Friday, January 31st 2025

Speculative Intel "Nova Lake" CPU Core Configurations Leaked Online
Intel's freshly uploaded fourth-quarter 2024 "CEO/CFO earnings call comments" document has revealed grand CPU-related plans for 2025 and beyond. One of Team Blue's interim leaders—Michelle Johnston Holthaus—believes that "Nova Lake" processors (a next-generation client family) will arrive in 2026, following a comprehensive rollout of "Panther Lake" CPU products. This official timeline matches previously leaked and rumored development schedules—most notably, in a shipping manifest that was discovered last week. In recent times, industry watchdogs have linked "Nova Lake" to Intel's own 14A node and a TSMC 2 nm process node. Additionally, tipsters pointed to an apparent selection of Coyote Cove performance cores and Arctic Wolf efficiency-oriented cores.
Following yesterday's official announcements, a leaker shared several insights—theorized core configurations and manufacturing details were posted on the Hardware subreddit. Community members were engaged in a debate over Intel's "killing of Falcon Shore," but a plucky contributor—going under the moniker "Exist50"—redirected conversation to all-things "Nova Lake." They believe that Intel has shifted all "compute dies to TSMC" for manufacturing, after a change in plans—initial designs had the "8+16 die" on TSMC's N2P, and the "4+8 die on Intel 18A." Exist50 seemed to have inside track knowledge of product ranges: "Nova Lake (NVL) has a unified HUB/SoC die across mobile and desktop. So yeah, the baseline there is 4+8+4. But there's at least one more die for mobile." The flagship desktop (NVL-S or NVL-SK) chip's configuration could feature as many as sixteen performance cores and thirty-two efficiency cores, due to tile reuse—2x (8P+16E). Exist50 advised Intel CPU enthusiasts to forgo current generation offerings. "Nova Lake" should be: "quite a jump from Arrow Lake (ARL) in terms of MT performance, to say the least. I think anyone who buys ARL will end up regretting it, big time!"Based on the leaker's information, VideoCardz has kindly compiled this data into a stack of Intel "Nova Lake" product tiers with "matching" core configurations:
Sources:
Hardware Subreddit, HXL/9550pro Tweet, VideoCardz
Following yesterday's official announcements, a leaker shared several insights—theorized core configurations and manufacturing details were posted on the Hardware subreddit. Community members were engaged in a debate over Intel's "killing of Falcon Shore," but a plucky contributor—going under the moniker "Exist50"—redirected conversation to all-things "Nova Lake." They believe that Intel has shifted all "compute dies to TSMC" for manufacturing, after a change in plans—initial designs had the "8+16 die" on TSMC's N2P, and the "4+8 die on Intel 18A." Exist50 seemed to have inside track knowledge of product ranges: "Nova Lake (NVL) has a unified HUB/SoC die across mobile and desktop. So yeah, the baseline there is 4+8+4. But there's at least one more die for mobile." The flagship desktop (NVL-S or NVL-SK) chip's configuration could feature as many as sixteen performance cores and thirty-two efficiency cores, due to tile reuse—2x (8P+16E). Exist50 advised Intel CPU enthusiasts to forgo current generation offerings. "Nova Lake" should be: "quite a jump from Arrow Lake (ARL) in terms of MT performance, to say the least. I think anyone who buys ARL will end up regretting it, big time!"Based on the leaker's information, VideoCardz has kindly compiled this data into a stack of Intel "Nova Lake" product tiers with "matching" core configurations:
- NVL-SK: 2x (8P+16E)
- NVL-HX: 1x (8P+16E)
- NVL-S/NVL-H: 4P+8E
- NVL-U: 4P+OE
11 Comments on Speculative Intel "Nova Lake" CPU Core Configurations Leaked Online
And if the price is right. Currently 245K costs $40 above 225 or better yet Ultra 7 at $140 more. Makes no sense. Where is the good cheap 10 core budget CPU. I don't need 50 core.
Sadly no word on the memory controller, but it's safe to assume Intel still thinks best location is on the moon orbiting the earth for improving latency.
Also they still have hyperthreading which intel dropped for no reason at all.
Intel reminds me of Yago in Aladdin at the end. When he is stuffing crackers down the sultan's mouth. Here have lots of E core need more performance heres more E core lots of E cores more and more E cores. Meanwhile AMD is just laughing and laughing how stupid Intel is right now.
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