Intel may use its most advanced process node for Nova Lake CPUs

With Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake finally launching in a few months, we can look forward to Intel's client CPU roadmap for the coming years when Intel is expected to release Panther Lake and Nova Lake in 2025 and 2026-2027 respectively.

For Panther Lake, Intel is using its 18A process. Intel announced yesterday that it has successfully tapped out Panther Lake using the Intel 18A process. So, we can reasonable assume that the Panther Lake chips are on track for next year.

For Nova Lake, a report from China Times suggests that Intel is using a bilateral approach. Team Blue is reportedly considering both Intel 14A and TSMC 2 nm processes for Nova Lake. The use of Intel 14A is, of course, conditional on the process node being ready on time.

For the uninitiated, Intel 14A is a 1.4 nm process that was announced earlier this year. Intel has claimed that 14A comes in two flavors, Intel 14A and Intel 14A-E, and will be an industry-first in utilizing High-NA EUV lithography. Sadly, we don't know much else about Intel 14A.

While we don't have a lot of information regarding Nova Lake, we do know some tidbits courtesy of leaks. 

First up, Nova Lake could go up to an insane 52 cores with 16 Performance and 32 Efficiency-cores. This many cores will, in theory, give the Nova Lake CPUs beastly multi-core performance. Additionally, we've also had reports about Nova Lake having two possible flavors: Nova Lake and Nova Lake LLC (Last Level Cache).

As evident by the name, Nova Lake LLC chips will have a last-level cache just like AMD's Ryzen X3D processors. So, the CPUs can be considered a direct rival to AMD's gaming champs which, so far, have yet to face a challenge from Intel.

In the end, only time will tell when and with what specifications Nova Lake CPUs release. Since the architecture is pretty far out, it is best to take rumors and leaks with an abundance of caution.

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