4 months ago
Intel turned up to CES 2026 to herald nan commencement of nan Core Ultra Series 3, a caller scope of chips offering “exceptional performance.” It says nan mobile processors, formerly known arsenic Panther Lake, present awesome graphics and artillery life alongside nan aforementioned grunt. And that, for nan first time, nan silicon has been certified for embedded and business usage cases, including robotics and smart cities. But, for illustration truthful galore stories astir Intel these days, nan motorboat is loaded pinch truthful overmuch subtext you’ll request a transcript of Cliffs Notes to understand it.
On nan look of it, these are conscionable immoderate snappy flagship chips, disposable successful Core Ultra 7 and 9 ranges arsenic good arsenic Core X7 and X9, which vessel pinch 12 Xe graphics cores complete nan accustomed four. Almost each of them connection 16 full cores and threads, and each barroom 2 person full NPU capacity of 50 PTOPS.
Image of nan Core Ultra Series 3 (Intel)
These chips are going to beryllium celebrated for 2 cardinal reasons: First, Intel claims they’re nan astir precocious chips ever manufactured successful nan US. Second, they’re nan first to beryllium made utilizing Intel’s agelong awaited 18A process, which has dogged nan institution for respective years. 18A was a cardinal plank of erstwhile CEO Pat Gelsinger’s rescue scheme to reconstruct Intel to nan apical of nan spot world. But sadly that comeback didn’t travel accelerated capable to forestall nan CEO from being (unfairly, successful my mind) deposed astatine nan extremity of 2024. It didn’t thief that, for each of nan money spent connected 18A, arsenic precocious arsenic August 2025, nan institution was reportedly still suffering from debased yields and precocious defect rates.
18A is short for 18 Angstrom, a measurement that’s acold smaller than nan nanometers we presently usage to denote transistor size successful chips. 18 Angstrom is astir balanced to 1.8 nanometers, putting it connected nan aforesaid unsmooth level arsenic nan astir precocious manufacturing process — N2 — disposable astatine TSMC successful Taiwan. At CES, Intel’s caller CEO Lip Bu-Tan said nan institution was now up of schedule for ramping accumulation connected 18A, which could people an important displacement successful nan world spot market.
You should expect to spot these chips show up successful laptops from each nan accustomed suspects, including HP, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung and nan remainder crossed this year.
