Intel Achieves Panther Lake “Power On” On Crucial 18A Node, Next-Gen Is All About IPC & Panther Lake Supports Several Segments & More Memory Flexibility

Intel has achieved "Power On" with its next-gen Panther Lake CPUs that utilize the 18A process node and are coming to several segments with improvements across the board.

Intel's Panther Lake Achieves Power-On With 18A Process Node, Engineering Team Now Gunning For IPC Improvements Versus Clock Speed Bumps

During their keynote, Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinsger, announced that the next-gen Panther Lake CPUs are on track and have achieved "Power On" status which is a crucial milestone in the development of chips. Pat held a wafer of the Panther Lake CPUs during the keynote which uses the 18A process node, marking a major step from the TSMC-based Lunar Lake to the in-house Panther Lake design.

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So far, we have only seen rumors that the next-gen cores for Panther Lake will be known as Cougar Cove on the P-Core and an enhanced version of Skymont on the E-Core side. The ones being used by the next-gen Clearwater Forest are called Darkmont. While the company isn't going into any specifics on Panther Lake, the recent Tech Tour gave us some insight into how Panther Lake will mark a radical shift from the existing engineering mindset.

It was revealed during a Q&A session that Intel states that there are two ways to do chips, you either invest in making significant changes to the architecture or just use high-frequency as your model. The latter is more difficult and takes a lot more time so starting with Lunar Lake, Intel has learned that it will be a wiser decision to just go the first route which is to introduce architectural changes for its next-gen chips. The microarchitecture development model also brings a lot more power efficiency to the table so in future chips following Lunar Lake, it's going to be all about going after IPC.

Intel also stated that Panther Lake will be a very flexible and scalable design. The flexibility being discussed is