During Intel's Q4 earnings call, CEO Pat Gelsinger (via Seeking Alpha) revealed that the company is targeting a double uplift in AI performance for Panther Lake over next-generation Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors, which will compete against the best CPUs. Gelsinger also confirmed that Xeon Clearwater Forest processors are already in the fabs.
"The Core Ultra platform delivers leadership AI performance today with our next-generation platforms launching later this year, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake tripling our AI performance. In 2025 with Panther Lake, we will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x," stated Gelsinger in Intel's Q4 earnings call.
Although Panther Lake will bear an impressive amount of AI performance compared to Meteor Lake, most of this 5X performance improvement comes from Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. The two CPUs will be three times faster than Meteor Lake, and then Panther Lake will double its performance, leading to 5X better performance than Meteor Lake.
Gelsinger also reiterated the 2024 launch date for Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake and that Panther Lake would still arrive in 2025. The fast-paced release schedule (assuming Intel can stick to it) combined with these aggressive performance gains in AI every single generation means Intel will likely become a potent contender in consumer AI hardware. It certainly makes the 60% gain AMD achieved from its Ryzen 7040 series Phoenix APUs to its Ryzen 8040 series Hawk Point APUs a bit quaint.
"We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year. Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half '24, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly," confirmed Gelsinger.
That AI performance is all on top of what is expected to be at least decent uplifts in traditional CPU performance and efficiency, thanks in part to Panther Lake's usage of the Intel 18A node. 18A should deliver a significant upgrade over Arrow Lake's 20A process and Lunar Lake's TSMC 3nm process, but it's hard to say by how much yet. It's also difficult to say how impactful architectural improvements will be.
Meanwhile, Clearwater Forest has already been taped out and in fabs. According to a new Linux patch, the Xeon chips will reportedly leverage Darkmont E-cores.
Given Panther Lake was only officially unveiled last September, other details on the CPU are scarce. It is more likely to be a successor to high-power Arrow Lake and an efficiency-focused Lunar Lake. It was first pitched as a Lunar Lake successor. Still, Gelsinger's comparison of Panther Lake to Arrow Lake and leaks suggesting there may be a Panther Lake-S imply that the upcoming CPU will handle the whole market, just as Alder Lake and Raptor Lake did in 2021 and 2022.
