Intel Panther Lake CPUs To Double The AI Performance Over Lunar Lake, Clearwater Already In Fabs

Pat also talked about the readiness of the 18A process node which will succeed the 20A node which is being leveraged by Intel’s Arrow Lake client while Intel 3 will be adopted by the Granite Rapids / Sierra Forest Xeon CPUs which 2H 2024. It will be a rather busy launch schedule for Intel in the 2nd half of this year but let’s get back to the 18A progression.

Intel states that the Clearwater Forest CPUs have already been taped out and have now entered fabs. The Clearwater chips will be based on the next-generation Darkmont E-Core architecture and target the cloud data center segment with an expected 288 cores. Intel has already begun the prep work on these chips as we reported here.

We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year. Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half ’24, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly.

But with respect to the manufacturing, I’ll just say, hey, we look at this every single day and we’re scrutinizing carefully our progress on 18A. And obviously the great news that we just described those Clearwater Forest taping out, that gives us a lot of confidence that 18A is healthy. That’s a major product for us. Panther Lake following that shortly.

Pat Gelsinger – Intel CEO (Q4 2023 Earnings Call)

Right after Clearwater Forest, Intel’s Panther Lake CPUs will be entering the fabs too but we can expect it to land on retail by 2025. Panther Lake CPUs are expected to feature Cougar Cove P-Cores and deploy the next-gen Xe3 GPU architecture, codenamed Celestial. Each CPU will offer a generational improvement over the last one, in terms of core, graphics, and efficiency capabilities.

Intel also shed light on its AI accelerators with Gaudi 3 launching this year and bringing in a 4x uplift in performance and doubling of network bandwidth while work on the next-gen Falcon Shores GPU is ongoing.

We’re building on this momentum with Gaudi 3, which is on track to launch this year and is expected to deliver performance leadership with 4x the processing power and double the networking bandwidth for greater scale out performance. Gaudi 3 is now in the lab, powered on and showing great health and performance and Falcon Shores is also well underway.

Pat Gelsinger – Intel CEO (Q4 2023 Earnings Call)

Intel will be holding its IFS Direct Connect 2024 live stream on the 21st of February so we can expect more details on its process roadmap and the respective products during that.

Intel Desktop CPU Generations Comparison: