Intel is reportedly limiting access to some of its most interesting "Nova Lake" processors during the early development stages. According to leaker Jaykihn, chips with the internal "DS" designation are being distributed to a much smaller group of testers compared to the rest of the "Nova Lake" lineup. This "DS" designation reportedly includes parts built around two compute tiles, which are expected to be among the first to be released. These SKUs are currently known to carry the "BFC" suffix, which has appeared on several leaked Core Ultra 4000 desktop processors and is linked to Intel's larger big last-level cache (bLLC) implementation. For example, the leaked Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC is a 28-core processor combining eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and four LPE cores.

The scarcity of BFC hardware in public leaks may be more related to Intel's sampling policy than to availability. The leaker claims these processors are being kept within a restricted testing group, preventing them from appearing through the standard qualification-sample pipeline that usually produces early benchmarks and hardware detections. This way, no public benchmark scores are surfacing, leaving us in complete dark before the official launch happens.This situation could change in December 2026, when wider DS sampling is reportedly scheduled to begin, including qualification samples. This would delay the broader rollout of these chips compared to some other Nova Lake segments, despite BFC models allegedly being among the first processors Intel plans to launch. "Nova Lake-S" is currently expected to arrive in Q1 2027, and the four-digit Core Ultra 4000 naming scheme is also expected to extend to "Nova Lake-HX" mobile parts. Intel has yet to confirm the DS designation, BFC branding, sampling schedule, or final specifications, so the current information is based entirely on leaks and should be taken with a grain of salt, as always.