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Intel confirms Nova Lake CPUs will use advanced 18A-P node, more details at CES — company says it's taking Panther Lake capacity offline to build more Granite Rapids data center CPUs
Intel's next-gen Nova Lake desktop processors will be the first client product to use Intel's enhanced 18A-P node, CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirmed in the company's Q3 2026 earnings call. The chief executive also said that the company intends to share more about Nova Lake at CES in January. The company's chief financial officer shared that Intel intends to take Panther Lake capacity offline to build more Granite Rapids data center CPUs.
"Nova Lake, our first Intel 18A-P client product, is tracking ahead of schedule, with design wins expecting to be twice those of Panther Lake at launch," Tan said in his prepared remarks. "We look forward to sharing more at CES in January."
There has been a lot of speculation about what node Intel's Nova Lake CPUs will use, with the rumor mill ping-ponging between Intel 18A and TSMC's N2P. Current speculation says the chip will use 18A-P for the SoC tile while using TSMC's N2P for the compute tile. It seems unlikely that Intel would use its most advanced node for an SoC tile, though it's possible.
Compared to 18A, which is available in Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake products currently, 18A-P comes with a 9% improvement in speed at iso-power, or an 18% reduction in power at iso-speed. Intel has described 18A-P as a drop-in replacement for 18A, allowing designs built for 18A to instead leverage 18A-P without any extra engineering work.
For 18A products, Intel says its new Wildcat Lake products that have shown up in devices like the Framework Laptop 12 are increasingly popular. "Demand for our Wildcat Lake is outstripping supply," said Tan. Intel says that 18A products now make up a third of client CPU revenue, up from less than 5% in Q1.
It makes sense that those products would be popular given the current environment. Tan said that Intel's OEM partners are "aggressively managing inventory to match softer sell-through," which means buying less to match the demand in the market. Intel's David Zinsner said the company expects the company's client business to decline by "more than 20%" in the next quarter."
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Zinsner warned of a further contraction in the PC market, describing a sustained decline in the size of the market over the next year, at least. "We expect the 2026 PC unit [Total Addressable Market] to decline approximately 12%, with second half units down more than 20%. We do not expect a sustained recovery until memory availability improves and pricing begins to normalize," Zinsner said. "For 2027, we're planning a PC unit TAM to decline roughly 10%."
Taking the comments together, Intel is saying that it expects the market itself to shrink significantly over the next year due to memory prices. It's not a situation of demand outstripping supply, at least not directly like the case of a component shortage. Rather, it's a pullback from direct customers, OEMs, and IT departments from spending, which is more significant.
Although Intel says the client PC market is shrinking, the company says that its long-term outlook remains positive. "We think next year, and in future years, we're a market-share-gain type of environment... we do think the PC is going to through a renaissance despite [memory shortage]," said Zinsner.
Despite the optimism, Zinsner said that Intel is taking some of its client capacity offline to build more data center products. In response to a question about reallocating wafers from client products, here's what the executive said: "Answer: Yes... What we're taking offline to put Intel 3 into Oregon is 18A wafers, which were generally going to build Panther Lake products, so we see the opportunity with some of that capacity freed up to go produce more data center wafers."
Intel 18A-P also introduces additional transistor options, including enhanced RibbonFET variants sometimes referred to as “Power Boost” devices. These allow designers to optimize different sections of a chip for maximum speed, lower leakage, or improved efficiency. The process also includes interconnect enhancements that reduce resistance, helping signals travel more efficiently through the chip.
Another significant improvement is thermal performance. Intel has indicated that 18A-P reduces thermal resistance by approximately 20% to 40% compared with 18A. Better thermal behavior means heat can be removed more effectively from the silicon, allowing chips to sustain higher performance levels without exceeding thermal limits.
Maybe we can see aggressive turbo and base clocks with this node due to those improvements.
Maybe we can see aggressive turbo and base clocks with this node due to those improvements.
Turbo and base have always been aggressive, what we can hope for with this is that temps and full power draw will be much lower, even with reviewers turning everything to 11 and claiming it being default.
