Intel's 18A process Panther Lake CPU is expected to be launched in mid-2025, promising a significant improvement in AI performance

According to the information obtained from the Zhitong Finance APP, in the latest earnings conference call of Intel (INTC.US), the company showcased its upcoming products and explicitly stated that it will fully promote the development of artificial intelligence on its next major CPU platform. CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that the upcoming 18A process Panther Lake CPU is progressing smoothly and is expected to be launched in mid-2025. Gelsinger made some bold statements, indicating that the artificial intelligence capabilities of Panther Lake will be double that of the Arrow Lake chip set to be released later this year. If Intel can achieve such generational progress, it may witness some remarkable artificial intelligence processing capabilities. Panther Lake, following Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake, represents the third iteration of Intel's Core Ultra series decomposition design. This modular approach divides processing components into multiple tiled chips, which is different from the hybrid architecture used in Alder Lake and Raptor Lake by the company. This shift towards chiplets allows Intel to adopt AI-focused components more widely and boldly. Gelsinger pointed out that the company's "execution engine" roadmap is progressing comprehensively, with five new process nodes set to enter production in just four years, demonstrating an extremely positive development pace. The 20A process paves the way for 18A and is set to begin mass production in the latter half of this year alongside Arrow Lake. Gelsinger revealed that the 1.0 PDK for Intel 18A is expected to be released this quarter. In addition, leading products Clearwater Forest and Panther Lake have entered the fab, with mass production of Intel 18A expected to begin in these products in the first half of 2025 and be released by mid-next year. During the earnings conference call in the fourth quarter of 2023, Gelsinger revealed that Intel is committed to increasing the AI performance of its x86 processors by up to six times in the coming generations of products. If Intel can successfully complete these tasks as planned, these rapid AI accelerator chip upgrades will help the company gain a crucial advantage in the fierce AI competition with competitors such as Nvidia (NVDA.US) and AMD (AMD.US). At the same time, Intel is actively promoting the adoption of the Core Ultra series products launched in December. With the easing of supply constraints, the company expects CPU shipments to double this quarter. By the end of this year, Intel aims to deploy over 40 million enhanced AI PCs in its Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake product stack In addition, Intel will also launch a new server chip, the Sierra Forest Xeon 6 series, based on Intel's 3rd generation process, with 288 cores. The 128-core Granite Rapids will follow closely, intended for data center deployment