[News] More Intel Nova Lake Buzz: 10%+ Performance Boost, Fresh Cores, and Foundry Partners

Recent market speculation hinted that Intel’s upcoming Nova Lake CPU, the successor to Panther Lake, might use TSMC’s 2nm process. Now, more details have emerged. According to Wccftech, Intel’s Nova Lake-S is expected to deliver major performance boosts, including a 10%+ improvement in single-threaded performance and over 60% gains in multi-threaded performance.

Intel’s Panther Lake will be the first processor built with its 18A technology, while the Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs are expected to launch in 2026, as per Wccftech. Another report from yahoo!tech suggested that Nova Lake is likely to be released sometime in the fall. Here are the latest highlights, giving the market a glimpse of what to expect from the product.

New Cove P-Cores/ Arctic Wolf E-Cores Power the Gains

As highlighted by Wccftech, Nova Lake-S CPUs feature the latest Coyote Cove P-Cores and Arctic Wolf E-Cores, both of which are new architectures and expected to deliver big gains.

Notably, Tom’s Hardware suggests that unlike Arrow Lake, which uses Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores, Nova Lake could make a splash by bringing LPE-Cores (Low Power E-Cores) to desktops for the first time—an innovation we first saw in Intel’s mobile Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) processors.

On the other hand, Wccftech highlights that while leaked images don’t specify whether the 10%+ single-threaded performance improvement is compared to Arrow Lake-S or Raptor Lake-S, the gains seem consistent with the 8% boost in single-threaded and 15% increase in multi-core performance seen between Arrow Lake-S and Raptor Lake-S.

With Nova Lake-S pushing up to 52 cores, compared to Arrow Lake-S’s 24, these multi-core gains are set to be a big leap forward, the report adds.

Low-Power Island Introduction

In addition, Wccftech highlights an exciting feature of Nova Lake: the introduction of a new Low-Power Island. This area will reportedly house 4 LPE-Cores based on the Arctic Wolf architecture, designed to deliver efficient performance without compromising power.

According to Tom’s Hardware, Nova Lake’s LPE-Cores are expected to be integrated directly into the SoC tile. These LPE-cores are specially designed to handle ultra-low-power tasks or background operations. By assigning different cores to specific workloads, Intel aims to boost power efficiency in Nova Lake while keeping performance optimized, the report suggests.

In summary, Nova Lake’s flagship model, likely branded as “Core Ultra 9,” is expected to feature an impressive 52 cores—16 P-Cores, 32 E-Cores, and 4 LPE-Cores dedicated to efficiency, as per Wccftech.

Partly Outsourced to TSMC

Notably, as Tom’s Hardware previously reported, Intel’s co-CEO Michelle Holthaus, who held the position at the time, confirmed that some components of Nova Lake would be outsourced to external foundries, likely TSMC.

While former CEO Pat Gelsinger said 70% of Panther Lake would be built on Intel Foundry silicon, this number is expected to improve with Nova Lake, the report indicated.

An April report from the Economic Daily News revealed that Intel, alongside AMD and Apple, is set to join TSMC’s first wave of 2nm clients. The report suggested Intel will outsource Nova Lake’s Compute Tile to TSMC.

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(Photo credit: Intel)