Intel admits it 'fumbled' with Arrow Lake but is confident about upcoming Nova Lake SKUs

Intel has been going through a major overhaul with new management and mass layoffs, brought on by lackluster performance over the past couple years. Its Meteor Lake processors from 2023 offered only minor performance improvements over Raptor Lake and the successor, Arrow Lake from 2024, was no different. The company has now admitted that it dropped the ball, specifically with Arrow Lake, but has shown confidence in its next generation of desktop CPUs.

According to a report by Wccftech citing a Deutsche Bank 2025 Technology Conference call, Intel CFO David Zinsner admitted to fumbling on the desktop side with Arrow Lake and not performing well against the competition. The quote is as follows:

As you know, we kind of fumbled the football on the desktop side, particularly high performance desktop side. So we’re as you kind of look at share on a dollar basis versus a unit basis, we don’t perform as well and it’s mostly because of this high end desktop business that we didn’t have a good offering this year.

Zinsner then spoke about Nova Lake, the next generation of desktop CPUs, and said that it will be a more complete set of SKUs that will address the high-end desktop market. The company is hopeful that Nova Lake will improve its position among the competition next year.  

Nova Lake is said to bring some major performance improvements over Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh. The CPUs will likely carry the new Coyote Cove P-cores and Arctic Wolf E-cores. It is unclear if they will be based on TSMC's 2nm or Intel 18A-P manufacturing process. These CPUs will follow the Core Ultra 400 nomenclature and the flagship offering is said to feature 52 cores with 16 P-cores, 32 E-cores, and 4 LP island E-cores at a 150 W TDP. Some SKUs are also expected to get 3D V-cache like the X3D series from AMD.

All in all, Intel’s Nova Lake lineup is shaping up to be a much better upgrade considering past couple of generations. The CPUs seem to be on track for next year but there isn’t an exact release window as of yet.