Intel launches Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs, made using the highly anticipated 18A process

Like previous Core Ultra generations, the Core Ultra 3 chips use a chiplet-based approach, combining several individual silicon tiles onto a fundamental “base tile” using Intel's Foveros packaging technology. The compute tile contains the CPU cores and the neural processing unit (NPU), and it is the piece built using 18A. There are two versions of this tile, one with up to 16 CPU cores and one with 8. The platform controller tile, which handles most of the I/O, is still being built at TSMC, as is the high-end 12-core version of the graphics tile. A simpler four-core version of the graphics tile is created using an older Intel 3 process, which until now has been mainly used for Intel's Xeon server CPUs.

The chiplet-based approach allows Intel to mix and match these tiles to provide three different versions of Panther Lake: the 16-core CPU and the 12-core GPU, the 16-core CPU and the 4-core GPU, and the 8-core CPU and the 4-core GPU. Versions of these chips with some CPU and GPU cores disabled fill out the rest of the Core Ultra Series 3 lineup.

Intel is making big performance claims about its very best Core Ultra Series 3 processors: up to 60 percent faster multi-core CPU performance compared to the outgoing Core Ultra 200V chips, and up to 77 percent faster integrated GPU performance. Intel also says that a “Lenovo IdeaPad reference design” with a Core Ultra

All Panther Lake chips will also contain the same neural processing unit (NPU), which can process up to 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS). This puts it well above the 40 TOPS requirement for Microsoft's Copilot+ PC label, although a bit lower than the 60 TOPS that AMD claims for its Ryzen AI 400 series and the 80 TOPS that Qualcomm says its Snapdragon X2 chips are capable of. Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 and up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports round out the main connectivity features.

It remains to be seen whether Core Ultra Series 3 chips will be a turning point for Intel's fortunes or a temporary recovery between years of missed deadlines (Panther Lake is a month later than Intel said it would be in October, although that's not bad by recent standards). But their launch later this month suggests the company's 18A facilities are up and running, opening the door for the kind of third-party chip manufacturing that former CEO Pat Gelsinger started nearly five years ago.