CES 2026: Intel Launches Core Ultra 3 Series “Panther Lake” Processors
Intel’s First Mobile Processor Built On 18A Delivers Improved Performance and Power Efficiency at Scale
Intel officially launched its Core Ultra 3 series of mobile processors dubbed “Panther Lake” at CES 2026. The new chips build upon Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake-H to deliver scalable chips that combine compute, GPU, and NPU cores to create products that claim to offer generational improvements over Intel’s previous generation while besting the competition particularly in gaming and AI. The Panther Lake offerings span the Intel Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 9 tiers as well as Core Ultra X7 and Core Ultra X9 with Intel Arc Xe3 graphics.
The new chips take advantage of a tiled architecture that allows Intel to mix and match CPU, GPU, NPU, and PCT modules into a single processor package connected via Intel’s Scalable Fabric. Intel is taking advantage of its latest 18A manufacturing process for its CPU cores (up to 8 Cougar Cove Performance Cores (P-Cores), 4 Darkmont Efficiency Cores (E-Cores), and 4 Low Power Efficiency Cores (LP E=Cores) and its Intel 3 process node for the smaller 4-Xe GPU. It is then utilizing TSMC and their N3E manufacturing process for the more powerful 12-Xe GPU and their N6 node to produce the Platform Control Tile that integrates PCI-E 5.0 (up to 12 lanes), PCI-E 4.0 (up to 8 lanes), two Thunderbolt 4, two USB 3.2, 8 USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity. Panther Lake chips support DDR5 and LPDDR5 including LPCAMM2 modules at up to 9600 MT/s for system RAM. The new processors reportedly offer 60% more multithreaded performance at the same power versus the previous generation. Further, Intel claims battery life improvements for devices running the more efficient chips achieving up to 27 hours of battery life when streaming Netflix or up to 9 hours of Microsoft Teams video conferencing (3×3) with studio effects turned on.
In addition to the latest 18A manufacturing process, Intel is also packing the chips with the latest Intel Arc B390 Xe3 graphics. The GPUs feature up to 12 Xe cores, 12 ray tracing engines and 96 XMX units for accelerating AI workloads. The company claims up to a total of 180 TOPs for AI workloads with 50 TOPS coming from the NPU and 120 TOPS from the Arc graphics. The GPUs support Intel’s latest AI acceleration technologies including multi-frame generation and XeSS3. Intel is claiming 77% faster graphics and 53% faster AI performance versus the Core Ultra 9 288V and 73% better gaming performance on average vs AMD’s HX 370 processor. Additionally, Intel claims that the Panther Lake Core Ultra 3 chips offer twice the LLM performance of the Intel Core Ultra 200H and 4.3-times the LLM performance of the AMD HX 370.
According to Jim Johnson, Intel VP & GM of Client Computing Group: “With Series 3, we are laser focused on improving power efficiency, adding more CPU performance, a bigger GPU in a class of its own, more AI compute and app compatibility you can count on with x86.”
Intel has quite a few design wins from partners at CES this year. With laptops powered by the new processors being available after January 27th and other AI edge computing systems coming as soon as Q1, we should see if the new chips live up to the performance and power efficiency claims soon. It is good to see Intel getting back into stride with their Core Ultra generations of mobile chips, and for the sake of enthusiasts and consumers at large I hope that their progress continues and they are able to remain competitive. The mobile market in particular is an important consumer level battleground, and I am glad to see the Intel Arc advancements in particular. What are your thoughts on Panther Lake and Intel’s future plans?
i have found no visible email on the site to contact you through, so please don’t be too weirded out by this comment, but i can’t access your website without a vpn or anything similar, regardless of device, isp (from my country, Romania), or browser i use. I used to be able to access the site since i started following, some 15 years ago. then it wasn’t accessible for a time, then i could access it again, and for a few years now i’m not able to access without a vpn.
i now have a severe flu, and in my delirium and “free time” i am trying to troubleshoot it. so it does work with vpns, or vpn like services (cloudflare warp). the rss feeds for the articles also sort of work (the rss summary of the article loads, but not the actual article) and the podcast definitely works without issues. i have tried troubleshooting if all my isps are blocking your domain or if akamai is blocking my ips, but unless the block happens on some hidden national blocklist or it happens between akamai and pcper.com, i have found no clear answers.
https://check-host.net/check-report/3686281ck2d3 is about as far as i got, for now. i’m not sure that 100% of that data is accurate but it does show that the site is not accessible from some countries or just regions of countries.
i hope i am not too forward if i ask you to verify false positive blockage from your end.
i don’t know if i should leave my email here, or if you can access it from my user on your end.
Hi, thanks for reaching out. If you try a tracert to us, can you see if there is address where the hops just stop?
1 <1 ms <1 ms 5 ms LauRoman [192.168.1.1]
2 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms y.y.y.y
3 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 10.225.83.161
4 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 10.220.188.200
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 6 ms * 6 ms buca-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.180.105]
7 25 ms 25 ms 26 ms win-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.114.112]
8 35 ms 35 ms 35 ms ffm-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.138.22]
9 48 ms 43 ms 43 ms prs-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.122.138]
10 127 ms 127 ms 127 ms ash-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.140.107]
11 125 ms 125 ms 125 ms rest-b2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.121.216]
12 130 ms 125 ms 125 ms akamai-ic-386429.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.190.161]
13 133 ms 132 ms 132 ms ae3.r21.iad02.mag.netarch.akamai.com [23.209.165.106]
14 125 ms 125 ms 124 ms ae3.r23.iad04.icn.netarch.akamai.com [23.209.165.127]
15 129 ms 129 ms 130 ms ae17.r02.ewr01.icn.netarch.akamai.com [23.193.113.17]
16 132 ms 132 ms 132 ms ae2.r02.ewr01.ien.netarch.akamai.com [23.203.154.41]
17 153 ms 132 ms 132 ms ae23.gw2.cjj1.netarch.akamai.com [23.203.154.43]
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
i've just hidden my public ip.
i've also went to a few sites to test if my ip (range) was part of some botnet or other stuff, but i have yet to find anything.
Huh, I can trace back to 62.115.180.105 here in Canada no problem. It skips all the akamai.com hops though. I can also trace to 23.203.154.43 so I’m thinking it’s something to do with your traffic hitting akamai.com and getting stopped. That’s weird as they are only supposed to block traffic specified by site owners.
I’ll bug Bront.
Hey, are you able to connect using our IP rather than the domain name? 104.200.29.114 AFAIK we do not have a country block for Romania but perhaps the dynamic IP your ISP Is assigning you was included in a blacklist. Maybe try power cycling your modem or contacting your ISP to try to get a different IP. We dont have email links in our bios but if you go to the About page there should be a way to message your specific IP if you’d like to help them troubleshoot the issue. I am not sure if they can see it based on your user profile, Probably, but I am not sure how easy it is to access. Edit: It’s okay they should be able to see it in the dashboard if they need it :).
Thank you for being a loyal reader / viewer! 15 years might be around the same time I found the site :). I hope that you feel better soon!
i’ve already said in another reply, that it’s the same thing from all isps and browsers i have tried, mobile or not (power cyclig will do nothing), so it definitely is some kind of blocking happening somwhere
i also can’t access the site using the ip. that confirms that there is some kind of blocking or traffic black hole happening somwhere.