A is using a RibbonFET design to reduce leakage. Unlike FinFETs, both the width and the number of the sheets can be varied to adjust drive strength or the amount of current the transistor can drive at a given voltage. The sheets often vary from 8 to 50 nanometers in width. The width of the nanosheets is known as Weff, or effective width.

The PowerVia backside power delivery network allows for better energy efficiency. Intel believes it will delivery about 6% performance gain.

Description

Panther Lake will be Intel's Core Ultra Series 300 CPUs, with updated Cougar Cove performance cores and revised Darkmont E-cores, too. Intel's 18A process, however, is where Intel hopes to right the ship, regain its manufacturing leadership, as well as handle the bulk of the chip's production. It makes sense, then, that Intel is going to push Panther Lake as hard as it can. Depending on demand Intel may find Panther Lake will have to make a good showing with mobile machine vendors.

NPU

Intel is developing AI features and a new NPU is likely. Intel is expected to be offering a 5th gen NPU design to help with Windows Copilot and Google Chrome etc. Mobile lag behind desktop processors so it is not clear if a NPU will be added to the U series processors.

Design

Raptor Lake features up to 24 cores (8 performance cores plus 16 efficiency cores) and 32 threads. H series tend to have 1/2 as many cores and U series the design is 15 W.

References

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