Hoping for new desktop CPUs from Intel this year? I hate to break it to you, but it still very much sounds like they won’t arrive until 2026 with Nova Lake

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Hoping for new desktop CPUs from Intel this year? I hate to break it to you, but it still very much sounds like they won’t arrive until 2026 with Nova Lake

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• Intel has confirmed its CPU roadmap for the near future
• Panther Lake is due later in 2025, and Nova Lake in 2026
• It’s still not made clear if Panther Lake will skip desktop, but it seems likely that next-gen desktop CPUs won’t be here until next year

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Intel has confirmed its future CPU plans and how the firm’s intended roadmap will pan out across 2025 and 2026, albeit while leaving question marks over certain specifics.

We got confirmation of existing plans – that Panther Lake is due this year, and Nova Lake next year – but there’s still no certainty over whether we’ll get a new generation of desktop CPUs later in 2025 (in other words, whether Intel will stick to its usual yearly cadence).

As

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reports, what Intel’s current (interim) co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus revealed during a recent earnings call is that we can expect Team Blue to release Panther Lake silicon, its next generation, in the second half of 2025.

Holthaus then observed: “2026 is even more exciting from a client perspective as Panther Lake achieves meaningful volumes and we introduce our next-generation client family codenamed Nova Lake.

“Both will provide strong performance across the entire PC stack with significantly better cost and margin for us, enhancing our competitive position and reinforcing our value proposition to our partners and customers.”

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(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Analysis: Form of the Panther

Okay, so next-gen Panther Lake is still due later in 2025, and 2026 will be the year of Nova Lake, the following generation. Good to know, or rather, to have that confirmed again.

The question is: what form will Panther Lake and Nova Lake take, exactly? The current rumor is that Panther Lake will be mobile chips only, meaning just laptops, not desktop PCs. The sightings of next-gen desktop chips via the rumor mill have been confined only to Nova Lake (so far, and it’s getting late in the day now).

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Based on what Intel’s co-CEO says here, there’s no specific mention of desktop CPUs, so that isn’t helpful. However, what we do get from Holthaus is an assertion that “both will provide strong performance across the entire PC stack” and the key word here is ‘both’ of course.

The “entire PC stack” means mobile and desktop, the works, and what appears to be stated here is that both Panther Lake and Nova Lake together will cover the entire PC stack between them. This is still true if Panther Lake doesn’t have a desktop incarnation.

Alternatively, you could read this as both Panther Lake and Nova Lake will separately cover the full stack, both desktop and mobile, in their own right – but that doesn’t feel like the intention here. By which I mean, for me, this seems to be a way of phrasing things that’s deliberately ambiguous to gloss over whether or not Panther Lake will have a desktop presence.

Take that for what you will, of course, and we absolutely don’t know for sure. Maybe Intel does have Panther Lake desktop chips in the works, but based on the rumors, it seems relatively unlikely.

Another alternative could be that Panther Lake is laptop only, but Intel could bring out an Arrow Lake Refresh on desktop later this year alongside it, as a stopgap before Nova Lake desktop CPUs in 2026. Remember, that’s what happened with Raptor Lake, and it was a very minor generational bump – but past rumors have claimed Intel is not going to carry out such a refresh with Arrow Lake for desktops.

Ultimately, for now, it seems to me that the likelihood is that Intel’s next-gen desktop silicon won’t be here until 2026 when Nova Lake blazes into town.

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