Intel's 'Serpent Lake' CPU leaks, its first chip developed in collaboration with Nvidia

AMD’s NIGHTMARE?! Intel’s Razor, Hammer Lake & Serpent Lake LEAKS – YouTube

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Brace yourself for not only a veritable cavalcade of Intel-related leaks, rumours and codenames, but also for the usual caveats and qualifications concerning unconfirmed reports of future products. The news includes Intel’s first joint-venture chip with Nvidia, plus several next-gen CPUs, reportedly with a big boost to per-core performance, plus a return to a unified CPU core architecture.

RedGamingtech describes Serpent Lake as an “APU monster” similar in remit to AMD’s Strix Halo chip. It’s said to sport Nvidia’s next-gen Rubin GPU technology built on TSMC N3P silicon, while CPU tech from Intel’s upcoming Titan Lake generation, more on which in a moment. Oh, and it’s all supported by LPDDR6 memory.

Exactly how accurate any of this is, well, that’s impossible to say. Arguably, the only data point of real note is that “Serpent Lake” codename. Where things get complicated concerns earlier rumours that another Intel architecture, codenamed, Hammer Lake, was to be the first example of the Intel-Nvidia alliance.

However, that “leak” claimed Hammer Lake was an existing architecture slated to be modified to accept an Nvidia GPU in response to the newly announced deal. In reality, it should probably be no surprise that Intel’s roadmap of future chips is somewhat in flux following that momentous deal with Nvidia.

Intel’s single-thread performance quest begins with Panther Lake, which launches next month. (Image credit: Intel)

With that in mind, Red GamingTech has something of a précis of the next few Intel CPU generations, including Hammer Lake. Intel’s next desktop CPU, officially, is Nova Lake, which should arrive toward the end of 2026.

After Nova Lake, according to these reports, is Razer Lake in 2027 or maybe 2028. That sticks with Intel’s current Performance and Efficient core approach, but with a fairly hefty double-digit (ie at least 10%) IPC boost over Nova Lake thanks to new “Griffin Cove” Performance cores.

Razer Lake’s “Golden Eagle” Efficient cores are claimed to be getting an even bigger boost and it’s implied that the success of the team that created those new E cores has convinced Intel to let them loose on the brand new unified CPU core architecture that follows, namely the aforementioned Hammer Lake family, said to be due in 2029.

If Intel does return to a so-called “unified” architecture for Hammer Lake, it will certainly make for interesting marketing. Back before Intel introduced P cores and E cores with the Alder Lake CPU generation, it just had, well, cores. No doubt a return to a single-core architecture, if it happens, will be marketed as some great advance.

After some pretty disappointing generations of CPUs, is Intel ready to take the fight to AMD? (Image credit: Future)

Whatever, along with Razer Lake and Hammer Lake is Titan Lake. That’s allegedly a mobile-only respin of Razer Lake with Griffin Cove P cores and Golden Eagle E cores, plus some tweaks and enhancements.

However, rather than the CPU cores being the interesting aspect of Titan Lake, it will be the debut of Intel’s Xe3P graphics architecture that marks the new mobile chip out as something special.

To recap, then, we have the Intel-Nvidia Serpent Lake mega-APU, supposedly with Nvidia Rubin graphics, the Razer Lake CPU architecture with a hefty performance boost over Nova Lake, Hammer Lake which sees a return to a unified core architecture, and Titan Lake, which is mobile-only and rocks Intel’s next-gen Xe3P graphics.

Given that Intel looked on the brink of collapse about a year ago, and bearing in mind recent rumours that Intel’s fabs have also inked multiple deals with big customers, this is all fairly promising stuff.