Intel has apparently reshuffled its desktop CPU plans and there’s no longer an Arrow Lake Refresh in the cards, if a fresh piece of speculation is correct.
If you recall, Arrow Lake is the next generation of processors from Intel that’s about to launch (in October, rumor has it), and the word from the grapevine in the past has been that next year’s generation of silicon from Team Blue would be an Arrow Lake Refresh.
However, according to leaker Panzerlied – a regular contributor of hardware-related theorizing from the Chiphell forums – Arrow Lake Refresh is now canceled (as flagged on X by Everest).
ARL-S Refresh is cancelled pic.twitter.com/NncQl3lDJSSeptember 23, 2024
So, what’s going to replace it? Absolutely nothing, according to Panzerlied – Intel will just not bother with a new generation of desktop silicon in 2025.
Instead, Team Blue will simply look to launch entirely new Nova Lake CPUs in 2026, if the leaker is right – and obviously, take this with a whole lot of seasoning.
Typically, Intel launches new desktop processors on a yearly cadence (or thereabouts), and even if there isn’t an entirely new range, it’ll push out a simple refresh of some kind – just as was the case with the current generation, Raptor Lake Refresh.
So, rumors of an Arrow Lake Refresh seemed to fit in terms of Intel’s past plans, as a stepping stone to the true next generation, Nova Lake – but seemingly this isn’t the way it’ll play out.
Analysis: Are desktop CPUs sliding down the priority list for Intel?
This is a briefly worded assertion and something of a bolt out of the blue, so we must be very cautious here. Of course, the fact that Intel was planning to refresh Arrow Lake next year was only a rumor in the first place, so this may simply have been a notion which has now been abandoned. Maybe there isn’t much room to maneuver in terms of juicing up Arrow Lake meaningfully to get more performance out of the chips – who knows.
We can indulge in all sorts of theorizing, really, but taking this latest rumor at face value, what it means is that Arrow Lake is all Intel will have on the table, desktop-wise, for two years now. Nova Lake will be the next stop for the desktop train, as noted, in 2026.
We previously figured Nova Lake – which was supposed to be the debut of Intel’s big Royal Core project, though supposedly now that’s not happening – would arrive later in 2026, but if there’s no new desktop CPU line-up in 2025, that presents the possibility that Intel would want to usher in Nova Lake earlier in 2026.
Intel will, of course, need a major improvement in the works to take on AMD’s Zen 6 processors (Ryzen 10000? – or perhaps a rejig of the naming scheme will be in order). Mainly because Zen 6 is expected to be a huge leap forward for AMD in a similar vein to Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000), which was a big step on going to 7nm from the original Zen’s 14nm process – and Zen 6 is expected to debut in 2026.
Perhaps Intel feels comfortable enough relying on Arrow Lake desktop for the next two years (or maybe year-and-a-half), or perhaps this reflects what seems to be Team Blue’s increasing focus on the laptop world, and pushing on the efficiency front with mobile processors (Lunar Lake sounds pretty awesome), rather than looking to raw performance. Or this could be meaningless chatter from the rumor mill that turns out to be false, of course – take it with plenty of salt as we’ve already said.
Via Wccftech
