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Intel’s next-generation Nova Lake desktop processors will be the first customer product to use Intel’s enhanced 18A-P node, CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirmed in the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call. The chief executive also said the company intends to share more about Nova Lake at CES in January. The company’s Chief Financial Officer shared that Intel intends to take the Panther Lake capacity offline to build more Granite Rapids datacenter CPUs.
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“Nova Lake, our first Intel 18A-P client product, is tracking ahead of schedule, with design gains expected to be twice that of Panther Lake at launch,” Tan said in his prepared remarks. “We look forward to sharing more at CES in January.”
There has been a lot of speculation about which Node Intel Nova Lake CPUs will use, with the rumor mill ping-ponging between Intel 18A and TSMC’s N2P. Current speculation says that the chip will use 18A-P for the SoC tile while TSMC will use N2P for the compute tile. It seems unlikely that Intel will use its most advanced node for an SoC tile, although it is possible.
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Regardless, Nova Lake chips use 18A-P in some sense. Intel announced in June that 18A-P had entered risk production, and at Hot Chips in August, Intel revealed that its next-generation Xeon 7 Diamond Rapids will be the company’s first server products to use the enhanced node.
Compared to the 18A, which is currently available in Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake products, 18A-P comes with a 9% improvement in speed at iso-power, or an 18% reduction in power at iso-speed. Intel has described 18A-P as a drop-in replacement for 18A, so designs for 18A can be built to perform 18A-P instead without extra engineering work.
For 18A products, Intel says that its new Wildcat Lake products that have been featured in devices such as the Framework Laptop 12 are increasingly popular. “Demand for our Wildcat Lake exceeds supply,” Tan said. Intel says 18A products now account for a third of customer CPU revenue, up from less than 5% in Q1.
It makes sense that these products would be popular given the current environment. Tan said Intel’s OEM partners are “aggressively managing inventory to match softer sales,” meaning buying less to match market demand. Intel’s David Zinsner said the company expects the company’s customer business to decline by “more than 20%” in the next quarter.
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Zinsner warned of a further contraction in the PC market, and described at least a sustained decline in the size of the market over the next year. “We expect the 2026 PC unit [Total Addressable Market] down about 12%, with second half units up more than 20%. We don’t expect a sustained recovery until memory availability improves and prices begin to normalize,” Zinsner said. “For 2027, we plan to drop a PC unit TAM by about 10%.”
Taking the comments together, Intel says it expects the market itself to shrink significantly next year due to memory prices. It is not a situation of demand exceeding supply, at least not directly like the case of a component shortage. Rather, it is a withdrawal of direct customers, OEMs, and IT departments from spending, which is more significant.
Although Intel says the client PC market is shrinking, the company says its long-term outlook remains positive. “We think next year, and in the years to come, we’re going to be a market-share-gain type of environment … we think the PC will go through a renaissance though [memory shortage]Zinsner said.
Despite the optimism, Zinsner said Intel is taking some of its customer capacity offline to build more data center products. In response to a question about the reallocation of wafers from customer products, here is what the executive said: “Answer: Yes… What we are taking offline to put Intel 3 in Oregon is 18A wafers that would generally build Panther Lake products, so we see the opportunity with some of that capacity free to produce more data center wafers.
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