Intel faces serious threat in the laptop market, not just from its nemesis AMD but also Qualcomm and Apple, thanks to the arrival of high-performance, highly efficient ARM cores that have forced the chipmaker to up every part of its game to compete. With 50% more oomph and 30% less power draw, the Core Ultra 3-series 'Panther Lake' processor is a robust response to those rivals — and at a financial event on Tuesday, Intel announced enormous progress toward delivering the goods.
When Intel announced mass production of Panther Lake about a month ago, the company openly admitted that all wafers for the initial CPUs would be made at pilot production lines in Oregon; the new Arizona fabs built on CHIPS ACT money would catch up later. Later means Q1, apparently, and the Arizona fabs should ramp up, the company said. This means costs might stay low, and crucially, yields will grow quickly (though likely remain low in 2026), all of which spells good news for anyone considering a new laptop.
