Intel launched its Panther Lake architecture at CES 2026, introducing the Core Ultra Series 3 mobile processor lineup. Manufactured on Intel’s in-house 18A process, Panther Lake succeeds Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake, targeting a scalable range of mobile systems from thin-and-light laptops to higher-performance mobile configurations.

Core Architecture and Tile Design

Panther Lake uses a modular tile-based design combining a heterogeneous CPU core tile built on Intel 18A, an integrated graphics tile based on Arc Xe3 architecture (derived from Xe2 Battlemage), and an I/O tile manufactured on TSMC’s N6 process. The platform omits hyper-threading support across all models.

High-power H series processors feature up to 16 cores configured as 4 P-cores (Cougar Cove), 8 E-cores (Darkmont), and 4 LP-E-cores. Low-power variants use an 8-core configuration with 4 P-cores and 4 LP-cores. Non-Arc H series CPUs utilize a larger I/O tile with 20 PCIe lanes (12 PCIe 5.0, 8 PCIe 4.0), while Arc H series and low-power CPUs use a smaller tile with 12 lanes (4 PCIe 5.0, 8 PCIe 4.0). Arc H series CPUs specifically use a binned I/O tile that drops DDR5DDR5. A generation of system RAM (memory); newer and faster than DDR4. support.

Graphics and NPU Specifications

Integrated graphics range from 2 to 12 Xe cores, with peak graphics clocks up to 2.5 GHz. Models with 12 Xe cores are branded as Arc B390 or Arc B370 if paired with memory speeds of at least LPDDR5X-7467; otherwise they carry standard Intel Graphics branding. Some larger GPUGPU. Graphics Processing Unit — the chip that renders the game's visuals; the main driver of framerate and image quality. tile models continue to use TSMC’s N3E process for the GPU tile.

The NPU uses Intel’s NPU 5 architecture, delivering up to 50 int8 TOPS on high-power models. Intel opted for an optimized, smaller NPU rather than a fundamentally upgraded design, offering roughly equivalent performance to the previous generation with improved efficiency.

Memory and Platform Support

Panther Lake supports LPDDR5X-9600 and DDR5-7200 across two channels, with maximum memory capacity up to 128 GB. The successor to Panther Lake will be Nova Lake.