Intel won't launch a new desktop CPU until 2026. That's the clear implication from comments made this week by the company's interim co-CEO.
Speaking on an earnings call to an assembly of the usual financial analyst types, Michelle Holthaus said, "2026 is even more exciting from a client perspective as Panther Lake achieves meaningful volumes, and we introduce our next-generation client family code-named Nova Lake."
Nova Lake is, of course, Intel's next desktop architecture, the replacement for the current Arrow Lake chips including the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. Now, we only reviewed that back in October last year. So Arrow Lake is still very new. You wouldn't normally expect a new CPU architecture anytime soon.
In that sense, the fact that Nova Lake isn't due until next year—and we don't have any clear indication in what part of 2026—is hardly a surprise. That said, there are reasons to think Intel might be keen to move things along more quickly than usual when it comes to Nova Lake.
By way of example, Intel released its new Meteor Lake laptop chips in December 2023, only to follow them up in very short order with the Lunar Lake family in September 2024. Arguably, Lunar Lake wasn't a direct replacement for Meteor Lake. But, still.
Moreover, Meteor Lake wasn't super competitive for various reasons and you could say the same of Arrow Lake. Likewise, Arrow Lake is built using predominantly TSMC silicon, and Intel is on record saying that hurts its profit margins.
So, Intel has plenty of reasons to get Nova Lake out the door ASAP. The potential catch is that Holthaus also confirmed that at least some Nova Lake CPU models will have silicon made by Intel on its new ultra-advanced 18A node.
"Nova Lake will actually have die both inside and outside [Intel Foundry] for that process [18A]," she said. As we reported earlier, Intel actually plans to release Panther Lake mobile chips on 18A later this year.
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But as we also reported in the same story, Intel only made about 5% of its chips on the latest Intel 4/3 node in 2024, despite releasing the first Intel 4 product, Meteor Lake, in 2023. The point being that Intel has hardly been ramping up its new nodes at speed.
That implies limitations as to Intel's ability to crank out lots of chips on 18A and therefore its ability to bring Nova Lake forward. In the meantime, we might expect to see Arrow Lake get some kind of refresh, though there are also rumours that Arrow Lake Refresh was planned but has now been canned.
Arguably, it doesn't really matter. Arrow Lake is what it is and a refresh is highly unlikely to turn it into an AMD Ryzen killer. It's not a terrible CPU by any means. It's just a little disappointing. Whether Nova Lake will change that, whenever exactly it arrives, is anyone's guess.
