Intel’s Arrow Lake processors may not arrive until the very end of 2024, if a new rumor is right.
This one comes from regular hardware leaker HXL as shared on X in a very brief statement that informs us that Arrow Lake sales won’t kick off until December.
In case you were wondering, ARL-S refers to Arrow Lake-S, with the ‘S’ suffix denoting desktop processors (there will be Arrow Lake mobile CPUs for notebooks too, with more powerful higher-end models that’ll complement Lunar Lake, next-gen laptop silicon that emphasizes power-efficiency).
We’ve previously heard that Arrow Lake desktop will arrive later in 2024, and fairly recently Intel assured us that its next-gen processors will turn up in Q4 – which could theoretically mean October.
With a September 2024 announcement supposedly planned, we’d imagined a release the following month would seem the most likely scenario. However, if this latest speculation is true – and don your skeptical hat, naturally, with this, and past claims to boot – that’s a pretty disappointing slide to the very end of the year.
Analysis: Intel’s not having a good time right now
Given Intel’s promise of a Q4 release, a December on-sale date would be the latest that Team Blue could leave it to unleash Arrow Lake to challenge for places on our best CPU list.
It’s worth noting, too, that another leaker (Harukaze5719) on X chimed in to flag a previous rumor from Jaykihn that ‘QS’ for Arrow Lake, meaning final Qualification Sample testing and validation, is set for week 40 of 2024, which is the first week of October. This would line up with an intended on-sale date of December, and so that’s a worrying hint that this fresh pessimistic prediction could be on the money.
If Arrow Lake comes out in December, what does that mean for Intel? Nothing good, frankly, as AMD has its next-gen CPUs, Ryzen 9000, about to come out (they’re going to debut at the end of July). Given that, Intel would be five months behind with Arrow Lake if it doesn’t emerge until the very end of the year – by which time Ryzen 9000 X3D will likely have arrived, or may have been out for some time even, if another rumor is correct.
On top of all this, Intel is currently suffering something of a PR nightmare as problems with its more recent Core i9 processors crashing continue to prove a thorny and controversial issue. Whether Arrow Lake will rectify these nasty issues, well, that remains to be seen of course – but it’s a new socket and different architecture, and it doesn’t push as hard on the power front, so we can certainly be hopeful.
Via Tom’s Hardware