Earlier in the week, online chatter pointed to a possible delay in the production of Panther Lake silicon. Well-known industry analyst—Ming-Chi Kuo—has kept tabs on the inner workings of several big semiconductor players. A previous insider tale revealed NVIDIA's allegedly revised "Blackwell" architecture roadmap. Kuo's latest insight focused on Intel and their 18A node process; rumored setbacks have reportedly pushed the launch of next-gen Panther Lake (PTL) mobile processors into 2026. Team Blue leadership has already reacted to the relatively fresh allegations—earlier in the week, John Pitzer sat down with Morgan Stanley Semiconductor Research's Joe Moore. During their conference fireside chat, Intel's Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations addressed recent internet whispers.

When asked about 18A being developed on schedule, Pitzer responded with: "yes, it is. I mean, I tend to wake up every morning trying to fish through rumors that are coming across on social media about Intel 18A. I want to be very clear. Panther Lake is on track to launch in the second half of this year. That launch date has not changed. We feel really good about the progress that we are making. In fact, if you look at where our yields are on Panther Lake today, they're actually slightly ahead at a similar point in time to Meteor Lake, if you look at the development process for Meteor Lake. I think a couple of weeks ago, there was a technical paper out that actually looked at our SRAM density on Intel 18A that compared well with TSMC's N2. Lots of different metrics you can compare technologies on. I think in general, we think about Intel 18A being an N3 type/N2 sort of comp with the external peers." Panther Lake is set to become the company's first product family that will utilize its own Foundry's 18A node process. Mid-way through February, we heard about the importance of PTL with Intel's portable gaming strategy.Pitzer elaborated on the topic of production punctuality: "we're also on track, and we've announced this that we're going to tape out our first external design on Intel 18A in the first half of this year. So we feel good about the progress that we're making there. Now I'll remind you that we will launch Panther Lake in the second half of this year. In a similar vein, we launched Meteor Lake in the second half of 2023. It wasn't until 2024 that it became real volume. We launched Lunar Lake in the second half of last year, and this is the year where it becomes real volume. And as we've said on Panther Lake, we launched in the second half of this year, but it's really not until next year that we get to that volumes where it really starts to help improve the margin profile of the overall company...I think as we turn the page into next year, and we get Panther Lake out the second half of this year and then Nova Lake the next year that we're in a very strong position in that market." Later on in the talk, he reiterated that everything is going according to plan—one of Team Blue's key milestones is the: "launch of Panther Lake in the second half of the year, which I said we're absolutely on track to do."