Intel seems to be preparing multiple Desktop CPU product lines for its 15th Gen lineup which are expected to include Arrow Lake, Panther Lake & Beast Lake.

Intel 15th Gen Desktop CPU Rumors: Arrow Lake With Up To 40 Cores, Panther Lake With Cougar Cove & Beast Lake With More P-Cores

The information comes from Moore's Law is Dead and talks about what we can expect from the upcoming Intel Desktop CPU lineup. The rumor states that the Intel 15th Gen Desktop CPU lineup was going to include at least four families starting with Meteor Lake-S but recent reports indicate that Meteor Lake-S won't be hitting retail shelves and instead, the 14th Gen family will comprise of refreshed Raptor Lake chips that focus on higher clock speeds with higher power draw & support for faster memory speeds. But that will mark the end of the road for the LGA 1700/1800 platform and it's all LGA 1851 after that.

Image Credits: Moore's Law is Dead

Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU Rumors - Up To 40 Cores, 40% Higher Single-Thread Performance

So while Intel Meteor Lake-S may or may not come to the desktop platform, it means technically that the Intel Arrow Lake-S family will be the first desktop offerings for the new LGA 1851 socket platform. The CPUs are said to be on track for a Q4 2024 launch and will include up to 8 P-Cores based on the Lion Cove architecture and 32 E-Cores based on the Skymont architecture. This will give you up to 40 cores and 48 threads. Intel is rumored to leverage both TSMC 3nm and its own 20A nodes for desktop-grade chips and this is for the compute tile:

Arrow Lake-S Core i9 - 8+32 Cores (TSMC 3nm)Arrow Lake-S Core i7 - 8+16 Cores (TSMC 3nm)Arrow Lake-P Core i7/i5 - 6+8 Cores (TSMC 3nm)Arrow Lake-S Core i5/i3 - 6+8 Cores (Intel 20A)Arrow Lake-P Core i3 - 2+8 Cores (Intel 20A)

In terms of performance, MLID claims that the Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs can offer up to a 30-40% increase in single-threaded performance versus Raptor Lake. In Multi-Threaded, the CPU is said to deliver a 40% increase in multi-threaded performance on a 6+8 configuration at the same power so overall desktop performance increase might end up in the 50%+ range versus the fastest 8+16 chips. Once again, there's talk of a 192 EU Xe2-LPG GPU which should fall under Battlemage & a new AI engine.

Intel Panther Lake & Beast Lake - Tuning Arrow Lake For Faster Desktop Performance

After Arrow Lake, Intel is rumored to introduce the Panther Lake and Beast Lake CPUs for the LGA 1851 desktop family. Intel already confirmed the development of Panther Lake which is targeted as a late 2025 launch and is expected to feature the Cougar Cove cores as the P-Cores. It will come in 8+32 configurations too and is projected to offer a 30-40% increase in single-threaded and up to a 20% increase in multi-threaded performance over the 8+32 Arrow Lake-S parts.

Then after that, Intel is likely to introduce a totally new family of desktop CPUs known as Beast Lake which extends upon Arrow Lake and Panther Lake. This might be the first chip that breaks past the 8 P-Core barriers with multiple configurations in consideration with up to 10 Big-Cores and 32 Little Cores. That will essentially make for a 16+64 configuration and that sounds insane. It also looks like the Beast Canyon family may be positioned as a HEDT class lineup based on its core counts but it's also going to compete against AMD's higher core count Zen 6 and future variants which will arrive in 2025+.

Intel Desktop CPU Core Count Progression: