In a LinkedIn job description, an Intel graphics hardware engineer revealed the codename for a new Intel integrated graphics unit and CPU architecture known as Panther Lake. The engineer then pulled out the information, tom’s hardware I saw the blurb during the live and took a screenshot.
We don’t know anything about this mysterious architecture, but we do know that iGP runs on Intel’s version of the Xe3 Celestial GPU architecture. According to their LinkedIn profile, Panther Lake and its associated iGP will be announced at Intel Architecture Day 22. If true, you should know some official architecture and power specs by then.
Based on the details provided, Panther Lake and its associated integrated graphics processors are expected to go into production a few years after Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake are released. Lunar Lake-Intel’s furthest CPU architecture of his three is set to arrive in 2024. As such, Panther Lake will likely be around 2024 or 2025.
Based on this timeline, we speculate that Panther Lake (as a CPU architecture) will likely utilize Intel’s 20A manufacturing process which is set to arrive in late 2024. 20A is a major milestone for Intel and the first node to enter Angstrom. We are no longer able to accurately measure the physical characteristics of a chip to the nanometer scale. Instead, chips are measured in Angstroms, or ten billionths of a meter.
This does not mean that individual transistors are guaranteed to be less than 1 nanometer in size, but that it is no longer possible to measure physical characteristics at the nanometer scale. In addition to this new breakthrough, the 20A features an all-new transistor architecture called RibbonFET, the successor to EUV, and a new transistor routing technology called PowerVia Interconnect.
Intel hasn’t specified any performance or wattage increases, but it’s safe to assume that 20A will have a significant performance boost over Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. For reference, the Intel 4 used in Meteor Lake promises a 20% performance improvement per watt over Alder/Raptor Lake. Intel 3 – 18% better performance per watt than Intel 4.
If this same trend continues, the Intel 20A will probably be at least 15% more efficient than the Intel 3, and Panther Lake will probably be 50% more efficient than Alder Lake or Raptor Lake.
Panther Lake iGP
As with the CPU side of the equation, we know essentially nothing about Intel’s Celestial GPU architecture. Celestial will be Intel’s third generation GPU after Arc Alchemist and Battlemage and will operate under the Xe3 nomenclature.
However, one fact that LinkedIn’s description has revealed is that Celestial isn’t just used in discrete GPUs, it’s also used in Intel’s integrated graphics solutions. Given that Intel is doing this with their current GPU architectures, this isn’t surprising, but it’s an indication that Intel is confident enough in their new discrete GPU architecture that they can continue to use it in their integrated graphics solutions. Good to know.
