Discovered by Gamma0burst, Intel is reportedly preparing Royal Core to replace the chipmaker's current Lion Cove. Royal Core's successor, Cobra Core, is also already in the pipeline. These microarchitectures will power Intel's next-generation processors, rivaling the best CPUs on the market.
Intel engineer Antony Jose Emmatty's LinkedIn profile, Intel has been working on Royal Core and Cobra Core since 2023. The project aims to "create and execute a new architecture for Intel x86 processors with more power efficiency and high performance compared to the other competitors in the market."
Lion Cove is currently the P-core utilized inside Intel's Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) and Core Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake) processors. Despite Intel killing off Hyper-Threading technology on Lion Cove, the new microarchitecture promises double-digit IPC improvements over the previous Raptor Cove that powers 13th and 14th Generation Core processors. Royal Core is reportedly the successor to Raptor Cove. It's interesting because Intel has used the "Cove" name for a few generations. The chipmaker appears to be transitioning to "Core," as evidenced by the next-generation Royal Core.
According to the Intel employee's project description, Royal Core will focus on achieving high performance and efficiency simultaneously. The latter sounds like Intel wants to develop a competitive microarchitecture to compete with Arm-based rivals, such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus or Apple's M-series silicon.
Alleged Intel roadmaps have shown that Nova Lake will be the direct replacement for Lunar Lake. Therefore, we can reasonably assume Royal Core will debut with Nova Lake. However, Nova Lake for mobile and desktops won't come to the market anytime soon, as the leaked roadmaps have pointed to a potential 2026 to 2027 timeframe for its release.
The transition from Royal Core to Cobra Core won't be quick, as rumors of upgraded variants of Royal Core exist. The Beast Lake codename has been loosely thrown around a lot in the hardware circles, but we haven't seen any substantial evidence of Beast Lake's existence or rumored cancellation.
Meanwhile, Cobra Core will eventually replace Royal Core. There's no estimated timetable, but we suspect Cobra Core will arrive no earlier than 2027.
