According to online leaker Kepler  the chips will lack ray tracing, but might have a smattering of AI functionality.

If this is correct, the new silicon will slot in under the upcoming Panther Lake chips, sticking to lightweight laptops, mini PCs, and other budget boxes.

On the surface, Wildcat Lake shares a lot of DNA with Panther Lake. Both come with the same Cougar Cove performance cores, Darkmont efficiency cores, and Xe3 “Celestial” integrated graphics. But don’t expect the same firepower. Wildcat Lake keeps things modest with just two P-cores, four low-power E-cores, and a miserly two Xe3 GPU cores.

It will support Thunderbolt 4 and LPDDR5X/DDR5 memory, while the AI marketing brigade will be thrilled to hear it claims up to 40 TOPS of AI grunt. That breaks down as 4 TOPS from the CPU, 18 from the GPU, and another 18 from the NPU. Of course, what all that means in the real world remains to be seen, especially with such a slim GPU.

The chips will be soldered onto a much smaller and cheaper BGA 1516 package, rather than the chunkier BGA 2540 seen on Panther Lake-H parts. Expect sub-10W TDPs, so they’ll fit nicely into fanless designs, handhelds, or anything that values battery life over actual performance.

It makes sense that Intel has saved its cash by dumping Race Tracing. It has XMX cores, meaning some XeSS upscaling support might limp along, though whether it’ll be usable is anyone’s guess until someone benchmarks it.

Wildcat Lake is clearly designed as the low-end stopgap, replacing Alder Lake-N in entry-level designs without pretending to be anything more. If you want proper performance, you’ll still be looking at Panther Lake or beyond.

More details are expected later this year, as Chipzilla lines up the launch alongside its more exciting Panther Lake lineup. For now, it looks like Wildcat Lake will quietly populate cheap laptops and mini PCs without making much noise.