Intel Announces Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" Processors
Intel Chairperson Press Conference On 18 May 2006, the company introduced its Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake". Its first 18A branded product also launched at the same time. Intel announced that it has officially launched its new Panther Lake processors, which herald the Core Ultra Series 3 family. These processors are the newest generation of CPUs built by Intel and manufactured in Intel's "18A" process technology, with new Performance-cores, Efficient-cores, GPU cores, and a novel NPU/IPU. The specific official launch is scheduled for CES 2026.
Panther Lake Die Configurations and Expansion
This family employs flexible multi-tile architecture combined with three primary die configurations dedicated to different devices, ranging from extremely thin and light laptops to powerful mobile systems.
- Panther Lake 8C: It is comprised of 4 P-Cores, 4 LP-E Cores, and a GPU tile housing 4 Xe3 Cores. Other features include LPDDR5x-6800 memory support, and its target is the Lunar Lake successor.
- Panther Lake 16C: This processor has 4 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, 4 LP-E Cores, and a GPU tile with 4 Xe3 Cores. Memory support has been increased to LPDDR5x-8533.
- Panther Lake 16C (12 Xe): It is the premium 16-core compute tile. But it belongs to a bigger GPU configuration, as it has 12 Xe3 Cores and 12 RT units. It works with much faster LPDDR5X-9600 memory to do so.
Tests of the CPU
With improved efficiency and competence in multicore performance, the Core Ultra Series 3 marked a major forward step in performance.
- Single-Core Efficiency: The panther lake CPUs deliver comparable power to that of AMD HX 370 in terms of single-core Cinebench 2024 performance but consume up to 40% less power on consumption of single-core operations.
- Multi-Core Performance: In the Cinebench 2024 multicore test, the flagship Core Ultra 9 388H displays a 60% performance enhancement over the previous-generation Core Ultra 9 288V at the same power level.
Arc B390 iGPU: A Leap in Integrated Graphics
The Xe3 collaborated on the architecture for the integrated Arc B-Series GPUs, which are the major highlights of the Panther Lake introduction. A good example would be its premier Arc B390 iGPU, which is found on the top die with enormous performance improvements.
- vs. AMD: In general, it is up to 82% faster than AMD's Radeon 890M iGPU in a number of games using native 1080p resolution.
- vs. Qualcomm: It institutes a 2.6x performance head start over one Adreno GPU in the Snapdragon X Elite 84-100.
- vs. NVIDIA Discrete GPU: At 45W sustained TDP, the Arc B390 performance matches or exceeds that of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (60W), showing an average of 10% ahead.
Advanced Features: The Arc B-Series is the first iGPU to support Multi-Frame Generation (MFG), giving a notable improvement in visual smoothness for supported titles such as Cyberpunk 2077.
Device Support and Provisioning
Intel does not limit its Panther Lake CPUs to Mex-laptops and Mini PCs. This was also confirmed by Intel when it announced its architecture for gaming handhelds through partners such as MSI, GPD, and OneXPlayer. After the official announcement at CES 2026, full market availability of the "Core Ultra Series 3" products will happen in Q1 2026.
