Following Intel's keynote at CES 2026, where it formally launched consumer Panther Lake products, our resident CPU reporter Jake Roach attended a press Q&A at CES in Las Vegas, featuring some of the senior staff behind Intel's Panther Lake architecture. The following article is a transcript of that Q&A session. We've edited some elements for flow and clarity, and have made notes where we couldn't quite make out what was being said. As speakers did not introduce themselves at the beginning of our transcript, we have denoted them as Journalists, denoted in the sequence that they spoke in.
Some highlights include Intel being particularly proud of making the lineup significantly easier to understand, combining the benefits of Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, while also making fewer SKU denotations, making the lineup easier to parse as a whole. Additionally, while Intel did not announce any EVO processors at CES 2026, the company is still keeping the brand alive, with 'stricter' qualifications in place for the future.
Ahead of reading this press Q&A session, be sure to familiarize yourself with all the elements of Intel's new Panther Lake architecture by checking out some of our coverage, or watch the keynote yourself below.
Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Launch Event Livestream | Intel - YouTube Watch On
So, now that you've learnt a little bit more about what Panther Lake offers, here's our full, slightly edited press Q&A session. This session was around 25 minutes long, and while recording in a noisy, ambient environment, some things can get lost in the audio mix, and have been denoted as such in the copy.
Shalini Singh: Hi. My name is Shalini, Technical Marketing, Intel CCG (Client Computing Group, with me, Damien, who leads technical marketing as well. [laughs]
Damien Triloet: Yep, Technical Marketing, a lot of time spent on graphics and [inaudible]
Mitch Lum: I'm Mitch Lum, I'm the Product Manager for both Core Ultra Series 3 and Core Series 4.
Client Product Team Lead: I'm [inaudible], I lead the client product team.
Journalist 1: So, my first question is, you guys are using a lot of panthers in the presentation. It was nice. And we are used to [having], like, the codename. And when we have the product, the codename disappears. You guys don't use the code name anymore just presenting the unique architecture [...] But you guys are using a lot of panthers in design. [...] Are you guys using [Panthers] to represent this generational product for clients? The guys actually buying the product?
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