Panther Lake (microprocessor)
Panther Lake is the codename for Core Ultra Series 3 mobile processors developed by Intel. The architecture was launched in January 2026 at CES 2026. It succeeds and extends Lunar Lake and is designed as a scalable mobile platform spanning a wider range of power and performance targets, from thin-and-light laptops to higher-performance mobile systems.
Panther Lake has been widely praised for its power-efficiency and integrated graphics performance, having been noted as a "return to form" for Intel.
Architecture
Panther Lake combines hybrid CPU cores manufactured on Intel's in-house 18A process with integrated graphics based on the Arc Xe3 architecture, which is derived from the earlier Xe2—codename Battlemage—design, along with updated AI acceleration hardware.Rather than introducing a fundamentally new CPU or GPU architecture, Panther Lake focuses on higher core counts, expanded graphics configurations, and increased power budgets enabled by a newer manufacturing node and modular tile-based design; some models continue to rely on TSMC manufacturing for the GPU on its N3E process.
Furthermore, instead of developing a more capable NPU, Intel has opted for an optimized, smaller and more efficient NPU that delivers about the same performance as the previous generation's NPU.