[News] Key Highlights to Watch at CES 2026: From Intel Panther Lake to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite

With CES 2026 approaching, what new releases are worth watching? According to a column by Zhu Xi in TechNews, while next year may see relatively fewer vendors launching new products, there are still several notable releases worth anticipating. The following highlights the key upcoming products in the PC space.

Panther Lake Reportedly Set for Official Debut at CES 2026

During Tech Tour 2025, Intel confirmed that it plans to officially launch its Panther Lake “Core Ultra Series 3” CPUs at CES 2026, according to Wccftech.  As highlighted by TechNews, Panther Lake will mark Intel’s first processor built on its in-house 18A process, with transistor density said to be comparable to TSMC’s N3. Industry observers are closely watching whether Panther Lake can rival the performance and power efficiency of the previous-generation Arrow Lake, which was manufactured using TSMC’s N3B process.

TechNews also notes that Panther Lake’s all-new Xe3 integrated graphics architecture is expected to be another major highlight, with a potential increase in core count. Given the strong graphics performance and power efficiency already demonstrated by the 140V iGPU in Lunar Lake, improvements in both architecture and core count suggest that Panther Lake’s iGPU may be able to edge past AMD’s 890M, potentially positioning it among the most capable integrated GPUs currently available on x86 processors.

In addition, TechNews notes that industry watchers are closely monitoring whether Intel may advance the official debut of Arrow Lake Refresh to CES. As Wccftech indicates, the Arrow Lake Refresh lineup is expected to serve as Intel’s next main desktop CPU offering, potentially featuring higher clock speeds than the original models while keeping core configurations largely unchanged.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Emerges as a CES 2026 Highlight

As noted by TechNews, another potential highlight of CES 2026 could be Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite. Unlike the previous generation, which was positioned mainly at the entry-level segment, Qualcomm has strengthened its high-end lineup this time by unveiling the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, featuring up to 18 CPU cores. TechNews adds that Qualcomm is expected to demonstrate actual devices powered by the new chip at CES.

The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is claimed to deliver the fastest and most power-efficient performance for Windows PCs, offering up to 75% higher CPU performance than competing solutions at the same power level, according to Qualcomm’s official website. TechPowerUp, citing ComputerBase, indicates that the flagship X2E-96-100 variant of the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme features LPDDR5X memory arrays stacked on-package around an 18-core Oryon 3 CPU cluster, a layout designed to reduce memory latency and improve sustained throughput for demanding AI workloads.

Read more

• [Insights] Intel’s Panther Lake Emerges — Can 18A Drive an Advanced-Process Comeback?
• [News] Intel Reportedly Plans Major CPU Roadmap Shifts: From Hammer Lake to NVIDIA Collaboration

(Photo credit: Intel)