Monday, June 16th 2025
Intel "Nova Lake‑S" Series: Seven SKUs, Up to 52 Cores and 150 W TDP
Rumors of Intel's "Nova Lake-S" processors are increasing, meaning that the design is nearing completion. Expected to arrive in the second half of 2026, Nova Lake‑S will offer configurations ranging from mainstream quad‑core models to a flagship with 52 cores. Initial information suggests that Intel will employ a tile-based design, separating LPE cores from P-Cores and E-Cores to optimize flexibility and yield. At the top of the lineup is the rumored Core Ultra 9 model, possibly designated 385K. It will combine 16 P-cores, 32 E-cores, and four LPE-cores for a total of 52 cores, as previously rumored. With a TDP of 150 W, it will be the most powerful SKU Intel prepared for this generation. Below the flagship, Intel appears to be planning a Core Ultra 7 SKU with 14 P-cores, 24 E-cores, and four LPE cores, totaling 42 cores.
The Core Ultra 5 series may include three variants: a 28-core version with eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and four LPE-cores; a 24-core version with eight P-cores, 12 E-cores, and four LPE-cores; and an 18-core model with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores. Entry-level Core Ultra 3 parts would feature either a 16-core configuration with four P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores, or a 12-core option with four P-cores, four E-cores, and four LPE-cores, both targeting a 65 W power envelope. All desktop SKUs are expected to feature four LPE cores on a separate die, suggesting a multi-tile package similar to Meteor Lake. Power demands will range from 65 W in entry-level segments to 150 W for high-end parts. Intel is reportedly preparing a new LGA 1954 socket even as it readies an Arrow Lake-S refresh for late 2025. Intel has also reportedly designated Xe3 "Celestial" for graphics rendering and Xe4 "Druid" for media and display duties.
Sources:
chi11eddog on X, via VideoCardz
The Core Ultra 5 series may include three variants: a 28-core version with eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and four LPE-cores; a 24-core version with eight P-cores, 12 E-cores, and four LPE-cores; and an 18-core model with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores. Entry-level Core Ultra 3 parts would feature either a 16-core configuration with four P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores, or a 12-core option with four P-cores, four E-cores, and four LPE-cores, both targeting a 65 W power envelope. All desktop SKUs are expected to feature four LPE cores on a separate die, suggesting a multi-tile package similar to Meteor Lake. Power demands will range from 65 W in entry-level segments to 150 W for high-end parts. Intel is reportedly preparing a new LGA 1954 socket even as it readies an Arrow Lake-S refresh for late 2025. Intel has also reportedly designated Xe3 "Celestial" for graphics rendering and Xe4 "Druid" for media and display duties.
100 Comments on Intel "Nova Lake‑S" Series: Seven SKUs, Up to 52 Cores and 150 W TDP
Nova Lake - up to 52 cores on 18A
Zen 6 - up to 48 or 64 threads on N2
UDNA - merging all GPU IP into one on N2
Rubin - more performance over blackwell on N2
Whether that translates into effective performance, however, is an entirely different story.
That's all fine and dandy for most basic tasks and even gaming, but computing in general, not just "AI" is becoming more and more memory/bandwidth bound and limited.
Apple has been giving consumers 260-380GB/s for the past two years. Now M4 Max is up to 500 GB/s. Guesstimates for M5 Max (going head to head with the above) are in the 500 to 700 GB/s range. Yes, I'm comparing SoCs to CPUs accessing RAM via DIMMs, but the AMD Ryzen AI+ Max 395 is equally bad and it's an integrated design.
Yes, design cycles are long in the tooth, but AMD and Intel should finally, after years of lagging, get with the RAM bandwidth program.
I'm getting bored waiting for something that offers 256GB RAM (and it works!) at good latencies, speeds and great bandwidth, without paying $60000+ for it.
But I expect Intel to fail this one with 99.999% probability, again. And I'm hopefully not the only one who thinks that dual channel DIMMs on a 52-core CPU is not necessarily the best idea ever.
Furthermore, M4/M5 Max are extremely expensive chips, the systems they're in are many times the cost of a ~$700 top end consumer chip from Intel. There's the quad/octa channel chips/platforms for comparable prices.
Natural evolution of P/E and node shrink is more cores, especially with HT deprecated for security/ST.
I think this is a great thing personally, only downside is having to buy more cores to get the best frequency bins. Kinda sucks if you only want/need ~20 threads as fast as possible etc.
I'd love to be wrong, maybe 2025 we'll finally get game engines and apps that can actually use all these cores but it seems unlikely.
But even if we did, stretching so far would still only would reach 160 GB/s. It's a significant step up from 96 GB/s with DDR5-6000, but still much less than the 273 GB/s of the M4 Pro.
They need to either move to quad-channel or make a new DIMM format that is 128-bit.
DIMMs are dead at these frequencies anyway. And true quad channel will not happen on consumer. Will either be single slot CAMM2 with whatever bandwidth they want and no physical slots/channels etc, or just soldered.
It's coming... eventually.
Single slot means 128-bit max, the same as current DIMMs in dual channel configuration. That's not enough.
Also, the base M4 only gets 120GB/s with LPDDR5X 7500 MT/s. The higher bandwidth you're talking about is the fused chips, which is misleading and can't be replicated by Intel or AMD in consumer chips, especially when they want to sell for $200.The 52 cores are going to be in the $600 CPU, The vast majority of users are not going to be buying it anyway. The mid-range chips have a reasonable 6-8 P cores, 8-12 e cores, and a LP island.
Also, I'm talking about general performance here, not the very niche and few workloads that actually fully utilize Intel's P and E cores. Most users don't need or will benefit from all those extra E-cores, hence why it's more of a PR gimmick than anything else.
Lastly, please do blindly trust Intel's judgment of how many cores the average user needs, but don't forget it is the same company that gave you nothing but 4-cores on 7 generations of products.
Again, if you want memory bandwidth, you don't go to a consumer platform, and again, the M4 Max you're comparing to is a significantly more expensive platform than the upcoming Intel Nova Lake, and the actual competition in the x86 space is from workstation platforms.
www.techpowerup.com/316595/jedec-publishes-new-camm2-memory-module-standard