LIVE: Intel holds a global launch event at CES 2026

Please welcome Chief Executive Officer Lip-bu Tan.

Every breakthrough begins with silence. A moment of focus, a moment of building in the quiet. But in that quiet, inside these fabs, the momentum has been rising. See, quiet doesn't mean stillness. Because here, progress never pauses. It pulses, pushes, accelerates, layer by layer, line by line, gate by gate. And now it's ready to meet the world. Progress never pauses, and neither do we. Please welcome Senior Vice President, General Manager, Client Computing Group, Jim Johnson.

I'm excited to be leading the Client Computing Group PC and edge products at one of the most exciting times in the industry and for our company. CES holds a special place in my heart because together we get to set the tone for what's coming this year. A special welcome to our partners. Thank you for coming and spending the time with us. You know, we could not do it without you. This partnership is what delivers. But before we talk about client, let's stop for a second and talk about Intel. The industry and Intel are both at a strategic inflection point. In 2026, we're delivering leadership products on a leadership process node, combining compute, graphics, and AI and scaling it with customers to be the broadest AI PC platform together we have ever built. In the last five years, we've invested heavily in capital, R&D, new fabs, new tools. Much of this investment aimed at pushing process technology forward, expanding manufacturing capacity in the United States and around the globe. 18A is the center of that effort. As Lip-bu mentioned, we are in production and ramping Panther Lake. This is a big milestone as the world's first foundry node with RibbonFET and PowerVia technologies. What are those and why are they important? RibbonFET is gate-all-around transistor technology that provides our architects a way to precisely control electrical current, critical for performance and energy efficiency. Backside power delivery via PowerVia enhances power flow and signal delivery. What does this mean? It enables Intel to deliver up to 15% better performance per watt with more than 30% better chip density. This was not an easy task, but we executed to our plan and we're ramping to our expectations. Leadership manufacturing has again become a strategic anchor of Intel, alongside delivering x86 solutions at unmatched scale. This is where our multi-gen effort to drive power-efficient performance, hybrid core architectures, and a multi-engine local AI are coming to life. We build for what's needed today, but work really hard with our partners to anticipate what's required next. And right now, as we know, that next wave is AI. It's everywhere. It's in every industry and is in every conversation, and we'll talk about it more today. It's a huge opportunity for all of us. And together, we've been out front shaping what it means for personal and edge computing. And with all the excitement around AI, we always remind ourselves fundamentals still matter. Everybody wants a cool, quiet PC, strong performance, all-day battery life when we're on the go. And the next step of the journey is here. This is Core Ultra Series 3, the first processor built with 18A technology, the most advanced process in the world. We've taken big steps in improving our major SoC IPs in virtually every piece of the chip design, bringing the latest and greatest on all fronts. We have new E-cores, brand new P-cores, a massive GPU with built-in ray tracing, and an NPU that packs more low-power AI in a very dense area, much denser than prior generation. Next-gen memory, next-generation IO, and the latest connectivity, wired and wireless. These were all done to achieve a primary goal with our partners to scale power-efficiency leadership performance across all workloads, expanding our graphics capability. I can't wait till you see this. And enabling a broader set of devices with our OS partners, with our ODM partners, our OEM customers, and importantly, the ISV community. Together, we've nailed these goals with Core Ultra Series 3, achieved by combining the performance and power efficiency we launched across our Series 2 family of processors into one single product. And this isn't marketing speak. We will show you how it's deeply architected into the SoC through our fabrics and with our 18A process node. We've used the power efficiency of Lunar Lake as the architectural foundation of Series 3 and our roadmap moving forward. The graphics performance was already impressive, but we wanted to expand performance available across more devices. We've moved the GPU tile to its own chiplet and now we can attach larger or smaller chiplets based on the market segment needs and the device needs of our customers. We're continuing to push through our hybrid core strategy, redesigning cores for 18A so they operate at significantly lower voltage. It means greater per-core performance while increasing efficiency. We've improved the multi-threaded performance of Series 3 by adding up to eight E-cores. And we completely redesigned our low-power island with dedicated low-power E-cores with their own cache that run hundreds of workloads that are optimized for maximum battery life. Examples like web browsing, video conferencing that demand power efficiency. The benefit: better performance, much lower power, longer battery life. We've also consolidated all the IOs onto a single chip. This was a big ask by our customers' design teams because they want to take Series 3 and expand its capabilities and its market coverage. But people don't buy SoCs and we know that. So beyond the SoC, we've deployed other technologies at the platform level focused on power efficiency. Intel's intelligent display technology, context-aware charging, low-power video conferencing with our image processor, long-lasting connectivity with Intel's Wi-Fi solution. We bring this all together with our advanced Foveros packaging technology delivering a full range of Series 3 processors. That architecture flexibility allows us to provide multiple configurations using a single package type up and down our customers' designs. Something they've been asking for for two generations. They have more memory options and they now can use their own power delivery schemes for their product management and product capability. This gives them design flexibility up and down their product lineup, supporting them into the market and easing design efforts for their teams. So, we just covered a lot on architecture. Let's unpack what it can do. Starting with the x86 core. We're proud of this accomplishment. Core Ultra Series 3 delivers 60% more performance than Lunar Lake Series 2. And it's faster and more efficient than our highest-performing SKU running fewer P-cores. This focus, this maniacal focus our design teams have on power efficiency and the implementation of the low-power island dramatically improves a range of applications we use every day. A simple example would be streaming 4K video on Series 3 draws now one-third the power than prior generations. A massive reduction that allows us to be talking about battery life in days, not in hours. It once again puts the myth to bed that x86 can't be power efficient even at higher performance levels. And this is the last time I'm going to say that. So, let's switch gears and now talk about the GPU, arguably the biggest update to Series 3. And to walk you through it, let me welcome our GM of PC products, Dan Rogers, to the stage.

Thanks, Jim. Graphics at Intel has an interesting history. Ubiquitously deployed with a massive install base, but previously lacking in key features, driver support, and frankly performance. Five years ago, we set on a mission to change that with the announcement of our Intel Arc graphics. And this was more than a hardware plan. Arc is our brand's commitment to deliver world-class discrete-class software across a range of graphics products including integrated. We've rearchitected our entire software stack and strategy to include extensive game-day testing, day-zero driver support, and a full modern feature set. Last year alone, our engineering teams engaged 300 developers on pre-release titles and supported 50 day-zero driver releases. This is light years ahead of where we were just a few years ago. And you've seen the results with Lunar Lake and then Battlemage, one of the best reviewed cards of 2025. And so today, we are very proud to announce the next-generation integrated GPU we've been referring to as 12 Xe, but the world will know as Intel Arc B390 graphics. It features 50% more graphics cores, twice the cache, and 96 built-in XMX AI accelerators for 120 GPU TOPS. If you're impressed by the graphics of Lunar Lake, Panther Lake has 70% more gaming performance and an incredible 50% more AI inference performance. And to prove it, we tested Panther Lake across a range of titles and APIs from DX9 to DX12. And as you can see, the new Arc GPU not only delivers a consistently smooth gameplay, but when compared to the latest from AMD Radeon with similar power and similar memory, delivers an incredible 70% higher frame rate on average and 2x faster on select titles. This is truly amazing. As an example, first-person shooters such as Painkiller and Delta Force will play at well over 100 frames per second with 1080p high settings and XeSS super resolution. To the developers and engineers at Intel and partners across the industry, thank you. Through your hard work, millions of PC gamers will be able to experience great discrete-class game performance on a thin and light laptop for the first time in 2026. But as impressive as this performance is, in a way, it's a look only at today. This is traditional raster performance with AI upscaling. What's unique about our graphics is that we built this for the future and we call this modern rendering. This means better lighting with ray tracing or other demanding visual settings, sharper visuals with high-quality textures and larger geometric assets, and the ultimate in smoothness through AI-generated frames. Today, we're excited to confirm that the new Arc Graphics in Panther Lake will be the first integrated graphics ever to ship day one with AI-based multi-frame generation, delivering three AI-generated frames for every one rendered frame. Thank you. It's a big moment for our graphics team. A great example of the benefits of these is Battlefield 6, which just launched late last year. Intel has been working with EA closely, the developers of Battlefield, to unleash the full performance of this title on our graphics with the most demanding visuals offered in the game called Overkill Settings. Arc B390 can already drive a smooth experience, smooth frame rates using super resolution. But as we turn on multi-frame generation in the driver, you can see that we can scale to an incredibly smooth experience over 120 frames per second and nearly three times faster than AMD. To share more about this collaboration between EA and Intel, I'm very honored to invite Fellow and VP of Technology Partnerships at EA, Jeff Skelton, to the stage. Please welcome Jeff.

Jeff, thank you for joining us today.

Pleasure to be here.

So we just walked through the incredible performance of Panther Lake Arc graphics. We'd love to hear your perspective of this collaboration between EA and Intel.

Absolutely. So, we set out to build the best Battlefield ever by reimagining this iconic franchise from the ground up, pushing the limits of large-scale multiplayer and tactical destruction experiences while redefining the FPS genre. We want all players to enjoy this amazing experience and a partnership like this one, like the one we have with Intel, helps us achieve that as we optimize for frame rate, stutter reduction, stability, and more. This work ensures that we meet player expectations whether they are running desktops with discrete GPUs or mobile processors like Panther Lake. You know, I've been making games for a very long time. And if you told me a few years ago I'd be up here on stage with Intel talking about how our games run and how well they run on integrated graphics, I wouldn't have believed you. The performance we see on Panther Lake is remarkable.

Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. This means a lot from you and the team at EA. Our engineers have been working with EA from the very beginning of Panther from the first silicon to ensure robust driver support at their beta as well as launch. We had two key focus areas. One was optimizing for the hybrid CPU architecture that we've had since Alder Lake and two, implementing the latest AI-based XeSS technologies into the title. The addition of AI into the rendering pipeline has been a game-changer. At this point, I don't think you'd want to build a game without technologies like XeSS. Anything else coming, Jeff?