Intel claims its next-gen 'Panther Lake' mobile chips will combine the power efficiency of Lunar Lake mobile with the performance of Arrow Lake-H desktop

Panther Lake, Intel's next generation of mobile chip, was shown off in person during presentations at Computex 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan. The headline information is a continuation of Lunar Lake's power efficiency, an upgraded iGPU, and a launch in early 2026.

This is all as reported by Wccftech, who managed to sit in on a presentation. In that presentation, Intel announced it is currently "on track for production in H2 '25" and will have a "consumer-ready launch with OEMs beginning early '26". This effectively means other companies can start producing hardware with Panther Lake chips in them then.

Our first thought goes to handhelds, like the recent MSI Claw 8 AI+, which came loaded with the beefy mobile Lunar Lake chip. A Panther Lake-driven laptop could potentially skip a dedicated GPU to opt for an ultra-power-efficient iGPU too.

In a real-time rendering and an AI application test, Tom's Hardware reports that "the silicon is healthy and on track for retail availability." In said presentation, Intel reportedly stated that Panther Lake chips combine the power efficiency of Lunar Lake with the performance of Arrow Lake-H.

Intel reportedly also teased that the chips' iGPU will come with XMX graphics, but didn't elaborate on power past the fact that it will be closer to Lunar Lake than Arrow Lake. We don't yet have confirmation, but it's assumed that the iGPU will be based on Xe3 architecture, which is the same reported in Intel Arc Celestial discrete GPUs.

Notably, the actual chip was also shown in these early Computex 2025 presentations, with Wccftech noting it is split into five tiles, and that the compute tile (which is the largest of the five) "features Cougar Cove P-Cores and Darkmont E-Cores".

The Panther Lake CPU specs that were shared featured 16 cores and 16 threads, and clocked a base speed of 2.0 GHz, which reportedly went up to 3.0 GHz in testing. Given this is early silicon, Wccftech reckons its final clock will go to 5.0 GHz or more.

The CPU they were shown also had 1.6 MB of L1, 24 MB of L2, and 18 MB of L3 cache—Lunar Lakes figures are 836 kB, 14 MB, and 12 MB respectively, so that's a notable increase in the total amount of cache, but don't forget that it has half the number of cores (four P, four E).

Panther Lake, which is assumed to be named the Core Ultra 300 series, will reportedly come with three SKUs, intended for different product types. Based on tech leaker Jaykihn0's claims, Wccftech reports that Panther Lake chips should have four P-Cores, with eight E-cores for the H variety SKUs, and four LP-E cores in all variants.

For graphics, there will be four 4 XE3 GPU cores in all but the most expensive SKU, which will have 12. The exact configurations are, of course, unconfirmed, but these would make sense.

Wccftech was also shown Panther Lake-powered laptops but no handhelds yet, and reports AI performance was much stronger on these Panther Lake engineering samples than Lunar Lake, which is a big push for Intel's upcoming chip.

Panther Lake is a major CPU built on Intel's own 18A processor technology. Given it's the first of its kind and Intel has bet quite a lot on its fab, 18A efficiency and power mean a lot for the future of Intel. So far, signs are looking good, and we've been looking forward to Panther Lake in a gaming handheld for a while now.

If Intel's early claims are true, it could make the future of gaming handhelds much more interesting, and iGPU-driven laptops could get a tidy boost to performance too.