Intel’s 18A Panther Lake CPUs will feature 5th Gen NPU, patch notes confirm

Intel confirms next-generation NPU plans with Linux patch notes

Intel’s Linux engineers are already preparing for the launch of the company’s next-generation processors. In 2025, Intel is due to release its 18A Panther Lake CPUs, which will succeed today’s Lunar Lake processors. Intel’s patch notes confirm that Panther Lake will feature Intel’s 5th-generation NPU technology. That means we should expect a big AI performance boost from Intel’s next-gen processors.

Sadly, Intel’s patch notes do not detail the performance levels of Intel’s 5th-generation NPUs. They only reveal that they are coming with Intel’s Panther Lake CPUs. Regardless, the popularity of AI and Intel’s focus on it implies that they will aim to deliver large generational boosts in NPU performance.

Intel’s current-generation NPUs in Lunar Lake can deliver up to 48 TOPs of AI performance. Their last-generation (3rd generation) NPU in Meteor Lake only delivered 11.5 TOPs of performance. That means that Intel delivered a greater than 3x performance boost in a single generation. Should we expect the same NPU gains with Panther Lake? Probably not. Even so, large performance gains aren’t out of the question.

(Intel Linux Patch Notes – via Phoronix)

NPU technology is relatively new. That means that it has room to mature and evolve. As such, we expect NPU performance improvements to outpace CPU and GPU performance improvements in the near-term. We also expect the use of NPUs to grow moving forward.

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