Intel’s long-awaited Nova Lake-S processors are seemingly in the engineering phase of development, as the processors break cover on recent shipping manifests. While there’s still a while to go before the launch of these chips, as partners busy themselves with testing and validation, these listings do provide some confirmation as to their specifications.
According to these shipping manifests, Nova Lake-S chips will pack up to 52 cores, lining up with prior rumours. Rumours suggest this amounts to16 Coyote Cove Performance-cores, 32 Arctic Wolf Efficient-cores, and four Arctic World Low power-cores. The manifest also lists a 28-core model, likely a Core Ultra 5 variant featuring an 8P + 16E + 4LP layout.
Like Arrow Lake, Intel is apparently ditching SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) support once again, meaning Nova Lake won’t support hyperthreading. However, it’s clear the company is keen to explore alternative means of plugging this gap, through large bLLC cache and potentially ‘Super Cores‘.
The manifest also sheds some light on Nova Lake motherboard support. The listings detail that desktop processors on this architecture will require an LGA1954 socket, signalling that LGA1851 won’t receive support for any architecture beyond Arrow Lake, refreshed or otherwise. There is a glimmer of good news here, though. As socket dimensions remain identical, cooler compatibility seems like a given.
It’s unclear when Nova Lake will debut bar broad estimates of H2 2026, but listings like this are important milestones that suggest the architecture is closer to delivery. The question for Intel is whether it fancies firing off before or after AMD, with Zen 6 expected to launch in the same year, if not early 2027.
