Intel accused of misleading claims in Q3 Earnings Report as Panther Lake and Nova Lake LLC could release in Q4 2024 and H1 2025

With the launch of the Intel Raptor Lake Refresh out of the way, Intel’s Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake processors are the next CPU architectures for mobile and desktops respectively. While the Meteor Lake processors are slated to hit laptops before the year draws to a close, Arrow Lake for desktop (ARL-S) is reportedly not coming until the second half of 2024. According to Moore’s Law Is Dead, Intel has made some misleading statements in its Q3 2023 Earnings Report regarding its future CPU architectures.

Per one of the leaker’s sources, while the Intel Arrow Lake “Powered On” in Q2 2023, the ARL processors aren’t expected to be released until “late Q4 2024”. This Arrow Lake release timeline is in line with what MLID has reported previously.

Intel Panther Lake release timeline

More interestingly, Intel claimed in their Q3’23 Earnings Report that the Intel 18A process “will go into fab in Q1’24 for Clearwater Forest for servers and Panther Lake for client” and is expected to “achieve manufacturing readiness” in H2 2024. In other words, Intel’s production timeline for 18A, which is something that CEO Pat Gelsinger has reiterated in his recent interview with Stratechery, suggests that the Panther Lake CPUs could be ready in early 2025. However, MLID disputes Team Blue’s timeline for the “five-nodes-in-four-years plan”.

Citing one of his sources, MLID states that Intel is releasing Lunar Lake for notebooks in H1 2025 or “End of 2024” coinciding with the launch of Arrow Lake CPUs.

The source also stated to MLID that although Intel could manage to “ready” 18A sooner, Panther Lake chips won’t be coming out before Q4 2025, essentially a year after Intel’s promised timeline for 18A manufacturing readiness.

Intel Nova Lake with Last Level Cache (LLC)

The source also alleged that the Nova Lake’s “Big LLC” version which is expected to go head to head with AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs, has “slipped to 2027” with the vanilla Nova Lake scheduled to make its debut in late 2026. 

AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D (Buy it on Amazon) have managed to retain the gaming crown even after the release of the Raptor Lake Refresh chips. For instance, in our review of the Core i9-14900K and Core i5-14600K (Available on Amazon), the flagship 14th-gen part still lagged behind the Ryzen 7 7800X3D with a gaming performance rating of 90.4% vs 99.3%. 

So, it will be interesting to see how, with the lack of any Last Level Cache (LLC), Arrow Lake, Panther Lake, and Nova Lake stack up to current and future Ryzen X3D CPUs in terms of performance and, especially, performance/watt.