Intel announced at CES 2026 that it is shipping its Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs (aka Panther Lake) using an 18A manufacturing process — at 18 angstroms — for both high-end laptops and gaming PCs.
This kind of product is critical for Intel, which has struggled as it has performed worse than rivals like Nvidia and AMD, and its manufacturing has fallen behind TSMC, its Taiwanese rival. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is trying to turn the ship around.
Jim Johnson, Intel’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Client Computing Group, said at the event that Intel has made significant investments in software that enable its processors to run at optimal performance.
Johnson said that the new 18A manufacturing technology delivers 15% better performance per clock. He said that fundamentals like this still matter. The new processor focuses on performance, power efficiency and battery life. Intel said it offers 60% better performance than the prior generation Lunar Lake processors.
Intel PC products executive Dan Rogers said the Ultra Series 3 features Intel’s new Arc B390 integrated GPU. It has 50% more graphics cores. The chip has twice the cache and 120 GPU TOPS of performance. Rogers said the new integrated unit should offer 77% faster gaming performance. He teased that Intel will have a portable gaming platform launching with Intel’s chips later in the year.
Johnson said this will be the most broadly adopted AI PC platform that Intel has ever shipped, based on Panther Lake.
“Let’s have a great 2026,” Johnson said.