Discussion Intel Nova Lake in H2-2026: Discussion Threads

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Io Magnesso

Senior member
Jun 12, 2025
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So up to ~180mm2 of N2 die. Not bad.

I’m assuming the the other tiles are 18A?
Hmm? So you think the N2 version will be made in a larger size?
Assuming it will be placed in two
I don't know the details, but I think the one in this image is the maximum configuration using the tiles made with TSMC N2.
 

Io Magnesso

Senior member
Jun 12, 2025
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It's costly to go out of your way to create a large cache (SRAM) in the cutting edge process...
For the time being, there should be almost no conversion of the bitcells around the area until the CFET comes out.
 

511

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Jul 12, 2024
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Here is all what we know about Nova Lake in terms of Improvements
  • IO tile is Intel 3
  • SoC is 18A with 4LPE Arctic Wolf cores and IMC
  • compute is N2(8+16)/18AP depending on SKU
  • GPU is 18AP/Intel 3(not totally sure about this maybe based on XE3/XE3P)
  • Xe3 Display Engines and Xe4 Media engine with professional codec support
  • minimum 70 TOPS Die waste Unit
  • Panther Cove with 4MB Shared L2 for P cores
  • Arctic Wolf E Cores(likely 20% IPC Improvements over Darkmont according to Raichu).
  • AVX 10(aka AVX -512 Support)
  • bumped up core counts for Ultra 5 will beat Ultra 9 285K easily in both ST and MT by a decent margin
  • big Last Level Cache SKU with 144MB L3 cache for a single 8+16 tiles
anything else i miss?
 

dullard

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May 21, 2001
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anything else i miss?
  • 12 more PCIe 5.0 lanes than Arrow Lake (if you exclude the chipset, then Nova Lake has 32 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes, while Arrow Lake is 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 28 PCIe 4.0 lanes)
  • DDR5-8000 memory support (Arrow Lake is DDR5-6400)
  • The chips with 2 CPU tiles will be 150 W TDP --- roughly matching the previous Extreme Edition processors (which were historically in the 130W to 165 W TDP range rather than the normal 125 W range):
  • Core Ultra 3 is coming back (Arrow Lake skipped it)
  • LGA1954 socket (Arrow Lake was LGA1851), but coolers are cross compatible.
 
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Tigerick

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Apr 1, 2022
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According to Guru3d, Intel has bumped up the memory controller to DDR5-8800, NVL-S need as much bandwidth as possible to feed the 52-core. ;)

Guru3d also mention the release date as Q3, 2026. Sept and October seems possible..
 
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511

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Jul 12, 2024
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Not how it works, otherwise we could substract the rest of 48 cores since they have L3 like Lunar.
Yeah but for the task they are designed for they will be to minimize going memory and standby stuff they don't need the super fast memory for many of the stuff they are designed for and placed there.
 
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DavidC1

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Dec 29, 2023
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The Chinese forum that leaked the info said that the P-core Haifa team is nearly devoid of personnel. Probably preparing for Unified Core transition. Not happy to have got to know you!
Not how it works, otherwise we could substract the rest of 48 cores since they have L3 like Lunar.
Yea but Novalake's LPE cores are really light load cores like Meteorlake was meant to do but failed. The performance contribution(if any) should be not meaningfully significant.
 
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511

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The Chinese forum that leaked the info said that the P-core Haifa team is nearly devoid of personnel. Probably preparing for Unified Core transition. Not happy to have got to know you!
He meant brain drani lol many of the engineers have left for Apple/Huwaei/Nvidia
 
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DavidC1

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Dec 29, 2023
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where was this lol also what does slightly improved means in comparison to Skymont improvements also looks like the SIMD/256 bit improvements took quite time out of their development budget if the gains are so low
Yea.

"Slight improvements" are already expected with the very minor changes in Darkmont.
this guy is an intel employee btw
Majority of Intel also believed that they could easily reach 5, 6, 7 even 10GHz. Prescott rumors were mentioning 5.5GHz, then 6GHz, then 6.6GHz every quarter! In the end it whimpered and cratered just under 4GHz.
 
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511

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Majority of Intel also believed that they could easily reach 5, 6, 7 even 10GHz. Prescott rumors were mentioning 5.5GHz, then 6GHz, then 6.6GHz every quarter! In the end it whimpered and cratered just under 4GHz.
They did hit 6Ghz just a 15-20 years later 🤣
 
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