The platform will carry the Core Ultra 300 branding, following Lunar Lake, and is pitched as a clean showcase of Cougar Cove P-cores, Darkmont E-cores, and Intel’s first real attempt at next-gen AI horsepower. Expect five tiles per chip, including Xe3 graphics, SoC, and IO, with support for DDR5 up to 7200 MT/s and LPDDR5X as high as 8533 MT/s.

Unlike Lunar Lake, Panther Lake isn’t a stopgap. It is the one Gelsinger’s “five nodes in four years” fantasy roadmap Intel has been building toward. If Chipzilla blows it, Donald Trump’s much-trumpeted “Made in America” chip dreams will look laughable, given how much cash has been sunk into propping up the firm as the US foundry champion.

Panther Lake’s AI performance is the headline act. The 5th-gen NPU is tipped to hit 180 TOPS, a big jump on Lunar Lake’s NPU4, and one-upping AMD’s Strix Halo ambitions. That alone makes Panther Lake a litmus test for the so-called “AI PC” hype cycle that both Red and Blue are trying to cash in on.

Graphics grunt won’t be ignored either. Xe3 “Celestial” iGPUs mark their debut, with up to 12 cores, 50 per cent more than Lunar Lake, plus higher clocks and new AV1 and XMX support. Given Battlemage Xe2 was just enough to close the gap with AMD’s RDNA 3.5, Celestial has to deliver if Chipzilla wants to be taken seriously when its discrete GPUs arrive.

Early engineering samples showed 16 cores and 16 threads, with 24 MB of L2 and 18 MB of L3 cache. Not record-breaking, but enough to fuel the hype machine. Expect H-series parts with 4P+8E+4LP-E configurations at 45W, and U-series models with trimmed cores at 15W.

Panther Lake’s timing is awkward. The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street will be watching closely, because if these chips flop, the whole “Intel Foundry” narrative collapses along with it. AMD’s Strix lineup will be on shelves, and Qualcomm is lurking with Snapdragon X refreshes.

Pat Gelsinger staked his career on 18A and will not be around to see if pays off. It’s Intel’s make-or-break chance to prove it can lead in both design and manufacturing without leaning on TSMC. If it misses the mark, Chipzilla will look less like a phoenix rising and more like a turkey being fattened for political Thanksgiving.

Intel Panther Lake CPU