Intel’s Wildcat Lake CPUs Lack Ray Tracing Support, Include Two “Xe3” RT Units and XMX Cores

Sure, here we go:

—

Okay, so Intel’s up to something again. They’ve got these new Wildcat Lake CPUs coming out, supposedly to replace the old Alder Lake-N ones. Not really sure why they named it “Wildcat” because, honestly, my cat’s a wild one and she wouldn’t care about CPUs. Anyway, moving on…

So, let’s dive in. These Wildcat things are gonna launch with some other CPUs called Panther Lake. Kind of like siblings, I guess? Wildcat’s gonna be for entry-level stuff, while the Panthers are aiming higher. If I’m understanding this right, both CPUs will share certain things like architecture, which sounds fancy but kinda confusing too.

Here’s the techy bit: Wildcat Lake’s gonna have what they call Cougar Cove P-Cores and Darkmont E-Cores. Breaks my brain slightly, but that’s tech, right? Plus, there’s this Xe3 “Celestial” graphics business. I always picture little cats with space helmets when I hear “celestial,” but maybe that’s just me.

So, we get 2 P-Cores and 4 LP-E Cores or whatever that means. They’re throwing in Xe3 cores too, but only two of them. Will it matter? I dunno.

One cool thing here – or, well, I think it’s cool – is Thunderbolt 4 support. LPDDR5X and DDR5 too, which sounds more like serial numbers to me. Also, they’re packaging it in something called BGA 1516 to make it smaller. I get that; everything’s gotta be small these days.

Oh, but wait! No ray tracing with these Wildcat CPUs. Yeah, they only have a couple of RT units. What’s the point if you can’t ray trace? But they’ve got those XMX cores for some XeSS support. Whatever XeSS is supposed to be.

Entry-level and budget machines are where we’re gonna see these Wildcat CPUs. Think Mini PCs and some handhelds, maybe. Could be a fun experiment to see how they handle.

And for the nitty-gritty tech details, there’s some chart comparing Wildcat, Alder Lake-N, and that Twin Lake thing. But charts confuse me – numbers all over the place. I really just need coffee after looking at that.

So that’s my ramble on Wildcat Lake. More info’s bound to pop up later, but until then, it’s all just silicon and circuit dreams.