Sources of reliability have spilled some details about Intel's ever-awaited Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs. The iGPU seems far more interesting. Gess Intel is cooking something very special.
The major news from leaker Jaykihn is that Nova Lake-S could feature an iGPU that cunningly amalgamates two different graphics architectures Xe3 and Xe4. Why should we care
The idea is this The Xe3 "Celestial" architecture does the heavy lifting for real gaming and graphics rendering. That's where the raw graphical power shall come from. But for just displaying your desktop, playing some video and media encoding/decoding, perhaps Intel could be calling upon its newer Xe4 "Druid" architecture. In effect, it could mean Xe4 performs well when it comes to these more relaxed (but equally very important) tasks, leaving Xe3 free to concentrate on pure performance.
Another leaker, Bionic_Squash, backs the theory, stating that media capabilities will be supportive of "professional codec support." He also insinuates that the Xe3 part in Nova Lake-S shall hardly resemble the conventional version it would have "a number of modifications," perhaps to best serve this hybrid endeavor. The "plain" Xe3 might be what we could see in dedicated Arc Celestial graphics cards or high-end Panther Lake laptop chips.
Now, apart from the iGPU, which is an interesting feature, Nova Lake-S is indeed going to be big for Intel. So far, leaks show some serious core counts:
- A flagship monster perhaps with 52 cores (16 Performance-cores, 32 Efficiency-cores, and 4 Low-Power E-cores).
- High-end laptop versions at 28 cores.
- Mid-range desktop and laptop SKUs around 16 cores.
- An entry-level version with 8 cores.
It's still very early in the game, and we do not know if all these versions will come with the same Xe3+Xe4 iGPU. With quite a flexible tile-based architecture, modern CPUs give Intel a lot of leeway for mixing and matching. Rumor also has it that Nova Lake-S will be manufactured using a combination of Intel's in-house 18A process and TSMC's 2nm process.
A busy calendar it surely is for Intel. Panther Lake laptop CPUs would be expected in the second half of 2025, followed by an Arrow Lake Refresh for desktop. Then, Nova Lake could come along somewhere in the second half of 2026. This hybrid iGPU, which might be the first to showcase Xe4 capabilities, will be very important in regaining Intel's strength.
Even more interestingly, it seems like Intel might just use Xe4 architecture for specific tasks even before we set our eyes on the dedicated Xe4 graphics cards (which might come in 2027), thus making it a very good set-up for balancing power and efficiency, especially for those cheaper chips that may require lesser Xe3 cores for graphics but can still tap into the Xe4 media features.
Supposedly, Panther Lake mobile chips will be the first launch of the Xe3 architecture later on in the year however, desktop-wise, we would see Arrow Lake Refresh and the P-Core only Bartlett Lake-S. Nova Lake-S is also expected to employ a completely new LGA 1954 socket, which, interestingly, is said to have the same dimensions as the current LGA 1700 and upcoming LGA 1851 sockets.
Of course, as of now, these are all leaks and rumors. But if indeed real, Intel Nova Lake-S could be quite an amazing show for desktop PC users. Stay tuned
