Intel says major AI boost is coming in Panther Lake CPUs, on top of Arrow and Lunar Lake chip improvements

What just happened? Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has revealed that the company is targeting significant improvement in AI performance for its Panther Lake processors over the upcoming Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake lineups. At the same time, Gelsinger also said that Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake platforms will themselves offer a massive uplift in AI performance over current-gen Meteor Lake CPUs.

Speaking at the company's Q4 2023 earnings call, Gelsinger revealed that the company is looking to improve the AI performance of its x86 processors by as much as 6x within the next few generations. According to him, most of the improvements will come from the Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake lineups that will "triple our AI performance," presumably over the Meteor Lake chips. With Panther Lake, Gelsinger says the company is targeting a further 2x improvement in AI performance.

If Intel can hit its targets, Panther Lake will offer a six-fold increase in AI performance compared to Meteor Lake, which is the first AI-enabled processor lineup from the company. While Meteor Lake was released in December 2023, Panther Lake is expected to debut in 2025 following the launch of Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors later this year.

Intel had earlier confirmed that Panther Lake will be based on the company's 18A node and will hit the market sometime next year. Not much else is known about the platform at this stage, but rumors suggest that it will utilize the same LGA-1851 socket as Arrow Lake and come with Cougar Cove P-Cores and Darkmont E-Cores. On the GPU side, it is expected to incorporate Intel's Xe3 Celestial integrated graphics. The Panther Lake lineup is tipped to include both desktop and laptop processors.

Meanwhile, Gelsinger also confirmed that the Clearwater Forest datacenter CPUs are already in the fabs. Like Panther Lake, Clearwater Forest will also incorporate Darkmont E-cores, but will give P-cores a miss. Intel will launch Clearwater Forest sometime next year as a follow-up to the Sierra Forest Xeon CPUs that are expected to debut later this year.