We have seen the name of a new processor from Intel for the first time – ‘Wildcat Lake’. Currently, it seems to be positioned at the entry-level and is intended to replace the existing Alder Lake-N series, including i3-N305/N300, N200/N100/N97/N50. Wildcat Lake is expected to be released later in 2025 and can be used in Chromebook notebooks, inexpensive notebooks, mini PCs, NAS, and even embedded devices, similar to the previous Pentium/Celeron N series.
The most amazing thing is that it is expected to adopt the latest Intel 18A manufacturing process. Wildcat Lake will also feature a big.LITTLE core design, including up to 2 P-cores of the Cougar Cove architecture and 4 LPE ultra-small cores of the Darkmont architecture. Compared to the existing N series with 8 pure small cores, it is expected to have a significant improvement. Furthermore, these cores are in a separated cluster combination, no longer the traditional ring bus. In terms of both manufacturing process and P-core architecture, Wildcat Lake is the same as Panther Lake. The LPE core is also rumored to return on Panther Lake. Therefore, Wildlake is very likely to be its entry-level streamlined version, and the release time may be even later. In terms of the GPU integrated graphics, it is expected to be upgraded to the latest Xe2 architecture, which is the same as Lunar Lake. However, it is not known how many cores there are. Of course, there will definitely be more. However, the packaging will be changed again. Originally, it was FCBGA1264 with a size of 35 x 24 millimeters. Now it is changed to FCBGA1516, and the size is slightly increased to 35 x 25 millimeters. They are not compatible with each other.
