'Now you've got something that's a little bit easier and less expensive and can go a little bit faster': Intel's lead x86 CPU architect explains why it's not bringing Hyper-Threading back for Panther Lake

A photo of an Intel 18A wafer, full of Panther Lake compute tiles, with a stylized image of a complete PTL chip in the background.

Intel recently spilled the beans on its upcoming Panther Lake CPU architecture, which seems to be an iterative improvement over previous designs, plus the promise of being built on a new process node, 18A. But in case you've wondered about some of the broader design choices that went into the last couple of generations plus the upcoming one, Intel's just answered why these CPU cores are the way they are.

Well, at least in one respect, that is, this is being why simultaneous multithreading (SMT) was abandoned. In a recent interview with Chips and Cheese, Intel's lead x86 CPU architect Stephen Robinson tells interviewer George Cozma that "SMT isn't necessarily as valuable" once you add hybrid cores into the mix.