Almost 14 months ago, Intel launched its first multi-tile processor, codenamed Meteor Lake, for laptop PCs. Just nine months later, it was joined by the much-improved Lunar Lake chip, for the ultra-low power market and at this year's CES event, Intel briefly demonstrated its successor, Panther Lake. As this is the first processor to be made on Intel's 18A process node, the little chip garnered quite the attention.
2024 is almost certainly a year that Intel would prefer everyone to forget about and at this year's mega-tech CES event, it's been singing its own praises regarding how it plans to bring things around in the coming months. Top of the list, despite only appearing briefly at the conference, was Panther Lake—the architectural successor to the well-received Lunar Lake.
The one thing we do know about Intel's next-gen processor is that it won't be using on-package DRAM like Lunar Lake does. This should help to make the chip more palatable to system vendors, who want to offer customers a broad range of products, especially in the budget sector. Compared to a typical laptop CPU, Lunar Lake is quite expensive and rather limited in scope, because it has two DRAM chips bonded to the package.
Investors will be looking very carefully at how good Panther Lake is because it's the first commercial chip to roll off Intel's 18A production line. Previous CEO Pat Gelsinger famously "bet the whole company on 18A" and if the little CPU turns out to be a miniature marvel then his gamble will be fully justified. If it isn't though, then it's difficult to see how Intel Foundry can continue operating.
It might just be for a fairly niche sector but an awful lot of Intel's fortunes are going to be riding on Panther Lake. For the consumer's sake (i.e. a competitive market), let's hope it's as good as Intel says it is.
