A lot seems to be going on at Intel right now. The company is still adjusting to having the US Government as a major stakeholder, along with setting up the details of its partnership with Nvidia. For several weeks, there have been additional rumours that Intel was working on a new set of ‘Core Ultra’ CPUs, and the latest from a reliable industry insider seems to confirm this.
Twitter user HXL has developed a reputation for providing reliable information from the CPU and graphics card industry. A recent post from HXL indicates that Intel is planning to add a new tier to the CPU product stack. The new chips will be designated as the ‘Core Ultra X’ line, and will span the usual 5, 7 and 9 SKUs.
Previous information on these chips came from the former editor of Chinese tech portal ITHome, Victor M. His post indicated that these new ‘Core Ultra X’ chips would be based on the upcoming ‘Panther Lake’ architecture. Specifically mentioned in the post was the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H. This chip is said to have the following specs:
- 4 Performance Cores
- 8 Efficiency Cores
- 4 Low-power efficiency cores
- 12 Xe3 cores
It has not been confirmed if these chips are desktop or mobile, but yet another leak from Momomo_US points towards these new chips being mobile CPUs intended for laptops. The Ultra X7 368H being the flagship, with a maximum P-Core clock speed of 5.0 GHz and a max iGPU clock speed of 2.5 GHz.
None of the information leaked so far has revealed definitively what the ‘X’ designation refers to. Speculation has run rife through the ranks of technology enthusiasts and analysts. Some predict it will indicate the presence of an enhanced iGPU, while others believe that it refers to power draw. Or perhaps Intel finally has an answer to AMD’s ‘X3D’ stacked V-Cache.
Answers will probably come when Intel lifts the Tech Tour embargo on the 9th of October, as full details on Panther Lake are expected to be part of the reveal.
