Mass production of Intel's Core Ultra 400 'Nova Lake-S' CPUs is scheduled for Q4 2026. The company plans to release unlocked 28-core SKUs in Q1 2027, while flagship models with up to 52 cores using two compute tiles may arrive later in 2027, potentially between May and September.
The high-end processors will feature up to 16 Coyote Cove high-performance cores with 16MB L2 cache and up to 32 energy-efficient Arctic Wolf cores, plus four low-power Arctic Wolf cores. To compete with AMD's X3D series, Intel may implement a big Last Level Cache (bLLC) scaling up to 288MB.
The 52-core Core Ultra 9 models and 44-core Core Ultra 7 models will utilize two compute tiles. These dual-chiplet CPUs are expected to consume up to 474W of power and will require motherboards with three 12V EPS power plugs.
Nova Lake processors will support dual-channel DDR5-8000 memory and provide 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, including 16 for graphics and two x4 links for SSDs. They will use the LGA1954 socket and 900-series chipsets, with Intel reportedly planning a longer lifespan for this socket.
The leaked roadmap also mentions Razor Lake and Hammer Lake processors as successors to Nova Lake-S, scheduled for release after Q4 2027, though technical specifications for these families remain undisclosed.
