Intel announces two new processor ranges: one for professional use, the other for the general public.
While 2026 should be rather quiet in terms of major CPU and GPU announcements, Intel is nevertheless launching two new ranges, almost back-to-back. On the one hand, the presentation of the Bartlett Lake range, and on the other, the refresh of an older range, Arrow Lake. In all, we're talking about 13 processors, with significant differences in both design and objectives.
The entire Bartlett Lake range © Intel
Bartlett Lake is a bit of a surprise. Indeed, this new range calls into question the latest developments in Intel's architectures by completely disregarding the so-called efficient cores (E-cores). It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the least powerful or the strongest of the range, only the high-performance cores (P-cores) count. There's every reason to believe that in taking this path, Intel is seeking to meet a particular demand, in situations where predictability is ultimately more important than raw performance: by simplifying its architecture in this way, Intel is making the scheduler 's job easier. In all, eleven Bartlett Lake processors were presented by Intel, which is not targeting the general public, but the business world: embedded computing andedge computing.
Only two new processors with the Core Ultra 200K Plus © Intel
Two days after Bartlett Lake, Intel is already introducing a new, more eagerly-awaited range, Arrow Lake Refresh. The aim here is to build on Arrow Lake - to be launched in autumn 2024 - and to keep people waiting, while Nova Lake, the real new architecture, is not due to arrive until late 2026 or early 2027. Arrow Lake Refresh doesn't shake things up, and goes against Bartlett Lake by increasing the number of E-cores compared to Arrow Lake: the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus each gain four, with the additional L3 cache that this implies. And most interesting of all, at a time when RAM and SSDs are becoming horribly expensive, Intel is offering its two new consumer processors at attractive prices: $199 and $299.
