Intel Debuts Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs on 18A Process
▼ Summary
– Intel will launch its first Core Ultra Series 3 laptop processors (codenamed Panther Lake) later this month, using its new 18A manufacturing process.
– The launch includes 14 chips across 5 families, with the first available on January 27th and others following in the first half of the year.
– The high-end Core Ultra X9 and X7 chips feature a 12-core integrated GPU and support for LPDDR5x-9600 memory.
– The Core Ultra 9 and 7 chips have fewer GPU cores but offer more PCI Express lanes, making them better suited for dedicated graphics cards.
– While a retreat from the Lunar Lake design, Intel states it used Lunar Lake as a baseline for power efficiency to avoid sacrificing battery life.
Intel’s next wave of laptop processors is set to arrive, marking a significant step in the company’s manufacturing roadmap. The Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs, codenamed Panther Lake, will be formally introduced later this month. These chips are initially aimed at high-end ultraportable PCs and represent a major technical milestone as the first processors built on Intel’s advanced 18A manufacturing process. This move is a crucial part of Intel’s strategy to regain competitive ground in semiconductor fabrication against rivals like TSMC.
The launch will encompass 14 different chips organized into five distinct product families. Intel states these processors will power more than 200 different PC designs, with the first models becoming available on January 27th and further releases continuing through the first half of the year.
At the top of the stack are the Core Ultra X9 and Core Ultra X7 processors. These models incorporate Intel’s latest CPU and GPU architectures in their entirety. They feature a fully-enabled 12-core Intel Arc B390 integrated graphics unit and offer support for the slightly faster LPDDR5x-9600 memory standard.
The Core Ultra 9 and Core Ultra 7 chips utilize the same core technologies but are configured with just four GPU cores. They support either LPDDR5x-8533 or DDR5-7200 DIMM memory. A key differentiator for these models is their expanded connectivity, offering 20 PCI Express lanes compared to the 12 lanes on the X-series. This makes them better suited for systems pairing the processor with a dedicated graphics card.
The Core Ultra 5 family serves as the more accessible tier, generally featuring fewer CPU cores and integrated graphics options with either 4 or 2 cores. However, Intel includes one notable exception that complicates a simple performance hierarchy: the Core Ultra 5 338H. This particular chip is equipped with 12 CPU cores and a 10-core Intel Arc B370 GPU, blurring the lines between segments.
This Panther Lake generation represents a strategic shift from the previous Lunar Lake architecture, which was marketed as the Core Ultra 200V series. Lunar Lake employed a design that relied heavily on chiplets manufactured externally and utilized on-package memory instead of traditional DIMM slots or soldered RAM. Intel had promoted those choices as essential for maximizing power efficiency and extending laptop battery life, alongside other decisions like removing Hyper-Threading support from performance cores.
With the Core Ultra Series 3, Intel has dialed back some of those more radical architectural changes. Nevertheless, the company emphasizes that it used Lunar Lake’s power efficiency as its foundational benchmark. The goal is to deliver the performance enhancements of Panther Lake without compromising the battery life improvements achieved in the prior generation.
(Source: Ars Technica)
