Intel has officially unveiled its next-generation Panther Lake mobile processors, slated for laptops in 2026. These are the first chips built on Intel's proprietary 18A process technology, focusing on improved energy efficiency, graphics performance, and AI capabilities.
The third-generation Intel Core Ultra processors (Panther Lake) are designed to boost performance, energy efficiency, and graphics capabilities while maintaining affordability for laptops at all levels. These processors are available in three flavors: 8-core, 16-core, and a 16-core version with 12 new Xe3 graphics cores and 12 ray tracing units. This is Intel's most powerful integrated graphics yet, rivaling the performance of discrete graphics cards.
The new architecture, comprised of Cougar Cove (P-cores) and Darkmont (E-cores), delivers up to 50% higher multi-threaded performance at the same power consumption, or up to 40% lower power consumption at the same performance. Intel claims the chip's improved overall energy efficiency will enable longer battery life in laptops compared to last year's Lunar Lake series.
Gaming performance is a key focus. Low-end chips will feature four Xe3 graphics cores, while high-end chips will have up to 12. Intelligent Bias Control v3 will allow Windows to distribute tasks across cores, maximizing graphics resource utilization. Intel is also deploying a cloud-based game shader pre-compilation system to reduce latency and stuttering during gameplay—similar to solutions offered by Microsoft and Valve.
Panther Lake also features a new NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for AI tasks, support for up to 96GB of RAM and an LPCAMM module, and an improved media engine with hardware encoding for AVC, AV1, and XAVC.
Intel has launched Panther Lake processors featuring the new Xe3 architecture and graphics.
Processor production has begun. The first Panther Lake-based devices are expected to ship in late 2025 or early 2026.
