Intel has officially launched its Core Ultra Series 3 processors, codenamed Panther Lake, marking the company’s first consumer platform built on its new Intel 18A manufacturing process. The rollout is being supported by dozens of PC makers, positioning Panther Lake as Intel’s flagship mobile platform for 2026.
At Intel’s CES 2026 launch event, executives emphasized the significance of the moment, highlighting that Panther Lake represents the first shipping products based on Intel 18A. The process combines RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors with PowerVia backside power delivery, a pairing Intel says enables up to 15 percent better performance per watt. The company framed Panther Lake as a major step forward in efficiency and architectural balance, particularly for thin-and-light and performance-focused laptops.
Intel previously previewed Panther Lake in October, outlining both the platform’s goals and its internal structure. With Core Ultra Series 3, Intel returns to a three-tier core design first seen in Meteor Lake, combining performance cores (P-cores), efficiency cores (E-cores), and low-power efficiency cores (LP E-cores). These are paired with a new NPU capable of delivering up to 50 TOPS of AI performance, alongside Intel’s Xe3 integrated graphics architecture, which is expected to significantly improve 3D and gaming performance.
According to Intel, Panther Lake delivers roughly 10 percent higher single-threaded performance than Lunar Lake at the same power level. In multithreaded workloads, Intel claims gains of more than 50 percent over both Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, while still consuming about 10 percent less power than Lunar Lake. Internally, Intel has characterized Panther Lake as offering Arrow Lake–class performance with Lunar Lake–level power efficiency, a combination aimed squarely at premium mobile systems.
The Panther Lake lineup is divided into three main configurations. The first is an 8-core design featuring 4 P-cores and 4 LP E-cores, paired with 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units, and supporting either LPDDR5X-6800 or DDR5-6400 memory. The second configuration scales up to 16 cores, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores, while retaining 4 Xe3 GPU cores and expanding memory support up to LPDDR5X-8533 or DDR5-7200. The top-tier configuration also uses a 16-core CPU layout but dramatically increases graphics capability, featuring 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray-tracing units, paired exclusively with LPDDR5X-9600 memory.
Intel highlighted performance gains at CES using Cinebench 2024 multicore results, claiming up to 60 percent higher performance compared to the Core Ultra 200 series, also known as Lunar Lake. Depending on the workload, Intel also said power consumption can be reduced by as much as 2.8 times. The high-end 12-Xe configuration is expected to form the backbone of premium Panther Lake laptops and will be branded as Intel Arc B390 graphics. Intel claims this configuration delivers approximately 73 percent higher gaming performance than Lunar Lake, positioning Panther Lake as Intel’s most capable integrated graphics platform to date.