Intel teases huge leaps for 18A, the tech behind its next-gen ‘Panther Lake’ CPUs

Intel is almost literally betting its future on its upcoming “Panther Lake” CPU architecture, as well as the 18A manufacturing process it will be built upon. While we don’t have any concrete details of how Panther Lake will perform, Intel has publicly revealed some impressive numbers about the process technology itself.

German publication Hardwareluxx reported on Intel’s 18A presentation at a VLSI symposium in Japan, where Intel unveiled the first performance numbers for the 18A process. Intel didn’t use one of its own architectures for the paper; rather, it used part of an Arm core to share its process improvements, which seems to be standard practice for these types of disclosures.

Intel showed off a slide claiming that its 18A process will deliver 25 percent more performance while running at the same power, or else cut power by 38 percent while running at the same performance.

There’s an additional wrinkle, though: Intel’s comparisons are being made between its Intel 3 technology and Intel 18A. Intel has never manufactured a consumer processor on an Intel 3 process; Intel’s Core Ultra 200 (Meteor Lake) was manufactured in the Intel 4 process, and Lunar Lake was manufactured on TSMC’s N3B and N6 processes. So while Intel is making some aggressive claims, we don’t quite know what it’s comparing them to.

Nevertheless, Intel has been talking up Panther Lake and the 18A process for more than a year. Panther Lake represents the culmination of Intel’s “five nodes in four years” plan to get Intel’s manufacturing back on track, backed by technologies like gate-all-around transistors and backside power routing.

Expect Intel to talk about these terms more, as well as what they mean for Panther Lake’s performance, this fall. Panther Lake is a critical product for Intel, so expect to hear a lot more before the chip is expected to ship early in 2026.

Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld