Rumour suggests Intel is cooking up a 12 Xe desktop Nova Lake CPU

Rumours continue to swirl around Intel's upcoming Nova Lake launch. The latest of these comes from noted leaker Jaykihn, who has hinted towards some exciting highlights among the desktop lineup. On X, the leaker wrote, "Nova Lake-H has a 12 Xe segment, and Nova Lake-S has a 12 Xe SKU. These are Xe3p."

Basically, this leak suggests there will be both a next-generation Nova Lake mobile CPU rocking 12 Xe cores as well as a desktop variant also sporting the same number of Intel graphics cores (though if that's true, I should probably be calling it an 'APU').

A high-performance iGPU was something sorely missing from the previous Arrow Lake generation of desktop chips, and having heard from our Dave what a 14 Xe core chip can do in the new MSI Claw handheld, it's exciting to think what a slightly upgraded version of Intel's GPU silicon could do in a wee little desktop chassis.

Anyway, drilling down a little more, the Xe 3P core is an upcoming iteration of Intel's microarchitecture. The discrete GPU tech was codenamed 'Celestial' for a time and was even meant to make its debut alongside Panther Lake. However, that chip went with what was essentially Xe2 'Plus Plus', and Jaykihn also claims what was Celestial 'was canned long ago'.

In other words, Xe 3P has been cooking for a minute. When it finally arrives in the form of the expected Crescent Island GPUs later this year, it'll be primarily geared towards handling AI inference by leveraging LPDDR5X memory, rather than the pricier data centre du jour HBM. It's entirely possible a powerful bit of kit like that could also turn its hand to gaming, but it's unlikely Intel would bring that chip to any gaming-focused cards.

Yes. Nova Lake -H has a 12 Xe segment, and Nova Lake -S has a 12 Xe SKU.These are Xe3p.April 24, 2026

As for a possible mobile APU, Nick recently wrote that a Nova Lake mobile chip with a beefy iGPU would be great news for handhelds, but that it would likely be destined for edge computing only.

But decent integrated graphics? In my desktop processor? That's exciting for sure, but how likely is it? Well, let's look at the leaker in question. Jaykihn claimed back in January the B70 Pro would arrive 'soon' and it did. Then in April, they leaked details about Intel's Core 300 laptop chips that also appeared to mostly bear out. Sure, a broken clock can be right twice a day, but this leaker is noted for having a pretty good track record as these things go.